Tag Archives: Communism

Everyone knows about Karl Marx, but what about Friedrich Engels?

Posted on by

Aleks Ka/Shutterstock.com

Terrell Carver, University of Bristol

Backgrounding Marx is hard to do, especially when 2018 is the 200th anniversary of his birth and a huge number of global events are focusing on the great man. This is his usual “leader of the orchestra” position, with his life-long friend, constant benefactor and sometime co-author Engels in his usual role as second fiddle. But another 200th anniversary is fast approaching: that of Engels’s birth in 1820. Best to be forewarned and forearmed. Continue reading →

How women rice weeders in Italy took on fascism and became heroines of the left

Posted on by

File 20180306 146697 anixlc.jpg?ixlib=rb 1.1Bramfab via Wikipedia

Flora Derounian, University of Bristol 

In an era before the dawn of pesticides and mechanisation, an all-female workforce was employed to “disinfect” and harvest Italy’s rice crops. These Italian rice weeders may be a thing of the past, but they have a remarkable political legacy.

Italy was, and remains, Europe’s largest rice producer. The rice weeders, known in Italian as “mondine”, could be found knee-deep in flooded fields from May until July, across Italy’s “rice belt” which spans the northern regions of Piedmont, Emilia Romagna, Lombardy and the Veneto. In my ongoing research, I study oral histories of rice weeders who worked between 1940 and 1965, collected from several interview projects and documentaries. Continue reading →