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.     

Man of faith and political commitment: Alcide De Gasperi in the history of Europe

Since the early 1980s historians and others have been radically revising established understandings of the Italian south. New research has undermined the notion of a dichotomy between north and south and has begun to challenge the parameters of the Southern Question itself. The books reviewed here reflect, comment upon and drive forward this process of revision. One suggestion is that representations of the south as 'backward', 'picturesque' or fundamentally 'different' are the product of ideological and political elaboration rather than the reflection of any fundamental reality, and should be seen as part of a neo-Orientalist discourse which justified southern subordination. While acknowledging the strengths of this new history of the Mezzogiorno, this article argues that the neo-Orientalist explanation risks simply restating southern difference and subordination in another form. What is needed instead is a new, and less dichotomized, approach to southern Italian cultures and a recognition of the complexities - and hence the importance - of southern identities.     

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.