Dressing and preening the body

Dalby, Liza. Kimono: Fashioning Culture. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1993. xi + 384 pp. including notes, bibliography, and index. $30.00 cloth, $17.95 paper.

Kawakami, Barbara F. Japanese Immigrant Clothing in Hawaii, 1885–1941. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1993. xvii + 253 pp. including notes, glossary, sources, and index. $19.95 paper.

Rubinstein, Ruth P. Dress Code: Meanings and Messages in American Culture. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1995. xii + 314 pp. including notes, bibliography, and index. $69.00 cloth, $21.95 paper.     

Design for rural development

Elliot R. Morss, John K. Hatch, Donald R. Mickelwait, and Charles F. Sweet. Strategies for Small Farmer Development. Volume I: 347 pp., tables, maps, no index. $20.00. Volume II: Case Studies. 444 pp., maps, no index. $20.00. Boulder, Col.: Westview Press, Westview Special Studies in Social, Political, and Economic Development, 1976.     

Political utopia or Potemkin village? Italian travellers to the Soviet Union in the early Cold War

Situated on the border between the capitalist West and Communist East, and with the largest Communist party in Western Europe, Italy found itself at the centre of global ideological struggles in the early Cold War years. A number of Italian writers and intellectuals who had joined the PCI (Partito Comunista Italiano) during the Resistance had hoped that the party would play a central role in the post-war reconstruction of Italy and were attracted to the Soviet Union as an example of Communism in action. This article centres on accounts of journeys to the USSR by Sibilla Aleramo, Renata Viganò and Italo Calvino. It will argue that although their writings portray a largely positive vision of the USSR, they should not be dismissed as naive, or worse, disingenuous travellers whose willingness to embrace Soviet-style Communism was based on a wholescale rejection of Western society and its values (see P. Hollander’s 1998 [1981] work, Political Pilgrims: Western Intellectuals in Search of the Good Society). Rather, the article shows how their accounts of the USSR shed light on the writers’ relationship with the PCI and argues that the views expressed in the travelogues emerge from the writers’ personal experiences of war and resistance, a fervent desire to position themselves as anti-Fascist intellectuals, and their concerns regarding the direction that Italian politics was taking at a pivotal moment in the nation’s history.     

Book reviews

Filippo Mazzonis (ed.) (1995) L'ltalia contemporanea e la storiografia internazionale (Venice: Marsilio), pp. 1‐315, 54,000 lire, ISBN 88‐317‐6207‐9.

Giuseppe Ricuperati (1994) Le avventure di uno stato ‘ben amministrato’. Rappre‐sentazioni e realtà nello spazio sabaudo tra Ancien Régime e Rivoluzione (Turin: Tirrenia Stampatori), pp. 1‐249.

Angela Groppi (ed.) (1996) Il lavoro delle donne (Rome‐Bari: Laterza), pp. i‐xvi, 1‐530,50,000 lire, ISBN 88‐420‐4868‐2 hardback.

Anna Bravo and Anna Maria Bruzzone (1995) In guerra senza ami: Stone di donne, 1940‐1945 (Rome/Bari: Laterza), pp. 1‐214, 25,000 lire, ISBN 88‐420‐4590‐X paperback.

Stefano Cavazza (1977) Piccole patrie: Feste popohri tra regione e nazione durante il fascismo (Bologna: II Mulino), pp. 1‐263,32,000 lire, ISBN 88‐15‐05762‐5 paperback.

Barbara Spackman (1996) Fascist Virilities: Rhetoric, Ideology, and Social Fantasy in Italy (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press), pp. 1 ‐187, US$ 18, ISBN 0‐8166‐2787‐8 paperback.

Jane C. Schneider and Peter T. Schneider (1996) Festival of the Poor. Fertility Decline and the Ideology of Class in Sicily, 1860‐1980 (Tucson: The University of Arizona Press), pp. 1‐322, ISBN 0‐8165‐1544‐1 hardback, ISBN 0‐8165‐1519‐0 paperback.

Franco Ferraresi (1996) Threats to Democracy, the Radical Right in Italy after the War (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press), pp. 1‐311, $35, ISBN 0‐691‐04499‐6 hardback.

Gianfranco Pasquino (1996) 1945‐1996: Profilo delta politica in Italia (Bari: Laterza), pp. 1‐117, plus CD‐ROM 1945‐1996: Archivio della politica in Italia, Gianfranco Pasquino with the collaboration of Marzia Zannini, ISBN 88‐420‐5139‐X.

Michela De Giorgio and Christiane Klapisch‐Zuber (eds) (1996) Storia del matrimonio (Bari and Rome: Laterza), pp. 1‐481, 50,000 lire, ISBN 88‐420‐5016‐4.     

Book reviews

Emilio Franzina (1995) Gli italiani al nuovo mondo; L'emigrazione italiana in America 1492‐1942 (Milan: Arnoldo Mondadori Editore), pp. 1‐644. 65,000 lire, ISBN 88‐04‐35977‐3.

Marta Petrusewicz (1996) Latifundium. Moral Economy and Material Life in a European Periphery, translated by Judith C. Green (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press), pp. i‐xx, 1‐289, ISBN 047‐2103423 hardback.

H. James Burgwyn (1997) Italian Foreign Policy in the Interwar Period, 1918‐1940 (Westport, Conn.: Praeger), pp. i‐xx, 1‐246, ISBN 0‐275‐94877‐3 hardback.

Lutz Klinkhammer (1997) Stragi naziste in Italia. La guerra contro i civili (1943‐44), translated by Suzanne Meyer (Rome: Donzelli), pp. i‐xii, 1‐165, 18,000 lire; Paolo Pezzino (1997) Anatomia di un massacro. Controversia sopra una strage tedesca (Bologna: Il Mulino), pp. 1‐243, 26,000 lire, paperback.

Mabel Berezin (1997) Making the Fascist Self: the Political Culture of Interwar Italy (Ithaca, NY, and London: Cornell University Press), pp. 1‐267, ISBN 0‐8014‐8420‐9 paperback; Simonetta Falasca‐Zamponi (1997) Fascist Spectacle: the Aesthetics of Power in Mussolini's Italy (Berkeley and London: University of California Press), pp. 1‐314, $40.00, ISBN 0‐520‐20623‐1 hardback.

David Ward (1996) Antifascisms: Cultural Politics in Italy, 1943‐46. Benedetto Croce and the Liberals, Carlo Levi and the ‘Actionists’ (Madison, NJ: Farteigh‐Dickinson University Press), pp. 1‐244, ISBN 0‐8363‐3676‐4.

David Forgacs and Robert Lumley (eds) (1996) Italian Cultural Studies: an Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 1‐368, $19.95, ISBN 0‐19‐871509‐9 paperback.

Maurizio Degl'lnnocenti (1995) La società unificata, Associazone, sindacato, partito sotto il fasdsmo (Manduria: Piero Lacaita Editore), pp. 1‐216, 25,000 lire, paperback.

Nello Ajello (1997) Illungo addio, intellettuali e PCI dal 1958 al 1991 (Rome‐Bari: Laterza), pp. 1‐425, 35,000 lire, ISBN 88‐420‐5323‐6.

Tom Behan (1997) The Camorra (London and New York: Routledge), pp. i‐vii, 1 ‐225, ISBN 0‐415‐09987‐0 hardback.

Sandro Setta (1995) La Destra ndl'Italia del dopoguerra (Bari: Laterza), pp. i‐xi, 1‐242, 35,000 lire, ISBN 88‐420‐4591‐8.

Manuela Gieri (1995) Contemporary Italian Filmmaking: Strategies of Subversion ‐Pirandello, Fellini, Scola and the Directors of the New Generation (Toronto: University of Toronto Press), pp. 1‐301, ISBN 0‐8020‐0556‐X hardback; ISBN 0‐8020‐6979‐7 paperback.