Simonetta Falasca-Zamponi

The Evolution of European Identities: Biographical Approaches:

tional in its wide range of sometimes uneven evidence from a variety of sources including Markovits’ (a senior researcher) previous studies, several studies completed by Markovits’ students (of whom Albertson is one), and a host of support provided by academic literatures on sport, psychology, communication, and social theory. The depth with which Markovits cites his students sometimes reads as an odd practice, although he is to be highly commended for his clearly ethical and unselfish practice of giving due credit to the original authorship of his students. The most impressive original data, presented in Chapter Five, is the jaw-dropping list of well-known female sports journalists interviewed for this study, depressingly but not surprisingly documenting the lifelong culture of refusal to legitimate their analytic voices. While the authors are not shy about arguing for the inclusion of women in full participation in sport at all levels, feminist readers will be frustrated with the authors’ distancing from claiming that their own argument is feminist. In their closing chapter—after providing an entire book substantiating women’s direct exclusion from sport, they write, ‘‘Why have few, if any, feminists [my emphasis]—at least to our knowledge— never demanded that the quarterback position of the Green Bay Packers, the point guard position of the Los Angeles Lakers, and the short stop position of the New York Yankees be occupied by a woman the way they have successfully lobbied that university presidents, doctors, lawyers, mathematicians, physicists, computer engineers, senators, and Supreme Court Justices, be women?’’ (p. 243). Actually, inclusion at all levels of sport and the reorganization of hegemonic sport culture has been the specific scholarly focus of a number of authors (such as Susan Birrell, C.L. Cole, Pat Griffin, Mary Jo Kane, Helen Lenskyj, Michael Messner, Don Sabo, and myself among many others) and the social movement focus of long-standing organizations such as the Women’s Sports Foundation. Further, this critique seems oddly contradictory of the important argument throughout the book that the hegemonic culture of sport is difficult to penetrate because there are few means of official credentialing. Given the authors’ own evidence, is it surprising that feminist voices have been stifled from wide public discussion? Though they note that sports talk is discursive practice, the authors never venture into such theoretically postmodern territory as to critique sports and fandom itself as a problem—that is, to say that sports talk and sports fandom are the desire for hegemonic masculinity itself wherein the passion that hegemonic sports culture produces is primarily focused on the preeminence of masculinity executed secondarily through sport. If they were to recognize this possibility, they might be less likely to assume that women would want to participate in such a sports world. Instead, they remain staunch sports fans, hoping for more liberal democratic goals such that women’s inclusion will implicitly change what the authors recognize as the current hegemonic practices of sport. Still, this text is a fine feminist critique of hegemonic sport culture, and adds to the library of work demonstrating how gender segregation is detrimental to gender parity in sport and in wider culture.

Comment and Reply

Dear Editor, I agree with Randall Collins that Gomorrah is not a good sociological work. I was indeed surprised to see it reviewed in CS. Saviano is not a sociologist and he graduated from the University of Naples with a degree in philosophy. I also agree with Collins that Saviano’s rhetorical style is often irritating and geared to provoke reactions of awe. This said, I find Collins’s reading of the book a bit unfair. Collins focuses on Saviano’s failure to reveal anything new about the international organization of the camorra. I thought that the book’s intent was to show the implications of the camorra’s influence on everyday life and practices. In addition, Saviano suggests that treating the camorra as a crime organization without taking into account its economic role is one of the biggest flaws in the way the Italian government handles the camorra. Second, Saviano gives a revamped interpretation of the Southern question, so acutely raised by Gramsci in the early 1900s, by showing that the Italian North actually owes part of its economic success to the South. Toxic wastes from factories in the North are disposed of in Campania at a fraction of the price, paving the way to Italy’s participation in the EU. Third, he makes the point that the camorristi wars are affecting the whole population in the areas where they operate; the camorristi don’t just kill each other. Finally, he dramatically indicates the environmental degradation brought on by the camorristi and its effects on people’s health. Saviano’s analysis of the cultural models circulated by the camorristi adds one more layer to the intractable problem facing Italy and those inhabiting the areas controlled by the camorra. The camorra penetrates deeply into the fabric of everyday life, aided by representations circulated by the culture industry.

Fascist Spectacle: The Aesthetics of Power in Mussolini's Italy@@@Making the Fascist Self: The Political Culture of Interwar Italy

This richly textured cultural history of Italian fascism traces the narrative path that accompanied the making of the regime and the construction of Mussolinis power. Simonetta Falasca-Zamponi reads fascist myths, rituals, images, and speeches as texts that tell the story of fascism. Linking Mussolinis elaboration of a new ruling style to the shaping of the regimes identity, she finds that in searching for symbolic means and forms that would represent its political novelty, fascism in fact brought itself into being, creating its own power and history. Falasca-Zamponi argues that an aesthetically founded notion of politics guided fascist powers historical unfolding and determined the fascist regimes violent understanding of social relations, its desensitized and dehumanized claims to creation, its privileging of form over ethical norms, and ultimately its truly totalitarian nature.