The Italian peasantry has often been described as tragic, backward,
hopeless, downtrodden, static, and passive. In Fate and Honor,
Family and Village, Rudolph Bell argues against this
characterization by reconstructing the complete demographic history
of four country villages since 1800. He analyzes births, marriages,
and deaths in terms of four concepts that capture more accurately
and sympathetically the essence of the Italian peasant's life:
Fortuna (fate), onore (honor, dignity), famiglia (family), and
campanilismo (village).Fortuna is the cultural wellspring of
Italian peasant society, the worldview from which all social life
flows. The concept of Fortuna does not refer to philosophical
questions, predestination, or value judgments. Rather, Fortuna is
the sum total of all explanations of outcomes perceived to be
beyond human control. Thus, in Bell's view, high mortality does not
lead peasants to a resigned acceptance of their fate; instead, they
rely on honor, reciprocal exchanges of favors, and marriage to
forge new links in their familial and social networks. With
thorough documentation in graphs and tables, the author evaluates
peasant reactions to time, work, family, space, migration, and
protest to portray rural Italians as active, flexible, and shrewd,
participating fully in shaping their destinies.Bell asserts that
the real problem of the Mezzogiorno is not one of resistance to
technology, of high birth rates, or even of illiteracy. It is one
of solving technical questions in ways that foster dependency. The
historical and sociological practice of treating peasant culture as
backward, secondary, and circumscribed only encourages disruption
and ultimately blocks the road to economic and political justice in
a post-modern world.
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