Education and class formation in an Italian factory town.
Item
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Title
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Education and class formation in an Italian factory town.
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Identifier
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AAI9605580
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identifier
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9605580
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Creator
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Ciardi, Paola.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Jane Schneider
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Date
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1995
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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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History, European | Anthropology, Cultural | Education, History of
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Abstract
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This dissertation reconstructs the relationship between schooling and class formation in Piombino, a metallurgical center in Central Italy, since the beginning of the twentieth century. It focuses on the ways in which historical experience and local working-class political subculture, steeped in the pre-war socialist and anarcho-syndicalist and post-war communist traditions, shaped the "positive" attitude toward education prevalent among many working-class families. Oral accounts inform the reconstruction of school experience and environments, dispositions and the negotiation of educational trajectories within the shifting contexts of the postwar period. Interview excerpts evoke the conservatism of the 1950s, the self-doubt provoked by the encounter with the class smugness and elitism of the school milieus, the ferments brewing in the early 1960s, and the change brought about by the student movement and the activism of the late 1960s and early 1970s.;The study argues that the choice made by many working-class families during the 1950s to send their children to secondary schools and university, at a time when post-elementary schooling was not compulsory and wages low, did not simply result from a desire for social advancement. Rather it was connected to a positive attitude toward "book knowledge" and education characteristic of the socialist subculture, the experience of oppressive and harsh working conditions which induced parents to look at education as a means of human emancipation and an opportunity to spare their children the hard life of the factory, and, finally, to a "language of class" with a strong future-orientation, that spoke of revolution and stressed the need for "organic" intellectuals. However, in the end the "meaning" of education as class empowerment and the drive to appropriate "knowledge" and "cultural competencies" shared in part the terms of the power relations that it sought to overturn, as that drive was partly rooted in feelings of cultural inferiority that were the effect of the dominant hegemony.;The thesis addresses the theoretical literature on issues of reflexivity, class formation, and social reproduction in education. In particular it draws on Raymond Williams concept of "structure of feeling" as well as Gramsci's understanding of cultural hegemony and Foucault's emphasis on discursive practices.
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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.
