Research
Population politics, especially low fertility; cultural politics of race, gender and class, particularly as related to reproduction; social memory and historical anthropology; economic anthropology; ethnography and writing culture; equity and education; Italy and U.S.
Books
2009 Unraveled: A Weaver’s Tale of Life Gone Modern. Berkeley: University of California Press.
2005 A Crisis of Births: Population Politics and Family-Making in Italy. Case Studies on Contemporary Social Issues. John A. Young, series editor. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.
When reproduction becomes a political issue, where do you stand? A Crisis of Births tells the fascinating story of Italian families in the 1990s, when Italy had the lowest birthrate of any nation in the world. Why did Italy’s birthrate fall so low? What has this meant for Italians as individuals and Italy as a society? What happens when reproduction become so politicized? Answers draw from two years of ethnographic fieldwork in Prato, Tuscany. Personal dialogues with ordinary people ranging from sweater-makers to counts, and aging bachelors to doting mothers reveal how a silent revolution against patriarchy reshapes social and sexual morality to create new imperatives for family making and immigrant newcomers.
Articles and Book Chapters
2007 Memory and Meaning: Genealogy of a Fertile Protest, Journal of Modern Italian Studies 12(4): 406-416.
2007 Fertility Politics as ‘Social Viagra’: Reproducing Boundaries, Social Cohesion and Modernity in Italy. Co-authored with Milena Marchesi. American Anthropologist 109(2): 350-362.
2007 From Explosion to Implosion: A Call for Population Skepticism. In Babies, Burdens and Threats: Current Faces of Population Control. Pp. 13-16. Amherst: Population and Development Program. http://popdev.hampshire.edu
2006 “Dangerous Demographies and the Scientific Manufacture of Fear.” The Corner House, Sarah Sexton, ed., Briefing paper No. 36. http://www.thecornerhouse.org.uk/
2006 ‘You Have to Start with Something’: Towards an Ethnographic Research Agenda for Modern Italy. Journal of Modern Italian Studies 11(3): 393-403.
2005 “Encounters with ‘the Peasant’: Memory Work, Masculinity, and Low Fertility in Italy.” American Ethnologist 32(4): 593-617. PDF (308 KB)
2005 “ ‘Toys and Perfumes’: Imploding Italy’s Population Paradox and Motherly Myths.” In Barren States: The Population “Implosion” in Europe, edited by Carrie B. Douglass. Pp. 159-182. London: Berg.
2003 “Italy,” In The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Women’s Issues Worldwide: Europe. Pp. 341-372. Lynn Walter, ed. Westport, CN: Greenwood Publishing Group.
2001 “‘Empty Cradles’ and the Quiet Revolution: Demographic Discourse and Cultural Struggles of Gender, Race, and Class in Italy,” Cultural Anthropology 16(4): 576-611. PDF (2.7 MB)
1998 “‘The Bead of Raw Sweat in a Field of Dainty Perspirers’: Nationalism, Whiteness, and the Olympic Class Ordeal of Tonya Harding,” Transforming Anthropology (7)1:33-52. PDF (2 MB)
1994 “Forward vs. Reverse Gear: Politics of Proliferation and Resistance in the Italian Fascist State,” Journal of Historical Sociology, 7(3): 261-288.
1992 “The Looking Glass of Historic Preservation: A Reflection of Modernization and Changing Values,” Peter New Award Paper, Human Organization 51(2): 97–201.
Book Reviews
2008 Sheltering Women: Negotiating Gender and Violence in Northern Italy. Sonja Plesset. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2006. Journal of Anthropological Research 64 (Spring):96-97.
2007 Carol Helstosky, Garlic & Oil: Food and Politics in Italy. 2004. (2006 paperback edition.) Oxford: Berg. South European Society & Politics 12(2): 255-57.
2003 “Raffaele Corso, La vita sessuale nelle credenze, pratiche e tradizioni popolari italiane,” (book review essay), Journal of Modern Italian Studies 8(1): 108-111
Popular Articles and Op-Eds
2009 Writing as Politics. Anthropology News, May.
2008 Intimate Borton school puts the children first, Guest Opinion, The Arizona Daily Star. April 3, p. A9.
2007 The Evolution of the Family. UMASS Amherst (Summer). http://umassmag.com/2007/Summer2007/Features/evolution_family.html
2007 From Explosion to Implosion: A Call for Population Skepticism. DifferenTakes, No. 46 (Spring): 1-4.
2005 “In Search of Community Conscious Capitalism,” Anthropology News PDF (612 KB), February, 46(2): 41-42.
2002 “Olympic Might,” Newsday. Sunday, Feb. 12, 2002. Pp. B4, B7.
