Case del fascio and the Making of Modern Italy

Abstract

In recent decades, scholars of modern Italy have identified Fascism’s effort to establish a new society as a hallmark of the regime’s engagement with modernism. Fascist party headquarters (case del fascio), the primary institution through which the party aimed to alter the character, habits, and attitudes of its citizens in the making of Fascist Italy, are largely absent from this discourse, despite their extraordinary importance to the regime. Through an analysis and discussion of the regime’s building activity in the rapidly developing working-class neighborhoods on the edge of nineteenth-century Milan, the city most closely associated with modern ways of life in the interwar period (and still today), this paper provides an opportunity to explore the ways in which the amenities, design, and location of party-controlled outposts were intended to advance the party’s objectives and communicate Fascism’s central place in the making of a modern urban landscape in the regime’s final decades.     

New material from the Ordovician of China indicates that Inocaulis is a graptolite

Muir, L.A., Zhang, Y.-D. & Lin, J.-P. 2012. New material from the Ordovician of China indicates that Inocaulis is a graptolite. Alcheringa 37, 558–559. ISSN 0311-5518.

The problematic Early Palaeozoic fossil Inocaulis has been regarded as an alga, a graptolite and a hydroid by different authors. A new specimen from the Ordovician (late Darriwilian) of Guizhou Province (China) shows fusellar banding, confirming that it is a benthic graptolite.

Lucy A Muir [lucy@asoldasthehills.org], Yuan-dong Zhang [ydzhang@nigpas.ac.cn], Jih-Pai Lin [jplin@nigpas.ac.cn] (corresponding author), State Key Laboratory of Palaeobiology and Stratigraphy, Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, No. 39 East Beijing Road, Nanjing 210008, PR China. Received 13.12.2012; revised 10.5.2013; accepted 13.5.2013.     

Reading Barthes

The Fédération des syndicats libres des travailleurs de la terre (FSLTT) was a trade union for farm workers established by the Christian confederation (CFTC) during the French Popular Front. Supported by two rural catholic action movements, the JAC and UCFA, it was a response to the wave of strikes in agriculture and viewed as a means to counter the perceived threat of communism in the countryside. Although the FSLTT remained small, its establishment and subsequent evolution is significant. Firstly, the union represented a break within social catholic thinking towards the rural world. Until the early 1930s, all wings of rural social catholicism supported the principle of syndicats mixtes—associations uniting workers, farmers and proprietors. The resulting clash between supporters of the FSLTT and the UNSA, the main association of agricultural syndicalism, whose leaders were also inspired by social catholic doctrine, left its mark on the future organisation of French agriculture under Vichy and during the Fourth Republic. Secondly, the FSLTT illustrates the contradictory nature of Christian trade unionism during the Popular Front period. During a decisive stage in its history, the CFTC's doctrinal and material link to social catholicism conflicted with the influence of pressures arising from the mass social movement. The article surveys the FSLTT from a national perspective, though much of the focus is on the Nord department, its strongest base.     

Correspondence

THE MYTH OF THE PENT CUCKOO. By JOHN EDWARD FIELD, M.A. Pp. vii+212. London: Elliot Stock. 1913. Reviewed by S. A. H. Burne.

RUSTIC SPEECH AND FOLK-LORE. By ELIZABETH MARY WRIGHT. Oxford: University Press. 1913. Pp. xx + 342. Reviewed by C. S. Burne.

THE ENGLISH FOLK-DANCE SOCIETY'S JOURNAL.

SPORT AND FOLKLORE IN THE HIMALAYA. By CAPTAIN H. L. HAUGHTON. Demy 8vo. Pp.ix+332. 12s.6d.net. London: E. Arnold. 1913. Reviewed by W. Crooke.

PEMBA, THE SPICE ISLAND OF ZANZIBAR. By CAPTAIN J. E. E. CRASTER, Demy 8vo. Pp. 358. 12s. 6d. London : T. Fisher Unwin. 1913.

RELIGIOUS CHASTITY. An Ethnological Study. By JOHN MAIN. New York, 1913. 8vo, pp. xxii+ 365. (No price.) Reviewed by W. R. HALLIDAY.

DER TRAUMSCHLÜSSEL DES JAGADDEVA. Ein Beitrag zur indischen Mantik. Von JULIUS VON NEGELEIN. [Religionsgeschichtliche Versuche und Vorarbeiten, xi. Band, 4 Heft]. Pp. xxiv + 428. 17 m. Giessen: Alfred Töpelmann. 1912. 8vo. Reviewed by W. R. Halliday.

DIE LEBENSALTER Ein Beitrag zur Antiken Ethnologie und zur Geschichte der Zahlen. Mit einem Anhang über die Schrift von der Siebenzahl. Von FRANZ BOLL. Leipzig: B. G. Teubner, 1913. 8vo, pp. iv + 58. Two pl. 2 m. 40 pf. Reviewed by W. R. Halliday.

DIE VERLOBUNG IM VOLKS- UND RECHTSBRAUCH, mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der Schweiz vergleichend-historisch dargestellt. Von HANNS BÄCHTOLD. Basel: Verlag der Schweiz. Gesellschaft für Volkskunde, 1913. 8vo, pp. 219. Reviewed by W. R. HALLIDAY.

ANTHROPOLOGICAL REPORT ON THE IBO-SPEAKING PEOPLES OF NIGERIA: Part I., Law and Custom of the Ibo of the Awka Neighbourhood, S. Nigeria; Part II., English-Ibo and Ibo-English Dictionary; Part III., Proverbs, Narratives, Vocabularies and Grammar. By NORTHCOTE W. THOMAS. Demy 8vo. Pp. 161,391,199. London: Harrison &; Sons. 1913. Reviewed by W. Crooke.

PSYCHE'S TASK : A DISCOURSE CONCERNING THE INFLUENCE OF SUPERSTITION ON THE GROWTH OF INSTITUTIONS. By J. G. FRAZER. Second edition, revised and enlarged. 8vo. Pp. viii+186. London : Macrnillan &; Co. 1913. Price 5s. net. Reviewed by W. Crooke.     

Peterborough Abbey and the Peterborough Psalter in Brussels

Abstract

New investigations at Wenlock Priory serve to allow a reinterpretation of the earlier excavations of Cranage (1901) and of Jackson and Fletcher (1962–3). A number of walls exposed in earlier excavations, and thought to be Saxon, seem to have comprised part of a Roman complex, whose abandonment is represented by a layer of collapsed plaster in the latest work.

The abandoned Roman buildings were re-occupied in the seventh century when a double monastery was founded here. The topography of the site, the location of the two churches and the extent of the monastic precinct are examined.

The plan of the Romanesque church, published by Jackson and Fletcher, and by them dated to before the Conquest, is revised and sculptural evidence, radiocarbon determinations from burials and documentary sources are used to suggest rather that Roger de Montgomery was the builder after the Conquest.     

Obstacles to utopia

Stanley R. Ingman and Anthony E. Thomas, eds. Topias and Utopias in Health: Policy Studies. The Hague and Paris: Mouton Publishers, 1975. Distributed in North America by Aldine Publishing Company, ix + 548 pp. Tables, biographical notes, and indices. $24.50.     

In the Public Interest

In today's economic and political climate, there is a growing trend toward less governmental intervention in the economy and more reliance on the private sector for the delivery of a variety of services. Deficit politics, airline deregulation, and the prospect of a windfall of cash has prompted many local units of government that own and operate airports to consider selling or leasing these facilities to private investors. Airport privatization has emerged as a contentious issue, with weighty arguments on both sides of the debate. This article examines these arguments and presents several models of airport privatization. The authors suggest that the most aggressive form of privatization–full divestiture–is unlikely to produce the benefits advertised by its proponents. However, less radical forms of privatization serve as useful models for future airport ownership and operation. The authors conclude that, given the great variation in the types of airports in the United States system, no single model is sufficient.     

Roman soil and Roman sound in Irish hagiography

ABSTRACT

Irish hagiography displays considerable interest in communication between Ireland and Rome, particularly as this featured saints, popes and relics. While people and objects travel between the two places, there is also concern to circumvent the distance involved. This article discusses an episode of miraculous communication in the Irish Life of St Colmán Élo. Here messages and messengers travel from Rome, but time and space are also telescoped through aural and material means: the sound of the bell marking the death of Pope Gregory the Great and a gift from him of Roman soil to be spread on Colmán Élo’s cemetery. The article considers how the two elements function within their hagiographical context to connect Rome and Ireland, and how these places shaped the account. The roles of bell and soil both draw on their associations in Ireland and relate to papal communication as this was experienced and imagined more widely.