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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