Memories of the Italian rice belt, 1945–65: work, class conflict and intimacy during the ‘great transformation’

Abstract

The essay examines the memory of the ‘great transformation’ of Italy from an agricultural to an industrial economy in the postwar years by focusing on the case of the rice belt located around the city of Vercelli in Piedmont. Between 1945 and 1965, a society that for more than two centuries had been organized around the culture of rice experienced abrupt and all-embracing change. The mechanization of farming and the introduction of herbicides overlapped with the exodus of rural workers to the city and factories, transforming a local world – from the natural landscape and built environment to the structures of production, division of labor, and everyday domestic, social and cultural life. Based on interviews with former rice farmers and workers, the essay sheds light on the subjective experience of this far-reaching transition. Its aim is to delineate the contours of a collective representation of historical change. What emerges from these personal narratives of the Vercellese rice fields is a complex, coherent, but ultimately selective public memory. The shared understandings that this memory sustains tend to mute a history of fear and oppression, unresolved conflicts and unbalanced relations of power. In its place, Vercellese public memory offers an epic story of the Italian rice belt in which all historical actors are accorded dignity and social relevance.