Cultures of Protest and Industrial Conflict in Italy Since 1945

The history of the twentieth century in Italy is marked by industrial unrest. And yet, our knowledge of the cultures that informed those protests and, equally important, of the forms they took is still limited, leaving important questions unanswered on their meanings, functions, mechanisms of transmission, continuities, and discontinuities with earlier waves of mobilization and global connections. In this illuminating and thought-provoking book, Favretto explores the protest methods and the underpinning protest cultures of Italian industrial workers from the collapse of Fascism to the present day. Challenging common portrayals of the labour movement as unimaginative and conventional in its tactics, the book demonstrates the variety of forms of industrial protest, encompassing actions such as sit-ins, protest camps, and hunger strikes, which are typically not associated with industrial conflict. Transcending the boundaries of contemporary history, the book also uncovers the persistence and reinvention of tactics commonly identified with the pre-modern period, such as time wasting, sabotage, and theft, and it shows the influence of earlier cultures and carnivalesque practices of popular contention, such as charivari, known as rough music in Britain and scampanata and other names in Italy.

By analysing tactics and cultures distinct from the official union protest repertoire that studies of post-1945 Italy and the labour movement often presume obsolete, the book provides a more profound understanding of workers' protest practices and underlying cultures and a better comprehension of their breadth and scope. It casts new light on the impact of internal migration on workers' protest rituals and practices, working-class women's participation in collective action, Communists' and Catholics' distinctive protest cultures, and, moving to recent decades, the effects of de-industrialisation on industrial conflict and its forms. The book fills an important gap in the study of the Italian labour movement and Italian history, enriching our understanding of the mechanisms behind the transmission and innovation of protest cultures and tactics. Its attention to the foreign experiences that shaped Italian labour industrial conflicts and analysis of tactics that have seen worldwide usage over extended periods also make it an essential contribution to a global history of protest.