The minor rural aristocracy and great lords in thirteenth-century Tuscany: three cases from the entourage of the Guidi counts

This article examines relations in thirteenth-century Tuscany between the minor rural aristocracy and great rural lords, that is, those based outside cities. The subject is approached through a study based on three families, with special emphasis on the way they were bound to the extended family of the Guidi counts, who were prominent at the highest level in the thirteenth-century kingdom of Italy. In the thirteenth century, attendance on the counts was not attractive to families of the minor aristocracy: it was universally acknowledged that the great rural lords of Tuscany had little to offer their adherents in terms of wealth, power and prestige, incentives which could be obtained from the cities of the region. Minor aristocrats who chose to live as professional soldiers were particularly attracted to the cities, which were always in need of soldiers for their armies.     

The mental maps of Italian entrepreneurs: a quali-quantitative approach

ABSTRACT

Geographers interested in how entrepreneurs perceive locational environments have studied their mental maps in several European countries, within the theoretical framework provided by behavioral approach. Such studies have typically employed quantitative techniques, but qualitative studies are relatively new to this line of research. In this article, I examine the mental maps of entrepreneurs in Italy by using a mixture of qualitative and quantitative methods. I present and discuss the qualitative outcomes of this research, focusing in particular on the explanatory location factors and the key influences on the mental maps of entrepreneurs. What emerges is the realization that entrepreneurs are far from being fully rational economic actors, who exploit optimally all information and who are driven only by objective considerations. Rather, their views are also affected by subjective factors, individual’s own insights, commonplaces, stereotypes, and prejudices, particularly with reference to the southern regions of Italy (Mezzogiorno), and of other peripheral areas.     

From pioneer migration to family reunification: Polish women’s narratives of lifestyle preferences in Bologna,Italy

In the article I analyse the emergence of lifestyle considerations among former labour migrants and the importance of these new preferences for their choice to settle in the new location. The paper critically engages with the theoretical framework of ‘lifestyle migration’ and discusses its applicability to labour migrants from Central-Eastern Europe settling in Mediterranean countries. I present the interplay between economic and lifestyle reasoning based on two narrative biographical interviews with migrants in Bologna, drawing on my comparative qualitative research in Italy and the UK. The pioneer female migrants went to Italy as care workers in order to fulfill their households’ immediate economic needs. During the years of circular migration the women developed ties to Italy, but found prolonged periods of separation from their families no longer acceptable. The female migrants opted to transfer their whole households to Bologna. Based on the women’s experience and preferences, the families’ consumption preferences and leisure activities transformed in the course of settlement in the Italian city. I claim that lifestyle is a fruitful concept in researching migrants’ changing aspirations, way of life in the new location and the reasons for staying. This approach allows to go beyond the typologies based on the initial motivations for migration.     

Briefly remembering Rosario Villari (1925–2017)

Umberto Gentiloni Silveri reflects briefly on the life and career of the Italian historian Rosario Villari who died in October 2017.     

La Méditerranée solide: un espace double en construction

There exists a space of the ‘solid Mediterranean’. This concept was first proposed by the Annales’s co-founder Lucien Febvre in 1944–45, during a course on Europe in the longue durée. The flexible borders of this double space, both conceptual and contextual, remain in construction within the on-going and global reality of the solid Mediterranean’s space. The comparative history of European societies promoted during the interwar period by Marc Bloch, the other Annales founder, contributes to the construction of said space. Examining this space allows us to concretely articulate scales of analysis from the local to the global. The article is based on a comparative analysis of two Italian and Spanish cases that appear to be particular and paradigmatic (‘exceptional normal’, Edoardo Grendi) of – respectively – Italy’s so-called ‘southern question’ (questione meridionale) and the Spanish ‘agrarian question’ (cuestión agraria). Thus the article helps to conceptualize the space of the Méditerranée solide, marked by the complex and long-term Southern European question. The article compares Il Ministro della mala vita (The Minister of the Corruption, 1910) by historian Gaetano Salvemini and Del caciquismo trágico (On Tragical Caciquism, 1913) by republican journalist Pedro Torres. Through these ‘exceptionally normal’ case studies, taken together and explained reciprocally, it is possible to better understand the space of the solid Mediterranean. The social realities of the Spanish cuestión agraria and the Italian questione meridionale, as well as the conditions of local historiographical production on such realities are, indeed, a consubstantial part of the European transnational, global space of the ‘solid Mediterranean’.     

Radical Urban Horticulture for Food Autonomy: Beyond the Community Gardens Experience

For those who are interested in radical changes, it is important to analyze the forms of resistance that promote self‐managed practices, also at apparently very small scale. In Italy the experience of “community gardens” is usually named “orti urbani”. In the last 10 years, the occupation of abandoned urban spaces to set up orti urbani has increased within the squatting movement. The case of the city of Rome is interesting because there has been a widespread activity to organize self‐managed spaces to grow fruit and vegetable plants. These initiatives make up not only potential spaces of dense social networking, political action and discussion on environmental issues, but also supporting large food autonomous configurations such as Genuino Clandestino, that are challenging dominant food production. A proliferation of orti urbani located in Social Centers, squatted houses or other abandoned spaces represents a scalar strategy to re‐appropriate and commune urban space.     

Italy's unfinished transition: between domestic dynamics and international change

In the early 1990s, Italy was drawn into a spiral of unprecedented transformation precipitated by changes that were taking place both inside Italy and on the international scene. Financial, political and institutional crises were superimposed in ways that brought into question the survival of the whole Italian system. This occurred at a moment when world geo-political relations were shifting dramatically and radically changing established relations, attitudes and policies and marked the beginning of a long period that is often described as a ‘transition’. But since the outcomes still remain far from certain, it is necessary to consider how accurately this term describes what has been taking place in Italy over the last two decades. This paper shows how more careful identification of the different phases and components of the crisis enable us to understand why the upheavals of 1992–94 have led to a systemic crisis of the Italian economy and politics.     

Italy and Australia: a relationship made and unmade by immigration

Australia's new-found post-colonial ‘independence’ in 1901 initially required it to continue to hold on to the apron strings of its colonial master. After World War II, these needs changed, as did the geopolitical power of the leading nations. For Australia, there would be the need to secure its borders, build its labour power, find security arrangements, and adhere to a cold war framework in its geographical region. The USA and the Asian region fell into Australia's sphere of interest. Italy, on the other hand, was a nation of contrasting interests and perspectives. Besides being located in Europe, the post-war period defined Italy by its participation in the concept of a European community and an entirely different set of allies, concerns and trajectories, which made it position itself in a different orbit than that of Australia. Australia's changing economic and social needs required a new and vast migration program in 1947, which would change the dynamics of its relationships. Enter Italy. The two countries now had common destinies in relation to migration—Australia needed people to help build its country, whilst Italy encouraged its impoverished rural population to emigrate to this distant and foreign land. A relationship was born.     

Late Bronze Age Copper Smelting Slags from Luserna (Trentino,Italy): Interpretation of the Metallurgical Process

In the Late Bronze Age, the extractive metallurgy of copper in north‐eastern Italy achieved a peak of technological efficiency and mass production, as evidenced by the substantial number of metallurgical sites and the large volume of slags resulting from smelting activities. In order to define the technological features of the Late Bronze Age metallurgical process, more than 20 slags from the smelting site of Luserna (Trentino, Italy) were fully analysed by means of optical microscopy, X‐ray powder diffraction, X‐ray fluorescence spectrometry and scanning electron microscopy. Three different slag types were identified based on mineralogical and chemico‐physical parameters, each being interpreted as the product of distinct metallurgical steps. A Cu‐smelting model is proposed accordingly.     

Twelfth-century Italian confraternities as institutions of pastoral care

When studied through canon law and scholastic pastoralia produced in the universities in the thirteenth century and beyond, medieval pastoral care comes across as spiritual care, more specifically the administration of sacraments and preaching, provided by the clergy for the faithful. This article complicates that view by arguing that in the twelfth century, the laity alongside the clergy was active in the provision and organisation of pastoral care. The sources examined are the surviving statutes of five religious confraternities – along with the obituaries and sermons in two cases – in Italy that flourished in the twelfth century and before. Each of these confraternities was centred around a church, established after an apostolic ideal, included laymen and women and local pastoral clergy of all levels, met regularly to celebrate the Eucharist, prayed for the dead members and made public confessions. Members prayed for and attended to the corporal needs of each other in case of sickness. In the final analysis, these twelfth-century confraternities appear as transitional institutions between the early medieval monastic confraternities focusing on prayer and the late medieval and renaissance confraternities focusing on charity. Their study opens a window onto the lay expectations of and contribution to pastoral care in medieval Italy.