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.

Keywords:

• Memory
• migration
• rural flight
• rural labor
• women workers
• rice

Notes

‘Il problema del riso al Parlamento’, La Sesia, 23 May 1950; ‘Tragica situazione dell'agricoltura vercellese’, La Sesia, 20 December 1955; ‘Considerazioni pratiche sul ridimensionamento della risaia’, La Sesia, 6 January 1956.

A. T., ‘La trapiantatrice meccanica in risaia con dieci serventi compie il lavoro di settanta’, La Sesia, 26 June 1956; E. Villa, ‘La mietitura del riso semplificata dalla meccanizzazione’, La Sesia, 22 September 1959.

C. A. Ciconi, ‘L'uso dei diserbanti consente la riduzione delle spese di monda’, La Sesia, 2 August 1949; R. Chiappelli, ‘La mondatura del riso coi diserbanti selettivi’, La Sesia, 15 May 1950.

‘Il reclutamento delle mondariso esteso nell'Italia centrale e meridionale’, La Sesia, 3 June 1958; ‘La meccanizzazione del trapianto consentirà di sopperire la rarefazione della mano d'opera stagionale’, La Sesia, 10 June 1958; ‘Giunte dal meridione seicento mondariso’, La Sesia, 13 June 1958.

‘Contro gli scorpori e a favore dei lavori di bonifica e di miglioramento’, La Sesia, 3 January 1950; ‘Le quattro condizioni necessarie per l'esecuzione dello scorporo delle aziende’, La Sesia, 20 June 1950.

An exhaustive review in the first person of the research initiatives that are discussed here can be found in Castelli et al. (2005).