Italian-American Community Research Articles

The New Deal Realignment and the Italian-American Community of Philadelphia

The formation of the New Deal coalition has been the subject of much scholarly discussion, as have the theories of voting behaviour which have informed that discussion. This essay seeks to investigate both the history and the theory. First, it analyses the timing and mechanics of the participation of Philadelphia's Italian-Americans in the Roosevelt coalition. Italian-Americans were a key component of the Democratic majority nationwide, and as pre-New Deal Republican bailiwicks that began to turn Democratic in the 1930s, Pennsylvania and Philadelphia are ideal settings to study the forging of the Roosevelt coalition not only on the federal but also on the state and local level. Secondly, the essay tests some hypotheses about the New Deal realignment. It suggests that none of the standard hypotheses convincingly explains what was happening in Philadelphia's Italian-American community in the 1930s and 1940s.

Reviews, Notes, and Listings: Cardiology: The Power of Clan: The Influence of Human Relationships on Heart Disease

Literature of Medicine15 December 1993Reviews, Notes, and Listings: Cardiology: The Power of Clan: The Influence of Human Relationships on Heart DiseaseGerdi Weidner, MDGerdi Weidner, MDState University of New York at Stony Brook, Stony Brook, NY 11794-2500.Search for more papers by this authorAuthor, Article, and Disclosure Informationhttps://doi.org/10.7326/0003-4819-119-12-199312150-00029 SectionsAboutFull TextPDF ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationsTrack CitationsPermissions ShareFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail The Power of Clan: The Influence of Human Relationships on Heart DiseaseStewart Wolf and John G. Bruhn. 171 pages. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction Publishers; 1993. $29.95.The notion that the quality of our social relationships may have a profound effect on our health and longevity has a long history but a short scientific past. A much publicized study that set out to show an association between social cohesion in the community and coronary heart disease mortality was begun in 1962 by Drs. Bruhn and Wolf. Their focus was on the town of Roseto, a cohesive and relatively stable Italian-American community ... Author, Article, and Disclosure InformationAffiliations: State University of New York at Stony Brook, Stony Brook, NY 11794-2500. PreviousarticleNextarticle Advertisement FiguresReferencesRelatedDetails Metrics 15 December 1993Volume 119, Issue 12Page: 1234KeywordsCardiovascular therapyCoronary heart diseaseDeath ratesHealth information technologyLongitudinal studiesMortalityMyocardial infarctionPsychometrics ePublished: 15 August 2000 Issue Published: 15 December 1993 Copyright & PermissionsCopyright © 1993 by American College of Physicians. All Rights Reserved.PDF downloadLoading ...

Book Review: Monte Carmelo: An Italian-American Community in the Bronx

Book Review: Monte Carmelo: An Italian-American Community in the Bronx

Between Standard Italian and Creole: An interim report on language patterns in an Italian-American community

(1981). Between Standard Italian and Creole: An interim report on language patterns in an Italian-American community. WORD: Vol. 32, No. 3, pp. 181-191.

Smoking habits and reported illness in two communities with different systems of social support

A retrospective comparison of smoking habits and reported illness in Roseto, Pennsylvania and Tecumseh, Michigan was undertaken to determine the role of different systems of social support in abating the consequences of risk behaviors such as smoking on chronic diseases. In this study of 898 adult inhabitants of Roseto, a demographically homogeneous Italian-American community and 4590 adult inhabitants of Tecumseh, a heterogeneous geographically defined community, smoking habits were related to health and social characteristics. Smokers in both communities of both sexes had less education than nonsmokers, although the reverse was true among women with 13 years or more of education. The smoking habits of husbands and wives were also similar. No significant relationship was found in either community between smoking (or the amount smoked in Roseto) and coronary heart disease, hypertension, or somatic complaints. Cigarette smoking was more common, however, among respondents with a history of peptic ulcers, and in Roseto these persons with ulcers also tended to be heavy smokers. A greater prevalence of hypertension was observed in Tecumseh among males and females than in Roseto. These results are interpreted in light of differing systems of social support in the two communities.

Book Review: The Burg: An Italian-American Community at Bay in Trenton

Book Review: The Burg: An Italian-American Community at Bay in Trenton

The Burg: An Italian-American Community at Bay in Trenton.

The Burg: An Italian-American Community at Bay in Trenton.

Acculturation and drinking in an Italian American community.

The hypothesis that drinking practices among Italian Americans become more Americanized with successive generations was tested. In general, it was found that aspects of drinking behavior from both Italy and America were selected to form a third distinct drinking pattern.

Fascism and Italian-Americans in Detroit, 1933–1935

Relations between the United States and Italy during the Fascist period have been the subject of a growing number of scholarly studies in recent years. For the most part, these works have focused on three general areas: the diplomatic and economic relations of the two countries, the attitudes and reactions of Americans toward Fascism and Mussolini, and the anti-Fascist opposition in the United States.1 But from the point of view of immigrant history, little research has been devoted to the impact of Fascism on individual Italian-American communities. This subject is, however, an important area of investigation, not only for what it can reveal about the specific question of Fascism and anti-Fascism among Italian immigrants, but also because it sheds considerable light on the broader process and the internal dynamics of socio-political integration among ethnic groups in general. The present essay is intended, therefore, as a preliminary case study designed to point out the potential possibili? ties, problems, and implications involved in such research. Throughout most of the 1920s relations between Italy and the Ameri? can government were friendly and Mussolini enjoyed a great deal of popularity in the United States among Americans in general as well as in

The Moral Basis of a Backward Sociologist: Edward Banfield, the Italians, and the Italian-AmericansThe Moral Basis of a Backward Society. Edward Banfield

This essay is a review of Edward Banfield's The Moral Basis of a Backward Society (1958), a major sociological work which after a decade of general acceptance has become even more influential as a result of the renewed interest among academics in white ethnicity. In an attempt to understand the characteristics of American ethnic groups, many scholars have felt it mandatory to familiarize themselves with the life-styles of the immigrants' forebears in Europe. Observers have hoped that much of the white ethnics' adjustment to America could be understood by the continuities and discontinuities they show with their past. One of the most attractive groups for researchers has been the Italian-American, and it is in the analysis of it that the most creative investigations have been done. In the study of Italian-Americans, the single most influential work has been Banfield's. While the book was written in the 1950s, it purports to describe a social system that existed with little change at least as far back as the turn of the century, the time when most Italians immigrated to America. As a result, Moral Basis . . . has been generally accepted as a historical as well as a sociological investigation; and it has been used by others as such. Banfield's influence can be seen in many of the most successful works on the Italian-American community. It was accepted not only by Herbert Gans (1962) in the early 1960s, but by Humbert Nelli (1970) in his recent study of Chicago, and with slight modifications by Gerald Suttles (1968). While some scholars employ Banfield's argument to demonstrate continuity with the past, and others use him for contrasts between American Italians and southern Italians, there is widespread agreement on its usefulness. As a result of this reliance on Moral Basis . . . , Banfield has come to play an unusually large role in shaping our image of the ItalianAmerican experience. While Banfield's reception in American sociological and historical circles has been warm, he has fared less well among other scholars. A number of anthropologists specializing in Italian studies have been unconvinced of

The Italian-American Funeral: Persistence through Change

Philadelphia Italian-American community is the persistence of a South Italian village funeral pattern.' The village system of behavior surrounding death and burial has endured through the Italians' emigration from the agriculturally centered settlements of Italy to the urban community of Philadelphia, while the forms have persisted for more than one hundred years, from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. The most striking characteristic of the persisting funeral pattern, however, is that the pattern is borrowed. It is not the peasants' traditional village pattern which the immigrants chose to follow; instead, the persisting pattern is modeled after the system of the Signori, the landowners for whom the peasants work.2

UNUSUALLY LOW INCIDENCE OF DEATH FROM MYOCARDIAL INFARCTION. STUDY OF AN ITALIAN AMERICAN COMMUNITY IN PENNSYLVANIA.

An unusually low death rate from myocardial infarction, less than half that of the surrounding communities, was observed in the Italian-American community of Roseto, Pa, during the seven-year period from 1955 to 1961. The low death rate, observed in both sexes, was particularly striking among the males. There were no deaths of either sex under the age of 47 recorded from myocardial infarction during the study. Whether the relative freedom of Rosetans from death from myocardial infarction is related to their way of life or to genetic or ethnic factors remains to be determined. It would seem, however, that in this community, obesity and a generous consumption of calories, fat, and wine were actually associated with a strikingly low death rate from myocardial infarction.