Victoria De Grazia

hanno collaborato 180 studiosi (per un terzo stranieri), fra cui lo storico francese Pierre Milza, autore della voce su Mussolini, Enzo Collotti, Nicola Tranfaglia, Angelo d'Orsi, ma anche critici della letteratura e dell'arte, sociologi, antropologi e giuristi. Il volume si apre con la voce Labriola Teresa e si chiude con la Z di "zona grigia", con cui gli storici hanno definito quella maggioranza degli italiani che, alla fine della guerra, sono passati dal regime fascista alla repubblica in modo passivo. (fonte: Google Books)… (meer)

In Irresistible Empire: America’s Advance through 20th-Century Europe, Victoria de Grazia writes, “An empire without frontiers, [the Market Empire] arose during the first decade of the twentieth century, reached its apogee during its second half, and showed symptoms of disintegration toward its close” (pg. 3). She continues, “America’s hegemony was built on European territory. The Old World was where the United States turned its power as the premier consumer society into the dominion that came from being universally recognized as the fountainhead of modern consumer practices. For America to establish its legitimacy in this domain, it had to confront the authority that the European region had accumulated since the age of merchant capitalism as the center of vast imperial wealth, astute commercial know-how, and great good taste” (pg. 5). De Grazia defines the Market Empire as regarding “other nations as having limited sovereignty over their public space” (pg. 6) and exporting “its civil society – meaning its voluntary associations, social scientific knowledge, and civic spirit – in tandem with, if not ahead of, the country’s economic exports” (pg. 7). Further, “Born as an alternative to European militarism, it progressed as a model of governing the good life in a century beset by successive decades of total war, fratricidal civil conflict, nuclear holocaust, and genocidal murder” (pg. 8-9). De Grazia continues, “More than a pace-setter or the first to get there, American consumer culture catalyzed discontents, produced ruptures, and pushed aside obstacles” (pg. 11).
De Grazia writes, “As the United States converted to peacetime, the supermarket was cheered as the hallmark of the American system of free enterprise…For Europeans, the supermarket offered a new model of industrial beauty: the shadow-free luminosity of neon lights, the constant temperatures of air-conditioned spaces, the vast glass-and-steel refrigeration units, the rows of brightly colored cans and packages, the mounds of fresh produce graded in string sacks or cellophane-wrapped containers” (pg. 384). She continues, “The modern consumer household…as it emerged in post-World War II Europe, was inspired by a common, public, indeed Western-wide standard of equipment. Against the class-divided, regionally segmented, highly localized living styles of the past, government, business, tastemakers, and consumers converged in envisaging a mass-middle standard of household consumption. This common standard was favored on economic grounds to accommodate the large-scale output of mass-production industries” (pg. 418).
De Grazia concludes, “Down to the 1960s, American policymakers had treated efforts to raise the standard of living as the centerpiece of the global movement for human rights. And the American ‘standard package’ of goods was held up as a model to prod western Europe to develop its own concept of ‘citizenship goods’ and pressure Soviet Europe to dedicate more resources to consumer investment. But from the 1970s on, official America backed away from asserting any universal right to a high standard of living. And by the 1980s, on the score of health care, leisure time, diet, social security, and numerous other indicators of the good life, the average western European enjoyed a higher standard of living than the average American” (pg. 462). Finally, “Mass consumer culture is such an ephemeral form of material life that the great ruptures that formed it are easily lost to sight. As interest in its history grows and U.S. hegemony is discredited, the temptation will be strong to downplay the role that American social inventions played in local developments” (pg. 477).… (meer)

"Il libro va segnalato per un duplice merito: è un libro di storia , sorretto da un'ampia documentazione di prima mano, ma è anche un'analisi sociologica e antropologica assai penetrante di aspetti e problemi della vita quotidiana che nei manuali di storia restano generalmente in ombra o sono dati per scontati ."
IL SOLE 24 ore

"Il primo completo studio sulle donne durante il fascismo, frutto di una ricerca ad ampio raggio e ricco impressionante dettagli"
NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW

"Mette a fuoco un pezzo di storia di cui finora conoscevamo slogan e immagini di facciata ma non le linee portanti."
LA STAMPA… (meer)

This work is at its best when De Grazia is dealing with the macroeconomic comedy of manners that was the European effort to preserve their traditional socio-economic relations and national markets in the face of the American juggernaut of mass-marketing and consumer sovereignty after the Great War. However, the portion dealing with the period during the High Cold War, when American economic hegemony was at its peak, but when the Europeans learned to make the American commercial innovations their own just doesn't have the same zip.

The coda to this work is De Grazia musing over having spent twenty years writing a book about the expansion of American "soft power," only to have one administration throw this advantage away in a misguided effort to secure formal empire; perhaps a sign of the wasting American advantage.… (meer)