OPPOSITIONAL POLITICS AND CULTURAL OPPOSITION: THE CONTEMPORARY ITALIAN FEMINIST MOVEMENT.
Item
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Title
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OPPOSITIONAL POLITICS AND CULTURAL OPPOSITION: THE CONTEMPORARY ITALIAN FEMINIST MOVEMENT.
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Identifier
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AAI8708320
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identifier
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8708320
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Creator
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SHTOB, TERESA H.
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Contributor
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Marilyn Gittell
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Date
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1987
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Sociology, Social Structure and Development | Women's Studies
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Abstract
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Feminist protest mobilizations occurred in both the United States and Western Europe during the 1970's, as women moved from participation in other social movements to the establishment of independent forms of organization. This work examines the Italian feminist movement from its origins within the student movement and New Left, and follows its development until the early 1980's, with particular emphasis on the campaigns for abortion legislation and women's health centers that marked the most intense period of feminist protest activities. Research focuses on the changing nature of the Italian feminist movement during the period under study, as it moved from direct confrontation with the political system and some notable policy 'successes' in the mid-1970's, to a period of waning influence over the political system and increasing internal heterogeneity by the end of the decade.;The original model utilized for the analysis of the Italian feminist movement's formation and development combines aspects of both the resource mobilization approaches characteristic of many U.S. social movement studies and the concept of a 'political opportunity structure'. The work then examines the 'fit' of this model to the Italian movement, and more broadly, to the sort of new social movement phenomena that this specific movement exemplifies. The 'political opportunity' model's explanatory value is strongest in considering the structuring of feminist protest by the Italian political system, while the resource mobilization approach aids in understanding the role of the 'internal' resources of the Italian feminist movement in its development. But because this model leaves crucial empirical and analytic questions unanswered and tends to equate a movement with its public policy goals, another paradigm is introduced, that of collective identity formation, an approach characterizing much Western European work on contemporary social movements. The collective identity paradigm helps to explain conflictual aspects of the Italian feminist movement that transcend immediate political goals and (perhaps) express broader, systemic conflicts and contradictions. Utilizing this paradigm, this work looks to both the visible and latent forms of struggle within the Italian feminist movement in order to decipher the relationship of that movement to its broader social structure.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
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Program
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Sociology
