Women and Alcohol Consumption in Fascist Italy

This article examines discourses and practices around women's drinking in Fascist Italy. The history of alcohol production and consumption in Italy during the fascist dictatorship has only recently received attention; alcohol's gendered dimensions, especially women's drinking, have been hitherto overlooked. While the production of legislation, rhetoric and propaganda on alcohol consumption was dominated by men, women were identified as key constituents whose alcohol-related practices could make or break the causes of fascist propagandists, ‘anti-alcohol’ campaigners and alcohol industry associations. The article explains how Italian women were imagined and addressed by regime propagandists, alcohol industry producers and temperance campaigners as (a) simultaneously the principal victims of and responsibility bearers for male excess alcohol consumption, (b) potential ‘crisis-women’ whose unpatriotic drinking choices (whether English tea, French champagne or American cocktails) denoted their prioritising of fashion over fascist values and (c) gatekeepers of family alcohol consumer practices and consumers of alcohol in their own right. It then moves to examine sources left by interwar Italian women to explore what, how and when they drank. Ultimately, it argues that despite attempts to construct women's drinking in archly nationalistic terms, the discourses and actual practices of Italian women around alcohol consumption operated within profoundly transnational frames.     

Breaking promises and raising taxes: rhetorical path dependence and policy dysfunction in time

Where historical institutionalists have stressed the path-dependent efficiencies that stabilise policy orders, their rationalist assumptions have increasingly obscured the scope for instability. To redress such oversights, I integrate historical institutionalist insights regarding incremental change with discursive institutionalist analyses of interpretive tensions in a way that accords with Daniel Kahneman’s analyses of shifting ‘fast’/principled and ‘slow’/cognitive biases. The resulting framework posits that initial principled constructions of policy ideas are undermined where their subsequent ‘intellectual conversion’ limits flexibility and legitimacy. Empirically, I contrast the practices of George HW Bush and John Howard, as each broke anti-tax promises. Bush’s intellectual justifications undermined his credibility, but Howard’s principled justifications enabled his success. This analysis has implications for theories of institutional agency and dysfunction.     

Reviews

S.M. IMAMUDDIN. Muslim Spain, 711–1492 A.D.: A Sociological Study. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1981. Pp. viii, 269. £36.80. Reviewed by Jill R. Webster

DANIEL R. HEADRICK. The Tools of Empire: Technology and European Imperialism in the Nineteenth Century. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1981. Pp. 221, $14.95 (US). Reviewed by Barrie M. Ratcliffe

V.R. BERGHAHN. Militarism: The History of An International Debate 1861–1979. Leamington Spa: Berg Publishers, 1981. Pp. 132. $8.95. Reviewed by Martin Kitchen

HUYNH KIM KHANH. Vietnamese Communism, 1925–1945. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press. Pp. 379. $25.00 (US). Reviewed by William J. Duiker

RALPH B. LEVERING. The Cold War, 1945–1972. Arlington Heights, Illinois: Harlan Davidson, Inc., 1982. Pp. 165, $6.95 (US). Reviewed by Wesley T. Wooley

R. DAN RICHARDSON. Comintern Army: The International Brigades and the Spanish Civil War. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 1982. Pp. 232. $19.50 (US). Reviewed by Stanley G. Payne

KATHLEEN BURK (Editor). War and the State: The Transformation of British Government 1914–1919. London: George Allen and Unwin, 1982. Pp. 189. $29.50 (US). Reviewed by M.L. Dockrill

TONY SMITH. The Pattern of Imperialism: The United States, Great Britain and the Late-Industrialising World since 1815. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981. Pp. xi, 308. $34.50 (US). Paperback $10.95 (US). Reviewed by Barbie M. Ratcliffe

D. GEORGE BOYCE. Nationalism in Ireland. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982. Pp. 441. $32.50 (US). Reviewed by Don M. Cregier

ODED ERAN. The Mezhdunarodtniki: An Assessment of Professional Expertise in the Making of Soviet Foreign Policy. Ramat Gan, Israel: Turtledove Publishing, 1979. Pp. 331. £11.75. Reviewed by Teddy J. Uldricks

BINNAZ TOPRAK. Islam and Political Development in Turkey. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1981. Pp. viii, 164. $22.75 (US). Reviewed by Dimitri Kitsikis

ORVILLE T. MURPHY. Charles Gravier, comte de Vergennes: French Diplomacy in the Age of Revolution, 1719–1787. Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, pp. 607. $16.95 (US) paper. Reviewed by William Stinchcombe

HUNTER R. RAWLINGS III. The Structure of Thucydides' History. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981. Pp. xiv, 278. $21.00 (US), MARC COGAN. The Human Thing: The Speeches and Principles of Thucydides' History. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1981. Pp. xvii, 309. $20.00 (US). Reviewed by Malcolm F. McGregor

H.E. MAUDE. Slavers in Paradise: The Peruvian Slave Trade in Polynesia, 1863–1864. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1981. Pp. xxii, 244. $22.50 (US). Reviewed by James A. Boutilier     

Review Article: The Air Force Brats' View of History: Recent Writing and the Royal Air Force, 1918–1960

JAMES S. CORUM. The Luftwaffe: Creating the Operational Air War, 1918–1940. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1997. Pp. ix, 378. $39.95 (US);

CHRISTINA J. M. GOULTER. A Forgotten Offensive: Royal Air Force Coastal Command's Anti-Shipping Campaign, 1941–1945. London: Frank Cass, 1995; dist. Portland, Oreg.: ISBS. Pp. xxii, 366. $47.50 (US);

SEBASTIAN RITCHIE. Industry and Air Power: The Expansion of British Military Aircraft Production, 1935–1941. London: Frank Cass, 1997; dist. Pordand, Oreg.: ISBS. Pp. 304. $49.50 (US), cloth; $22.50 (US), paper;

S. J. BALL. The Bomber in British Strategy: Doctrine, Strategy, and Britain's World Role, 1945–1960. Boulder: Westview Press, 1995. Pp. x, 246. $59.95 (US);

SCOT ROBERTSON. The Development of RAF Strategic Bombing Doctrine, 1919–1939. Westport: Praeger, 1995. Pp. xxix, 187. $55.00 (US);

JOHN GOOCH, ed. Airpower: Theory and Practice. London: Frank Cass, 1995; dist. Portland, Oreg.: ISBS. Pp. 276. $37.00 (US);

MARK K. WELLS. Courage and Air Warfare: The Allied Aircrew Experience in the Second World War. London: Frank Cass, 1995; dist. Portland, Oreg.: ISBS. Pp. xiv, 240. $40.00 (US);

ARTHUR T. HARRIS. Despatch on War Operations: 23rd February, 1942 to 8th May, 1945, introd. Sebastian Cox. London: Frank Cass, 1995; dist. Pordand, Oreg.: ISBS. Pp. liv, 211. $45.00 (US).     

Accountability and Inaction: NGOs and Resource Lodging in Development

From the late 1980s, research on NGOs had a normative focus and was vulnerable to changing donor preoccupations. This article contributes a new conceptual approach, analysing the practices through which relationships and resources are translated into programmes and projects. The theoretical justification for this move combines the new ethnography of development practice with a re‐agency approach to transactions across time and space. The study is based on data including thirty hours of video ethnography involving interviews and field visits with Kenyan NGOs in a variety of sectors. The analysis focuses on the problem of accountability that emerged through the interactions of donors and state corruption. We argue that NGOs operating in capital cities often provide organizational solutions to this problem. Depending on donor preferences, varying amounts of resources become ‘lodged’ or absorbed in ‘capital NGOs’ as they provide accounts of programmes that satisfy donors. However, no matter the donor preferences, capital NGOs provide accountability independently of increased action with communities or increased resources transferred to them. We conclude that the institutionalization of the NGO field as a well‐grounded specialization depends in part on the degree to which researchers can sideline the stories generated in inter‐organizational contexts such as workshops and policy meetings, and substitute understandings based on accounting practices, resource flows and social ties.