A01=Rudolph M. Bell
Author_Rudolph M. Bell
Autostrada Del Sole
Category=JHM
demographic change southern Italy
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Familial Networks
Feudal Vestiges
historical demography
II Trovatore
Italian Peasantry
Italian Unification
Italy's Economic Miracle
Italy’s Economic Miracle
Jacini Inquiry
kinship systems
La Famiglia
La Gioia
La Miseria
Landed Men
migration studies
Mountain Cities
Net Emigration
Net Emigration Rates
Nuptial Choice
Pci's Role
Pci’s Role
peasant agency
Piazza Armerina
Rudolph M. Bell
Rural Italians
Rural Italy
rural sociology
social mobility Italy
Town Hall
Vice Versa
Volatile Realities
West Germany
Young Men
Product details
- ISBN 9781138523463
- Weight: 453g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 02 Aug 2017
- Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Hardback
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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.
