Author: Michael R. Weisser
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226891583
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description

Author: Rudolph M. Bell
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351520156
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 284

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Book Description
The Italian peasantry has often been described as tragic, backward, hopeless, downtrodden, static, and passive. In Fate and Honor, Family and Village, Rudolph Bell argues against this characterization by reconstructing the complete demographic history of four country villages since 1800. He analyzes births, marriages, and deaths in terms of four concepts that capture more accurately and sympathetically the essence of the Italian peasant's life: Fortuna (fate), onore (honor, dignity), famiglia (family), and campanilismo (village).Fortuna is the cultural wellspring of Italian peasant society, the worldview from which all social life flows. The concept of Fortuna does not refer to philosophical questions, predestination, or value judgments. Rather, Fortuna is the sum total of all explanations of outcomes perceived to be beyond human control. Thus, in Bell's view, high mortality does not lead peasants to a resigned acceptance of their fate; instead, they rely on honor, reciprocal exchanges of favors, and marriage to forge new links in their familial and social networks. With thorough documentation in graphs and tables, the author evaluates peasant reactions to time, work, family, space, migration, and protest to portray rural Italians as active, flexible, and shrewd, participating fully in shaping their destinies.Bell asserts that the real problem of the Mezzogiorno is not one of resistance to technology, of high birth rates, or even of illiteracy. It is one of solving technical questions in ways that foster dependency. The historical and sociological practice of treating peasant culture as backward, secondary, and circumscribed only encourages disruption and ultimately blocks the road to economic and political justice in a post-modern world.

Author: Ann O Koloski-Ostrow
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134603851
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 340

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Book Description
The articles in Naked Truths demonstrate the application of feminist theory to a diverse repertory of classical art: they offer topical and controversial readings on the material culture of the ancient Mediterranean. This volume presents a timely, provocative and beautifully illustrated re-evaluation of how the issues of gender, identity and sexuality reveal 'naked truths' about fundamental human values and social realities, through the compelling symbolism of the body.

Author: Louis J. Gesualdi
Publisher: University Press of America
ISBN: 076185861X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 107

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Book Description
The Italian/American Experience: A Collection of Writings represents a meaningful attempt to inform Italian Americans about their group’s varied experiences in America. This book, unlike many works on the Italian American experience, contains writings that explain why popular negative notions of Italian/American life are inaccurate. The Italian/American Experience lists a number of organizations and journals specializing in Italian American culture and provides brief descriptions of many leading researchers in the field of Italian American studies. This unique text also contains an annotated bibliography of key books that deal with the lives of Italians and Italian Americans. This collection of eleven works offers readers an in-depth view of Italian American culture and heritage.

Author: Stavroula Pipyrou
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812248309
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
In this groundbreaking ethnography of "fearless governance", Stavroula Pipyrou shows how Grecanici—the Greek linguistic minority of Calabria, Southern Italy—have crafted the means to invert hegemonic culture and participate in the power games of minority politics on local and national scales.

Author: Barry Reay
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521892223
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
This 1996 book uses a local study to explore some of the more significant societal changes of the modern western world.

Author: Derek Howard Aldcroft
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 9780719034923
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 314

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Book Description
This bibliographical guide contains 10,000 references to the economic and social history of 30 European countries during the period 1700-1939. More than 3000 periodicals have been consulted to obtain references, as well as books, edited collections and conference proceedings. The information is listed in categories such as industry, agriculture, finance, migration, labour conditions, urban communities and organizations. Full publication details are included, so that references may be located easily.

Author: Richard Leete
Publisher: Clarendon Press
ISBN: 0191583952
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 398

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Book Description
The global transformation in the number of children women bear has been one of the most remarkable changes in social behaviour in the twentieth century. The search for explanations of the causes in childbearing behaviour, and particularly in the values attached to children, remains a central research preoccupation of population scientists. This book explores the dimensions of values identified as significant in their impact on fertility decisions. It offers a range of perspectives on a mosaic of values perceived to be of importance in influencing the bearing and caring of children. The book examines the macro and micro theories of the value of children, and considers the multi-dimensional nature of value change. The chapters explore the nature of the mechanisms by which value change may serve to reinforce or promote the ideational essence of change and the impact of pressures for change. It is observed that gender, religion, and culture, all function as complementary lenses through which the necessity of value maintenance or modification is viewed. The book concludes that fertility behaviour is value-driven, but that fertility change is not necessarily driven by value change. The values of most significance to fertility are more fundamental and general values, rather than explicit 'fertility values'.

Author: Pellegrino A D'Acierno
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000525554
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 542

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Book Description
First published in 1999. The many available scholarly works on Italian-Americans are perhaps of little practical help to the undergraduate or high school student who needs background information when reading contemporary fiction with Italian characters, watching films that require a familiarity with Italian Americans, or looking at works of art that can be fully appreciated only if one understands Italian culture. This basic reference work for non-specialists and students offers quick insights and essential, easy-to-grasp information on Italian-American contributions to American art, music, literature, motion pictures and cultural life. This rich legacy is examined in a collection of original essays that include portrayals of Italian characters in the films of Francis Coppola, Italian American poetry, the art of Frank Stella, the music of Frank Zappa, a survey of Italian folk customs and an analysis of the evolution of Italian-American biography. Comprising 22 lengthy essays written specifically for this volume, the book identifies what is uniquely Italian in American life and examines how Italian customs, traditions, social mores and cultural antecedents have wrought their influence on the American character. Filled with insights, observations and ethnic facts and fictions, this volume should prove to be a valuable source of information for scholars, researchers and students interested in pinpointing and examining the cultural, intellectual and social influence of Italian immigrants and their successors.

Author: Niamh Cullen
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192576755
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description
Love, Honour, and Jealousy investigates the impact of the Italian economic miracle of the 1950s and 1960s on intimate life. Just as Italy was rapidly forged into an urban, industrial nation in these years, the ways in which Italians thought about family, love, and marriage were transformed by migration and modern consumer culture. At the core of this book lies the investigation of almost one hundred and fifty unpublished diaries and memoirs written by ordinary men and women who were coming of age during these years. These personal testimonies reveal unique insights into the experiences, thoughts, and feelings of those who came of age against the backdrop of a rapidly changing Italy. The personal stories are explored alongside the films, magazines, and music of the time, which were saturated with both new and old ideas of romance. Films and magazines encouraged young Italians to put romantic love and individual desire over family, contributing to changing expectations about marriage, and often resulting in family tensions. At the same time popular love stories were frequently laced with jealousy, hinting at the darker emotions that were linked in many minds, to love. This darker side was a significant part of the story of changing ideas about intimacy in post-war Italy, as was the growing desire to marry for love. Control and violence against women was closely linked to southern ideas about family honour but also to anxieties about Italy's changing society, which manifested itself in romantic jealousy. Through its exploration of courtship, marriage, honour crime, forced marriage, jealousy, and marriage breakdown, Love, Honour, and Jealousy traces the ways in which the lives both of individuals and of the nation itself, were shaped by changing understandings of romantic love and its darker companions, honour and jealousy.