"Great Families": Capital accumulation and political power in Italy. (Volumes I and II).
Item
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Title
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"Great Families": Capital accumulation and political power in Italy. (Volumes I and II).
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Identifier
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AAI9432379
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identifier
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9432379
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Creator
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Scassellati, Alessandro.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Edward C. Hansen
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Date
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1994
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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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Anthropology, Cultural | History, European | Economics, History
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Abstract
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This work is a study of a selected group of north Italian capitalist dynastic families, the so-called "Grandi Famiglie" (Great Families). They are descent groups that over the course of at least three generations have accumulated sufficient wealth-as-capital to become a market factor in one or multiple sectors of economic endeavor. Such groups are more than mere genealogical constructions; they are closely linked networks of relatives with common economic interests and collective identities. They are kinship groups as well as cohesive economic interest groups.;North Italian dynastic families have formed relatively small but very powerful sets of social networks and kinship groups, which have been organized into a small number of dominant patrilineages, comprising a few thousand people. Despite their limited number, these families and their connections, in this work conceptualized together as elite formations, have controlled most of the economic power in Italy since the country's industrialization in the early 19th century. The power base of these families has rested on the control of strategic resources in the form of major industrial and financial activities largely located in the "industrial triangle" of the Milan-Genoa-Turin region.;These Great families have also been pivotal in the country's political life. Thus, for example, as their forebears actively participated in the formation of the Italian nation state in the 1860s, so too the members of the present generation are major actors in the integration process of the Italian economy and polity into Europe.;In spite of the fact that these elite families have been, and continue to be extremely visible, dominating key sectors of economic activity, and exerting considerable influence on the executive power of the Italian state, scholars investigating Italian economic and political developments have neglected such groups.;The present study seeks to overcome precisely the lack of knowledge over the formation of these Italian political-economic elites. In particular, the work examines their shifting economic, political and familial strategies as such descent groups confronted two major historical periods of crisis in the accumulation process defined by the long wave periodization--1816/21-1848 and 1874-1896. This assessment is conducted with the awareness that these families were hegemonic actors in the processes that led to the alteration of established local, regional and national social structures and to the formation of new ones that sustained rapid capital accumulation during expansionary phases--1780-1815; 1848-1875; 1896-1913/19.
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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.
