Andrew Rolle

Book Review: Italian Americans: Into the Twilight of EthnicityItalian Americans: Into the Twilight of Ethnicity. By AlbaRichard D.Englewood Cliffs, NJ, Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1984. Pp. 182.

principles: the perceptions of America, the spread of immigrants beyond the gateway of the Atlantic Seaboard, the settling, moving and returning, the discrimination faced by the Italians, the role of the family and its dilution. No book on the Italians, presumably, can be without a chapter on La Mafia. The achievements of the Italians in politics and amenities lead to the concluding comments on new identity or assimilation. Troubled Roots is taken in the context of other Rolles writings. As a component of his attempt to document and analyze the Italian achievements and failures the book is an attractive exploration of immigrants psychology; as a self standing document it is fragmented and biased, more interpretive than documented, more insinuating than confirming. The immigrant experiences are seldom adequately perceived by external observers. The psychological roots of behavior have been often ignored by historians; they are analyzed by sociologists, psychologists and anthropologists. The external manifestations become part of the historical chronicle. In his earlier study, Rolle convincingly argued against the portrayal of immigrant deprivation by stressing the successes in the American West. The present book expresses caution, that the success was not really as thorough as it appears to be. The mental anguish of immigrants, the soul searching in an alien environment, was deeper than the external manifestations seem to indicate. The book should be taken as a call for further exploration. Numerous comparative studies of psychological behavior consider ethnicity as a significant variable. While the application to the Italian immigrants is new, the general awareness of often pathological behavior of migrants in an alien environment is well known to the students of migration micro-analyses. The author does not tackle the question of uniqueness of the Italian behavior. Nevertheless, the study is a refreshing and bold contribution worthy of careful examination, though not as new as the author claims. The dealing with the Italian immigrants has much broader implications: it represents a case that is applicable with minor modifications to other immigrants. America did not take full advantage of the immigrants. It accepted their arms and strong backs, but was reluctant to embrace their skills, their minds, their potentials. The deprivation of the working people is known and analyzed by Rolle and others, the restraint imposed by the host society on free development of their minds is only sketched in some recent analyses. Rolle brings it up. Lets hope that he will explore and document it further. The concluding essay on sources is a timely remainder of the vast array of Italian ethnic studies available in English. The omission of Silvano Tomasis Power and Piety is evidently an oversight. The bibliography has not been updated for the 1984 reprint.

Book Review: Fate and Honor, Family and Village: Demographic and Cultural Change in Rural Italy since 1800Fate and Honor, Family and Village: Demographic and Cultural Change in Rural Italy Since 1800. By BellRudolph M.Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979. Pp. 269.

the peculiar political considerations which have helped mold current migration policies in the labor importing and labor exporting countries of Europe as well as in the overseas Anglo Saxon democracies of Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States. The latter volume, less policy oriented than the former, concentrates on a comparative country by country treatment of conditions in the sending and receiving nations of Europe with particular attention to modifications which have occurred since the 1973-74 recruitment stop following the oil crisis. Only the last chapter examines North America and attempts to extrapolate similarities and differences between there and Europe. The chapter in the Power book entitled Politics .of Migration closely parallels materials discussed in much greater detail in the Kubat volume. The subsequent chapter entitled Immigration and Social Conditions in the Major Receiving Countries overlaps in many respects materials presented in the Krane volume. The areas in which the Power book goes beyond the Kubat and Krane works and makes distinct contributions in its own right are in its treatment of the highly important subject of illegal migration in both Europe and North America and in its analysis of conditions conducive to migration in the economically less developed nations. Likewise helpful is the country by country historical perspective on migration which enables the reader to view developments of the past two decades in the broader context of their nineteenth and early twentieth century antecedents. Moreover, as indicated in the title, the Power book gives broad coverage to the United States with particular reference to Mexican migration and, in doing so, goes well beyond materials contained in the previously mentioned volumes. On the European scene, however, Powers analysis is restricted to Belgium, France, the Federal Republic of Germany, Holland, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. In his concluding chapter Power suggests a few answers to the problems discussed in preceding chapters. This reviewer found it difficult in certain instances to fully understand precisely what solutions Power was suggesting and how they would be concretely implemented. Generally speaking, however, Power seems to advocate a reversal of the 1973-74 recruitment stop in the West European labor importing countries, a movement of industries employing large numbers of immigrant workers to the sources of labor supply, and an attempt to reduce the demand for immigrant workers by utilizing more effectively unemployed and underemployed native workers. Counterpart measures to be taken in the labor sending countries seem to revolve almost wholly around land reform, retaining labor on the land, and encouraging higher productivity per unit of land. In short, Powers answers, in the opinion of this reviewer, need to be far better articulated, and it is doubtful that the solution in the labor sending countries can be reduced simply, or even primarily, to the one Power suggests.

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The Italian peasantry has often been described as tragic, backward, hopeless, downtrodden, static, and passive. In Fate and Honor, Family and Village, Rudolph Bell argues against the characterizationmore by reconstructing the complete demographic history of four country villages since 1800. He analyzes births, marriages, and deaths in terms of four concepts that capture mroe accurately and sympathetically the essence of the Italian peasant life: fortuna (fate), onore (honor, dignity), famiglia (family), and campanilismo (village). Fortuna is the cultural wellspring of Italian peasant society, the world view from which all social life flows. The concept of fortuna does not refer to philosophical questions, predestination, or value judgments. Rather, fortuna is the sum total of all explanations of outcomes perceived to be beyond human control. Thus, in Bells view, high mortality does not lead peasants to a resigned acceptance of their fate; instead, they rely on honor, reciprocal exchanges of favors, and marriage to forge new links in their familial and social networks. With thorough documentation in graphs and tables, the author evaluates peasant reactions to time, work, family, space, migration, and protest to portray rural Italians as active, flexible, and shrewd, participating fully in shaping their destinies. Bell asserts that the real problem of the Mezzogiorno is not one of resistance to technology, of high birth rates, or even of illiteracy. It is one of solving technical questions in ways that foster dependency. The historical and sociological practice of treating peasant culture as backward, secondary, and circumscribed only encourages disruption and ultimately blocks the road to economic and political justice in a postmodern world.

Fate and Honor, Family and Village: Demographic and Cultural Change in Rural Italy Since 1800.

political, racial, ideological and territorial frontiers. The UNHCR has demonstrated its ability to respond with speed and flexibility to multinational crises involving thousands and even millions of people in crises as varied as the Hungarian exodus of 1956 and the Indian Pakistani crisis of 1971. It has been less successful, or almost totally unsuccessful in dealing with the refugees from Communist brutality in east Asia and especially southeast Asia. The incredible remarks by UN Secretary General Waldheim about the Vietnamese refugees in 1975 is a case in point. The chief problem is the quite natural lack of cooperation on the part of the countries who cause the refugees in the first place. There is a bibliography, glossary and index.

Book Review: Peasants and Strangers: Italians, Rumanians, and Slovaks in an American City, 1890–1950Peasants and Strangers: Italians, Rumanians, and Slovaks in an American City, 1890–1950. By BartonJosef J., Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 1975. Pp. 217.

Investigates the events which led to Californias rejection of newcomers from the South Central states in the late 1930s.

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At a time when so many themes connected with the American west and California are being exhausted by over-publication, it is a pleasure to read a book that deals with an overlooked topic. The dust bowl migration of the 1930s, brought to national consciousness by John Steinbecks Grapes of Wrath, was a minor epic, combining the pathos of personal deprivation as well as despoliation of the environment. Unemployment plagued those migrants who sought to escape from the parched fields of Oklahoma. The prejudice which they encountered in California is still felt today by Caesar Chavez and the struggling MexicanAmerican farm workers union he heads. Stein sees the Okies as not the cause but the focus of numerous problems that confronted California in the 1930s. As unwitting publicists for these shortcomings, these migrants encouraged an hysterical outpouring of neo-racist regional indignation. Paradoxically, however, the intruders were native Americans; although arriving from other states, they could not be pointed to as foreigners who had arrived to rob the jobs of permanent residents. Another paradox is that some of these migrants went on to become millionaires. In some instances they, in fact, became as reactionary as those who had persecuted them in a previous generation-as Anglo nativists who stood ready to persecute later Latino farm migrants. Stein does nothing with this concept, however. This book was originally a doctoral dissertation; thus its documentation is superb. Manuscript collections, government documents, newspapers, and periodicals have all been carefully mined. In general the book is a valuable contribution to the literature in its field. It represents an updating of the work of Carey McWilliams and other labor-oriented interpreters.

California and the Dust Bowl Migration.

in my admiration for Counselor Moynihans perceptiveness about the Irish of New York, but not all the Irish live in New York and not everything that can be said about the Irish is said in Beyond the Melting Pot. Litt repeats the hoary cliche that the Irish are politically conservative and economically less than successful because of the influence of their Church -even though there is published data which refutes this cliche. To prove some of his assertions about the Irish he cites Gerhard Lenskis The Religious Factor and does not tell the student that Lenskis survey was limited to Detroit, that it had no ethnic question and hence tell us nothing about the Irish, that it has been strongly criticized and that a recent replication at the University of Michigan seriously questions its validity. Furthermore, the principal books on which he leans for his comments on Catholicism are Lenski and Thomas ODeas American Catholic Dilemma. There have been other works on American Catholicism in the last decade and Professor Litt should either have read them or not presumed to have commented on American Catholicism in general and the American Irish in particular. In short, the present reviewer cannot escape the melancholy conclusion that Ethnic Politics in America is irresponsible. Whether it might be called something even worse is a question a reader will have to settle for himself; but Litts sympathetic consideration of Jewish liberalism and unsympathetic treatment of Irish conservatism in successive chapters must at least raise the question. Andrew M. Greeley Center for the Study of Ethnic Pluralism National Opinion Research Center University of Chicago