ASMI Annual Conference: LABOUR AND THE MAKING OF ITALY FROM CAVOUR TO COVID

This year ASMI annual conference (online) will explore meanings and transformations of work in modern and contemporary Italy, including labour’s shifting geographies, discourses and representations. The decline of the Fordist factory and the diminishing centrality of factories into people’s life and Italy’s national identity triggered in the 1980s and 1990s a temporary decline in the study of labour. However, growing interest in issues such as homeworking, the feminization of work, precarity and “non-lavoro”, cognitive work, new digital professions, transnational flows of labour migration have recently signalled a revival of the field with original and thought-provoking research being carried out in history, political science, sociology, cultural studies and anthropology. Taking stock of this innovative and increasingly interdisciplinary scholarship, the conference will examine the key role played by work in Italy’s political, economic, cultural and social developments since unification and will provide a space to further encourage dialogue on work-related themes across disciplinary boundaries.

This conference will be held online, and Zoom links will be circulated to attendees signed on with Eventbrite tickets prior to the 3rd December.

The conference will include papers in English and Italian.

YOU CAN FIND THE PROGRAMME WITH THE LINKS OF THE ONLINE (ZOOM) SESSIONS ON :

http://www.asmi.org.uk/conferences/2021-asmi-conference-remote/

Please feel free to contact us if you have any queries and requests for clarification (Asmiconference2021@gmail.com)

The conference is free. However, we encourage participants to support and join ASMI. ASMI membership is annual and includes a subscription to Modern Italy (four issues per year – Cambridge University Press)

http://www.asmi.org.uk/membership/

PLEASE NOTE THAT THE TIME INDICATED BELOW IS GMT (UK TIME)

Friday 3 December 2021

9.30-9.45: Welcome and introduction

9.45-11.00: Keynote Lecture: Andrea Sangiovanni (University of Teramo), ‘Il lavoro immaginario. Le rappresentazioni mediali del lavoro in Italia dal miracolo economico ad oggi’

11.00-11.15: Coffee break

11.15-12.45 Session 1

Panel 1.1: Genere, lavoro e precarietà nell’Italia contemporanea

Chair: Bruno Settis ((Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa)

Manfredi Alberti (University of Florence), Lavoro precario e disoccupazione in una prospettiva di genere dall'Unità all'inizio del Novecento

Eloisa Betti (University of Bologna), Lavoratrici precarie tra casa e fabbrica nel trentennio glorioso

Sandra Burchi (University of Pisa), Prima della pandemia, la precarietà. Donne che lavorano da casa oggi

Panel 1.2: Workers’ representation and industrial relations since the 1970s

Chair: Claudia Baldoli (University of Milan)

Chiara Colangelo (University of Rome), L’"anno della rivolta dei professori” e la nascita dei Cobas scuola

Stefano Gasparri (University of the West England, Bristol), Employee Benefits and Paternalistic Work Regimes. Historical and Contemporary Perspectives on Company Welfare in Italy

Filippo Sbrana (University for Foreigners of Perugia), Sindacato, Mezzogiorno e Lega Nord

Vanesa Coscia (University of Buenos Aires), Lavorare alla Fiat di Melfi: rappresentazioni, media e flessibilizzazione del lavoro

13.00-14.00: Lunch and virtual tour of the photographic exhibition ‘The Female Gaze: women and work in Italy since the 1950s’ (Italian Cultural Institute, London, 2-23 December 2021). The tour will be led by the curator Maria Chiara di Trapani and the exhibition’s organisers Eloisa Betti, Ilaria Favretto and Nico Pizzolato

14.00-15.30: Session 2

Panel 2.1: Changing labour markets and emerging forms of collective action in the Italian platform economy

Chair: Alessandro Gerosa (University of Birmingham)

Paolo Borghi (University of Milan) and Annalisa Murgia (University of Milan), Claiming rights by building forms of solidarity. Cross-sectoral, cross-organisational, and cross-border practices of food delivery riders

Marco Marrone (University of Venice), Rights Against the Machines! The struggle of food delivery workers and the ambivalences of digital labor in the Italian case of Riders Union Bologna

Arianna Tassinari (Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies), Lorenzo Cini (Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa), Vincenzo Maccarrone (University College Dublin), With or Without U(nions)? Understanding the Diversity of Gig Workers’ Organizing Practices

Panel 2.2: Organised labour and conflict in newly unified Italy

Chair: Carlotta Ferrara degli Uberti (University of Pisa)

Samuel Boscarello (Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa), Co-operating for the nation. The impact of Risorgimento on the birth of the Italian social economy

Giulio Taccetti (Scuola Superiore di Studi Storici di San Marino), Pratiche di resistenza rurale nell’Italia di fine Ottocento

Penelope Wickson (St Mary’s School, Calne), Coltura Promiscua: Giovanni Fattori’s Le Macchiaiole and Progressive Patriotism

15.30-15.45: Coffee break

15.45-17.45 Session 3

Panel 3.1: Storia del lavoro nell’Italia contemporanea: studi, progetti, prospettive di ricerca

Chair: Stefano Musso (University of Turin)

Eloisa Betti (University of Bologna), Lavoro, genere e precarietà

Michele Colucci (ISSR-CNR), Lavoro e migrazioni: nuovi percorsi di ricerca sull’Italia repubblicana

Fabrizio Loreto (University of Turin), Sindacati, conflitti, contratti: i nodi della rappresentanza del lavoro

Anna Pellegrino (University of Bologna), La medicina del lavoro in Italia: studi, progetti, prospettive di ricerca

Panel 3.2: Work ethic(s) in modern and contemporary Italy

Chair: Ilaria Favretto (Kingston-UCL)

Mark Chu (University College Cork), A Micron’s Tolerance: ‘Made in Italy’ vs ‘Made in China’ in Amelio’s ‘La stella che non c’è’ and Perissinotto’s ‘Coordinate d’Oriente’

Federica Falchi (University of Cagliari), Mazzini e l’associazionismo: dalla Gran Bretagna alla “giovine” Italia: “Il voto, l’educazione, il lavoro; sono le tre colonne fondamentali della nazione”

Clementina Gentile Fusillo (University of Warwick), Il “Lavoro” nel pensiero di Aldo Moro

Erica Moretti (Fashion Institute of Technology, SUNY), Young refugees and the ethics of the camp in the postwar Italy

Saturday 4 December 2021

9.15 -9.30: Welcome

9.30-11.00: Session 4

Panel 4.1: Fascism and the working class: legality, modernity and violence

Chair: Stefano Musso (University of Turin)

Laura Cerasi (University of Venice), A Fascist modernity. The constitutionalisation of labour and its shortcomings

John Foot (University of Bristol), Fascist Violence and the Working Class in Italy. Power and Powerlessness in post-World War One Italy

Irene Guerrini (Istituto ligure per la storia della Resistenza e dell’età contemporanea) and Marco Pluviano (Istituto ligure per la storia della Resistenza e dell’età contemporanea), 1938-1945. Workers from Fascist Italy to Nazi Germany: free and enforced labour

Bruno Settis (Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa), Birth and Evolution of the Fiat Survaillance System

Panel 4.2: Sex+Work: Exploring the complex interplay of sexual labour and political recognition in Italy

Chair: Charlotte Ross (University of Birmingham)

Isabel Crowhurst (University of Essex), The ambiguous taxation of prostitution in Italy

Giulia Garofalo Geymonat (University of Venice) and Giulia Selmi (University of Verona), The Italian feminists (dis)alliances on prostitution and sex work: 1982-2020

Elena Zambelli (Lancaster University), Longing for the brothel: female prostitution in the making of Italy

Panel 4.3: Italian working marginalities: images, self-representations and identities

Chair: Marzia Maccaferri (Goldsmiths)

Stefano Agnoletto (BI-Norwegian Business School Oslo), Class and Ethnicity. The case study of Italian strikes in Toronto (1960-1961)

Giorgia Alù (University of Sydney), “A true slavery condition”: sulphur, subjection and modernity at the turn of the nineteenth century

Erica Grossi (University of Trieste), Da Terelle a Toronto. L’Atlante fotografico di una comunità migrante

11.00-11.15: Coffee break

11.15-12.30: Keynote lecture: Maud Bracke (University of Glasgow), 'Feminist thought and the question of work in the 20th Century’

12.30-13.30: Lunch

13.30-15.00: Session 5

Panel 5.1: Ideas and ideologies of work in post-1945 Italy

Chair: Robert Gordon (University of Cambridge)

Stefano Adamo (Banja Luka University), Looking back on a not-quite-golden age: Recent literature of work and its ideology

Bianca Rita Cataldi (University College Dublin), “La disoccupazione sempre divide”: Labour, Alienation and Unemployment in Ottiero Ottieri’s ‘Donnarumma all’assalto’

Jacopo Ciammariconi (University of Trier), Dal rifiuto del lavoro alla precarietà: l’evoluzione del rapporto tra giovani e lavoro in Italia 1977-2002

Panel 5.2: Narrating and filming Italian workers in Italian colonies

Chair: Joseph Viscomi (Birkbeck, University of London)

Francesco Casales (Universities of Pavia and Paris 8- Vincennes/Saint Denis), Colonies at Work: Between Identity Production and Strategies of Resistance

Gianmarco Mancosu (University of Cagliari), ‘Il lavoro italiano in Africa’. Politics and Rhetoric about Italian industriousness in Colonial and Post-Colonial Films

Alessandro Pes (University of Cagliari), Un’esperienza di lavoro: narrazioni del colonialismo italiano in un mondo post-coloniale

Panel 5.3: Alternative narratives of labour in contemporary Italy: disability, migrants, and the underemployed

Chair: George Newth (University of Bath)

Alessandra Gissi (University of Naples “L’Orientale”), “Dall’Africa a Milano”. Female immigration and domestic labour in the 1960s and 1970s

Antonio Maria Pusceddu (CRIA, University Institute of Lisbon), Unemployment and collective utility: Work-income nexus and housewifization of labour in contemporary Italy

Martina Salvante (University of Nottingham), The right to work for people with disabilities: some preliminary considerations from an historical perspective

15.00-15.15: Coffee break

15.15.16.45 Session 6

Panel 6.1: Seeking a job abroad: Italian migrants in the 20th c.

Chair: Stefano Agnoletto

Monica Miscali (Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway), Accordi bilaterali e conflitti. I primi lavoratori italiani in Norvegia nei primi del novecento

Giuliana Muscio (University of Padua), The ‘figurinaio’ from Lucchesia: exporting images of Italian art

Stefano Orazi (Istituto per la Storia del Risorgimento italiano, Comitato di Pesaro e Urbino), Organismi sociali a tutela dei lavoratori italiani all’estero nel primo Novecento

Panel 6.2: Gendered meanings and memories of work across the political spectrum

Chair: Perry Wilson (University of Dundee)

Ettore Bucci (University of Pisa), Gender, work, faith…and revolution? The development of a general reflection and a public commitment through the ACLI’s women’s coordination (1957-1977)

Lia Perrone (Université Côte d’Azur and Università Cattolica, Milan), Le lotte (delle) operaie: memoria e racconto del lavoro femminile in fabbrica

Panel 6.3: Lights, camera, action! The labour of film in post-1945 Italy

Chair: Gianluca Fantoni (Nottingham Trent University)

Carla Mereu-Keating (University of Bristol), Working in the Dream Factory: Spatiality of Labour and Gender Specialisation in Italian Film Studios

Catherine O’Rawe (University of Bristol), The Non-Professional Child Actor as Worker in Post-War Cinema

16.45-18.30: Screening of ‘Ragioni politiche. Incontro con Vittorio Foa’ (2000). Directed by Giuseppe Bertolucci and scripted by Giuseppe Bertolucci and Paul Ginsborg.

Paul Ginsborg will open and end with some remarks

Conference organisers:

Ilaria Favretto (Kingston University-UCL)

Nico Pizzolato (Middlesex University)

The programme may be subject to minor changes

Any questions should be directed to Asmiconference2021@gmail.com

Image above courtesy of Photographic archive, UDI Bologna: Worker at Weber, employed in the manufacture of a carburettor needle valve. Bologna, February 1950.