This article examines how Fascism’s economic autarky impacted on church construction in the late 1930s. The shortage of copper in Italy due to sanctions imposed by the League of Nations and the ensuing Italian policy of self-sufficiency led to the installation of loudspeakers instead of bells in newly erected churches. The amplified sound of recordings and of tubular bells could be heard from far greater distances than that of traditional bells. Although these technologies disregarded the Catholic Church’s directives on utilising modern technical equipment in liturgy, their use was tolerated because of the economic circumstances. Indeed, some clergy endorsed these sound systems as a means of modernising the Church and as an act of patriotism. The practice, however, risked conflating ecclesiastical and Fascist broadcasts since the use of loudspeakers for political propaganda was widespread. In one case, the Fascist anthem Giovinezza was played regularly from a church belfry: after the war, furious citizens destroyed this audio system. The decision by dioceses as to whether to adopt technological alternatives to bells exposed the conflicting positions within the Church towards both modernity and the Regime.

In spite of the great tradition in social movement studies, Italy completely lacks any contribution regarding animal advocacy from the point of view of political sociology. This is despite the fact that, as in the rest of Western societies, interest in the wellbeing, rights and status of non-human animals is growing. This can be seen both among the general population and in the very varied organised forms of welfare and activism. In this article, we will investigate this internal differentiation, starting from an initial stratification in welfare, protectionism and anti-speciesism, and focusing in particular on the following two aspects: ethical values; and political ‘careers’ and multi-membership affiliations. The investigation was accomplished by means of 20 semi-structured interviews and an online questionnaire answered by 704 volunteers and activists. The tripartition hypothesised was confirmed, although with a few exceptions: more progressive values emerged among anti-speciesists, and conservative positions among protectionists and welfarists, but the overall spectrum is characterised by utilitarian perspectives. Similarly, previous experience in the specific field of animal advocacy is typical of the protectionist area, while anti-speciesists also come from other opposition movements.

Branding promotes and sells products and services through the creation of an identity – the brand. What happens when the promoter of a brand is a government? What transformations does a national identity experience when it becomes a brand to export? Is national branding a contemporary form of promoting national identities? To explore these questions, the article focuses on two artefacts that show the propaganda/branding strategies of Italians in Peru and Peruvians in Italy during the twentieth century: the magazine Romana- Gens ne la Terra de ‘Los Incas’ (1934–1941) and the ad-documentary Marca Perú in Loreto, Italy (2012). The analysis of these artefacts shows three dimensions of Italo-Peruvian mobilities. First, the complex negotiations of foreign populations that seek to integrate into their adoptive countries (and/or desired market). Second, the reversal of the direction of migration: Latin America was a point of arrival for the Italian immigrants from the nineteenth century until the 1970s, but during the last decades of the twentieth century, it became a point of departure to Italy, which was seen as a place of economic progress. Finally, the specific politics of affects in the relationship of Italian and Peruvian immigrants with national identities built during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Italian anti-fascists started to emigrate from the moment that Mussolini seized power. These émigrés, or fuorusciti, tried to organise themselves to put an end to Mussolini’s regime, but found themselves confronting a number of unexpected difficulties in their host countries. Among them, Giustiza e Libertà (GL) was one of the most active organisations. One of the problems they had to face was the issue of how best to deal with their hosts without compromising their integrity as Italians, and as patriots. The case of Paolo Vittorelli (Raffaele Battino), who is the subject of this article, presents a clear case study of this issue and shows how close collaboration between Italian anti-fascists and western democracies (in this case, the United Kingdom) was hindered by ideological problems. The study of such episodes helps us to shed light not only on the mentality of the GL émigrés, but also on the way the Italian Resistance would later approach the issue of working together with the Allies during the Italian campaign of 1943–1945.

This article compares two recent memory controversies in the United States and Italy – the removal of the Robert E. Lee statue in Charlottesville, Virginia and the Legge Fiano, the abortive ban on Fascist propaganda proposed by Emanuele Fiano and the Partito Democratico – in order to identify a common set of challenges now confronting liberal democracies on both sides of the Atlantic. While acknowledging the longue durée of memory politics surrounding the Confederacy and Fascism respectively, the article argues that disputes over their monuments and symbols must also be situated in terms of contemporary debates over national identity, race, populism, citizenship and speech.

Relations between Italy and other countries – such as China – are often imagined within a binary frame that essentialises national and ethnic communities and fails to recognise the complex transcultural ramifications of an increasingly globalising world. This is particularly problematic when studying those social and cultural spaces that Ilaria Vanni (2016) has described as transcultural edges. These are marginal spaces of transition and encounters between different cultures and societies, which have the potential to create new, innovative and productive ecosystems. We argue that one such space is Prato, an industrial town near Florence, well known for its textile district, and host to one of the largest Chinese communities in Europe. Significant academic attention has been devoted to the Chinese community in Prato, including studies of its social and economic impact on the host local community and the textile industry. Most of these studies tend to isolate the Chinese community from the ethnic complexity of the area, within a binary frame that fails to acknowledge the large presence of other migrant groups and the reciprocal permeability and transculturation between the Chinese community, the Italian community, and other ethnic groups. As part of a larger project, a group of scholars is currently digitally remapping Prato, to include quantitative and qualitative geolocalised information collected through a multidisciplinary method that includes ethnography, media analysis, translation studies, transcultural studies, and digital participatory action research. Through a brief description of the aims and characteristics of this research project, the paper will discuss the importance of rethinking the relationship between Italy and China, and between Italians and Chinese, within a more complex and nuanced transcultural frame.

As Italian society struggles to come to terms with the presence of Chinese immigrants and with changing global patterns of industrialisation and shifts in the dynamics of industrial power, the question of Sino-Italian relations is increasingly present in Italian cultural representations across media and genre. Among the themes which recur within Italian discourse on Chinese industry are Made in Italy vs Made in China, tradition vs modernity, and environmental responsibility. In this paper, I offer a reading of the complex and, at times, ambivalent treatment of these themes in Gianni Amelio's 2006 film, La stella che non c’è (The Missing Star), and Alessandro Perissinotto's 2014 novel, Coordinate d'Oriente (Oriental Coordinates). Central to my analysis of the two works is an examination of the trope of contacts between the economies and societies of the two countries being sublimated in the fictional narratives into relationships between Western men and Chinese women. Against this backdrop, I propose an interpretation of the power dynamics which underpin the narratives.

During the years leading up to and during the First World War, patriotic films featuring self-sacrificing child protagonists formed an important sub-genre of Italian film production. This article looks at Film Artistica Gloria’s Cuore series (1915–1916), adapted from De Amicis’ novel, with particular attention given to the two war-themed films, Il tamburino sardo (UK: The Sardinian Drummer Boy, 1915) and La piccola vedetta lombarda (The Little Lookout from Lombardy, 1915). An examination of the way in which advertising, reviews, and promotional materials worked to reframe these Risorgimento stories within a new historical context shows how the transmedial relationship between the novel, films and paracinematic texts helped to transform De Amicis’s civically-minded patriotic tales into an endorsement of Italy’s intervention in the First World War.

This article focuses on the history and reception of the ex-Casa del Fascio in Predappio, from the end of the Second World War to the current plans for its restoration and reuse as a study centre and a museum of Fascism. Taking into account changes in legislative, political, and cultural contexts, the article proposes an approach to the legacy of Fascist architecture in Italy based not just on its ideological charge, but also on cultural and political shifts, changes in legislation, and the complex relationships between the bodies in charge of the preservation and management of public heritage. The recent plans put forward by the town administration to restore the building and turn it into a museum of Fascism have reopened the debate on the heritage of Fascism and the ex-Casa del Fascio has now become one of the most conspicuous emblems of Italy’s uneasy relationship with its Fascist past and of the problems of dealing with the material legacy of the Fascist regime.

Irish drama underwent an extraordinary rediscovery in Italy during the Second World War, primarily because of its political convenience (Ireland was a neutral nation) but also because of its aesthetic significance. Through an analysis of the role of key mediators I employ Irish literature as a lens to investigate a crucial moment of renewal within both Italian politics and theatre, emphasising strands of continuity between Fascist and post-Fascist practices. First, I show how a wartime ban on English and American plays prompted an interest in Irish drama and the fluid status of the Irish canon enabled authors of Irish origin (e.g. Eugene O’Neill), to be affiliated with Irish literature. I then move on to considering how this very fluidity facilitated the daring rebranding of Irish theatre as anti-fascist in Paolo Grassi’s ‘Collezione Teatro’, a key step in his position-taking at the centre of Italy’s theatrical field. Ireland was a substitute for England and appeared on Italian (political and literary) maps mainly thanks to its anti-English function. However, despite the politically inflected motivation of the various, often contrasting uses of the category ‘Irish drama’ in wartime Italy, this was the first time Irish literature had been widely acknowledged as a specific tradition within the Anglosphere in Italy.

When the Italian army breached the Aurelian walls at Porta Pia in 1870 and Rome was seized from the pope, the city could not have been more unlike a contemporary European capital city. In the years after it became Italy’s capital, Rome underwent a process of radical urban renewal. This article, focusing on the creation of a new neighbourhood in Prati di Castello – the area north-east of the Vatican – frames Rome’s transformation as part of the ‘culture wars’ between the Church and the new Italian state. The decision to postpone the creation of the new district in Prati until the 1880s and the way it was then carried out reflect the wider shift of Italian politics from Cavour’s notion of ‘a free Church in a free State’ to the more combative anticlericalism of the Left after 1876. Against this background, Prati emerged as a political landscape in which competing powers articulated their aspirations and values, negotiated their respective authorities, and transmitted political ideas.

In recent decades, architectural historians, preservationists, and the general public have shown a growing interest in Fascist-era buildings. Many of the most high-profile examples are those associated with the monumental excesses of the regime. However, new attention has also been focused on more modest buildings that are significant examples of interwar Italian modernism or Rationalism, including former party headquarters (case del fascio). Taking as primary examples works by Giuseppe Terragni, the architect most often associated with Rationalism, as well by Luigi Carlo Danieri and Luigi Vietti, whose interwar contributions to Italian modernism have been less often the focus of scholarly attention, this article traces the postwar histories of case del fascio with the aim of better understanding the ways in which architecture and politics intersect and some of the consequences of this for the contemporary Italian architectural landscape.

The ‘making’ of fashion cannot merely refer to garment production and manufacturing. It is the prerequisite for a nation to actively participate on the global stage. To establish a ‘recognisable’ fashion image, a country must go far beyond the competition of a specialised garment and textile industry. Being recognised as the ‘author countries’ for fashion creation is part of a process in which the (re)negotiation of national hierarchies and roles are constantly at play. For a country or a city, expressing an instantly recognisable aesthetic has become an important corollary of the communication of political and economic strength. More than in the past centuries, fashion has been tasked with not only reflecting and representing social or individual needs, but also constructing ex novo territories in which old stereotypes and imaginary are creatively set free. This is because, unlike most production and commercial activities, fashion expresses an elaborate culture whose composition of symbols, ideologies and lifestyles (Crane 2004) can be drawn on. On the other hand, the accelerated production relocation in past decades has irrevocably changed the geography of fashion, as well as the rhetoric of the origin of national creativity. In particular, it leads one to wonder what happens when two or more players are engaged in the making of fashion. Specifically, what happens when Italy and China collaborate in transglobal fashion-making? How does one account for the national creativity that has sprung from the Sino-Italian co-creation? Drawing on accounts of Italian fashion and Chinese fashion, this article discusses the intricacy of Sino-Italian collaboration and the implications of such a fashion co-creation; it then reflects on transglobal fashion-making and proposes a framework for its examination.

This article examines the Italian policy framework on the employment of disabled people. It discusses the strengths and limitations of Law 68 of 12 March 1999 (Regulation on the right to work of disabled people). Despite it having been enacted 16 years after being passed, Law 68/99 still faces problems in its implementation. The data analysis shows the propensity of firms to flout their obligations with regard to the recruitment of disabled people, preferring instead the risk of being sanctioned. In order for Law 68/99 to have a positive effect on the employment of disabled people, higher incentives (including subsidies for labour costs) must be introduced for employers, especially to enable the adaptation and adjustment of the workplace. With these inducements, firms would be encouraged to recruit disabled people and avoid penalties. In addition, disability management policies (still rarely implemented in the Italian workplace) and comprehensive training programmes can play a crucial role in overcoming discriminatory constraints regarding skills and physical ability, so as to increase the employability of disabled people in the labour market.

At the dawn of the Second World War, the successes of the Axis seemed to herald the realisation of a new anti-Bolshevik and anti-democratic European order dominated by Nazi-fascist powers. Italian Fascists and Spanish Falangists enthusiastically welcomed plans for the ‘new civilisation’ in which they were determined to participate as protagonists. This article sheds light on the roles projected for the respective countries in the New European Order in the postwar period, according to the black and the blue shirts. It also investigates the ideological and cultural foundations of the Fascist and Falangist projects related to the new continental configuration, identifying similarities and differences between them. Considering the scarcity of comparative writings about fascist movements in the Mediterranean area, the present research fills a historiographic gap.

In this article, we analyse the ideological content of the discursive strategies used by a group of migrant workers subjected to ‘caporalato’, a form of illegal hiring and exploitation of farm day workers through an intermediary. Starting from a series of collective open interviews with farm workers, we examine the way in which the dynamics of both exploitation and resistance are reproduced through linguistic and discursive practices. What emerges from the analysis is a complex set of ambivalent experiences and representations. Despite its inherent exploitative and controlling nature, the workers tend to justify, legitimise and deny the negative aspects of caporalato. Nonetheless, they also use linguistic devices of resistance to reconfigure the meanings of, and their role in, caporalato. Interestingly, the analyses show that caporalato is also perceived as a mechanism of social mobility. Only limited attempts at explicitly challenging its criminal nature are strategically expressed.

This article consists of three sections. The first one concentrates on the conceptualisation of the Italian concession in Tianjin (1901–1947). The second connects the past imagery of the Italian ‘aristocratic concession’ to its contemporary reinvention as the ‘New Italian-style Town’. The third section explores the rationale for the diffusion of what I define as Italianerie: a fascination for Italy, for a ‘real-unreal’ Italian-flavoured atmosphere, through the creation of multi-million-dollar luxury designer outlets known as ‘Florentia Villages’. The first Florentia Village, ‘inspired by classic Italian architecture’, opened in Wuqing, halfway between Beijing and Tianjin, in June 2011, followed by the replica of this template in eight Chinese cities. Is this the outcome of a specific patrimonialisation strategy? What is the significance of this showcase of Italian design in China? What lies behind the apparent paradox of reproducing ‘in/authentic’ Italy in miniature, and using it to sell the ‘real’ luxury products, in a country like China, which is stereotyped as the paradise of the fake? Is innovation by design reconfiguring the relationship between production and consumption of cultural images and commodities? This article intends to explore these questions with particular attention to transcultural strategies in Chinese urbanism – past and present.

The large triangular building sandwiched betweenthe Castel Sant’Angelo and the Palazzo di Giustizia in Rome is the Casa Madre dei Mutilati, designed by Marcello Piacentini and built in two phases between 1926 and 1928, and from 1936 to 1939. Its exterior blends in well with its surroundings, suggesting it no longer conjures memories of the Fascist regime, but inside, its decorative plan reveals a series of artworks with polyvalent meanings that were later depoliticised, ‘censored’ and rehabilitated. They throw light on the ‘difficult heritage’ of the Fascist era in a continuum of meaning and memory connected to myths of war and sacrifice.