Space agents: anti‐racist feminism and the politics of scale in Turin,Italy

This article discusses racialized politics among women in Turin, Italy, utilizing and expanding Neil Smith's concept of the spatial politics of scale specifically in relation to an anti‐racist organization, Alma Mater, that emerged during the early 1990s. International migration is relatively recent in Italy, and popular responses over the past decade have been both supportive and hostile. Overt and implicit expressions of racism and intolerance toward migrants have become apparent throughout the country. Migrant and Italian women have retaliated by engaging in a politics of space and scale to effect local and national labor and cultural practices. Through an examination of every day cultural–ideological practices and their links to broad political and economic processes I examine the relative success of Alma Mater in its ability to challenge scales and add to an understanding of the social production and reproduction of power relations at all scales.     

The Israeli left between culture and politics: Tzavta and Mapam, 1956–1973

The Tzavta club in Tel Aviv (until 1956 called the Center for Progressive Culture) was founded in 1946 by Hakibbutz Ha'artzi-Hashomer Hatza'ir kibbutz movement. Cultural activity was a traditional means used by political movements to increase their influence in society. However, as part of the “cultural front” of Hashomer Hatza'ir and Mapam, Tzavta had the additional goal of strengthening “ideological collectivism” among the members of the movement and the party. This article analyzes Tzavta's activity between 1956 and 1973, arguing that it was created to combine two functions – cultural and political. Although the leadership of Mapam intended to use the club as a political tool for disseminating the party's views and controlling internal conflicts, Tzavta became increasingly culturally autonomous and eventually uncontrollable.     

Opium smoking,anti‐Chinese attitudes,and the American medical community, 1850–1890

During the 1870s and early 1880s, members of the American medical community sought to exclude the Chinese from immigrating to the United States because these physicians believed that the Chinese opium smoking habit threatened the moral system of the country. Doctors were especially concerned about the supposed effects of opium smoking on sexual behavior, arguing that it both heightened male and female desire and endangered the nation's reproductive capacity. They also feared that opium smoking and Chinese prostitution would encourage miscegenation, and that use of the drug could ultimately harm America's socio‐economic progress. The conclusions of these physicians fed into the anti‐Chinese campaign that resulted in the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882.     

Technologies of compliance: Surveillance of self‐administration of tuberculosis treatment, 1956–1966

The development of antibiotics for tuberculosis in the 1950s liberated patients from prolonged hospitalization and enabled physicians to bring treatment to underserved populations. However, outpatient treatment programs could only be as effective as the reliability with which patients self‐administered medications. This anxiety with non‐compliance quickly became ubiquitous in medicine. Several physicians, treating tuberculosis among the Navajo, attempted to use technologies of surveillance to overcome this limitation. They used fluorescent tracers, urine testing, and radioactive pill dispensers to expose non‐compliance. Although successful, these techniques threatened patient‐doctor relationships with secrecy and distrust. Physicians turned instead to personal surveillance through directly observed therapy.     

The battle of Turin, 1933–1936: Carlo Rosselli,Giustizia e Libertà, OVRA and the origins of Mussolini's anti‐Semitic campaign

This study draws attention to the intensity of the conflict between Carlo Rosselli and Giustizia e Libertà (the Italian liberal‐socialist anti‐Fascist organization) and the highest ranks of Italian Fascism, including Mussolini and OVRA ‐ the Fascist secret police ‐between 1933 and 1936. The activities of Rosselli and Giustizia e Libertà can be considered in the light of their secret attempts to organize the assassination of Mussolini and their efforts to disseminate broader anti‐Fascist sentiment in Italy. The militants of Giustizia e Libertà in Turin were key figures in the second of these operations. But the success of agents of OVRA in infiltrating Giustizia e Libertà resulted in three waves of arrests in Turin (in 1934, 1935 and 1936). However, Rosselli and GL showed a great capacity for recovery. By focusing on the struggle between Giustizia e Libertà and Fascism which had all the features of a civil war, and on the events in Turin in the period 1933–6, this research shows that the conflict between Fascism and anti‐Fascism was a central feature of the history of Italian Fascism even at the height of the regime's power. The article also offers a specific but incomplete study of the activities of OVRA. Since many of the members of Giustizia e Libertà in Turin were Jews, it also shows how OVRA's efforts to dismantle Giustizia e Libertà in Turin were closely linked to Mussolini's first anti‐Semitic campaign in 1934.     

War memorials and the commemoration of the Israeli war of independence, 1948–1956

Gershon Greenberg, The Holy Land in American Religious Thought, 1620–1948: The Symbiosis of American Religious Approaches to Scripture's Sacred Territory, Lanham, Maryland, University Press of America, 1994.

Steven Beller, Herzl, London, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1991, 161 pp.

Theodor Herzl: Briefe und Tagebucher, Briefe 1895–1898, Vol. 4, 1990, and Briefe 1898–1900, Vol. 5, 1991, Barbara Schäfer et al, eds., Frankfurt/M., Propyläen Verlag.

Jacques Kornberg, Theodar Herzl: From Assimilation to Zionism, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1993, 272 pp., $24.95.

Michael Berkowitz, Zionist Culture and West European Jewry before the First World War, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1993, £29.95.

Laura Zittrain-Eisenberg, My Enemy's Enemy: Lebanon in the Early Zionist Imagination, 1900–1948, Detroit, Wayne State University Press, 1994, 211 pp., $29.95.

Philip Mattar, The Mufti of Jerusalem: Al‐Hajj Amin al‐Husayni and the Palestinian National Movement, New York, Columbia University Press (Revised Edition), 1991.

Hava Eshkoli (Wagman), Silence: Mapai and the Holocaust — 1939–1942, Jerusalem, Yad Izhak Ben‐Zvi, 1994.

Yechiam Weitz, Aware but Helpless: Mapai and the Hobcaust — 1943–1945, Jerusalem, Yad Izhak Ben‐Zvi, 1994.

Jehuda Reinharz, Chaim Weizmann: The Making of a Statesman, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1993. xii, 498 pp., bibliography, index, illustrations, £32.50.

Dov Gavish, Land and Map: The Survey of Palestine, 1920–1948 (Hebrew), Jerusalem, Yad Izhak Ben‐Zvi, 1991, 297 pp.

David H. Shpiro, From Philanthropy to Activism: The Political Transformation of American Zionism in the Holocaust Years 1933–1945, New York, Pergamon Press, 1994, xxxvi + 208 pp.

Asher Susser, On Both Banks of the Jordan: A Political Biography of Wasfi al‐Tall, Frank Cass, London, 1994.

Samuel Heilman, Defenders of the Faith: Inside Ultra‐Orthodox Jewry. New York, Schocken Books, 1992, xxxi, 394 pp., $27.50.

Yosef Gorny, The State of Israel in Jewish Public Thought: The Quest for Collective Identity, New York, New York University Press, 1994, xii+279 pp.     

The Risiera di San Sabba: Fascism,anti‐Fascism and Italian nationalism

This essay examines the postwar debates surrounding the Risiera di San Sabba, the site of a Nazi death‐camp near Trieste, and explores the deeper conflicts and contradictions in the formation of an Italian national identity in the period since the Second World War.