Biasillo, Roberta (Author)
Silva, Claiton Marcio da (Author)
This article analyzes the role of soil in the making of authoritarian regimes and illustrates twentieth-century practices and discourses related to fertility across the globe. It compares two different approaches to and understandings of soil fertility: the first emerged in North Libya under Italian Fascist rule (1922–1943), the second in Central Brazil during the civil-military dictatorship (1964–1985). We compare two soil-forming processes that changed physical and chemical properties of the original matter and were embedded within specific ideologies of modernization. In both cases, state agendas of agrarian production played a paramount role not only in socioeconomic projects but also as an instrument to suppress opposition. Technocratic and political aspects of building and maintaining fertility were interwoven, although in different patterns in the two countries. We show how the rejuvenation of land bled into the regeneration of communities through processes that anchored the self-definition and development of these authoritarian regimes, and argue that attempts at landscape transformations through agricultural activity and strategies of fertilization are inescapable features of dictatorships. In so doing, we elaborate the concept of “authoritarian soil.” The juxtaposition of these non-synchronous cases reveals how agricultural modernization developed throughout the twentieth century. Our study is rooted in environmental history and contributes to the ongoing dialogue between that field and science and technology studies. Its cross-temporal, comparative methodology draws upon sources and historiographical debates in English, Italian, and Portuguese.
...More
Book
Ash, Mitchell G.;
(2010)
Psychoanalyse in totalitären und autoritären Regimes
(/isis/citation/CBB001023462/)
Book
Boyer, Christopher R.;
(2012)
A Land between Waters: Environmental Histories of Modern Mexico
(/isis/citation/CBB001421939/)
Article
Abrams, M. D.;
Johnson, S. E.;
(2014)
Impacts of Early Homestead Abandonment on Forests and Soils at Scotia Barrens, Central Pennsylvania: Implications for Altered and Arrested Vegetation Development
(/isis/citation/CBB001421933/)
Book
Rogers, Thomas D.;
(2010)
The Deepest Wounds: A Labor and Environmental History of Sugar in Northeast Brazil
(/isis/citation/CBB001211190/)
Article
Gretchen Heefner;
(January 2017)
“A Fighter Pilot’s Heaven”: Finding Cold War Utility in the North African Desert
(/isis/citation/CBB630202577/)
Book
Roberta Biasillo;
(2023)
Una storia ambientale delle Paludi pontine. Terracina dall’Unità alla bonifica integrale (1871-1928)
(/isis/citation/CBB997610073/)
Book
Mulwafu, Wapulumuka Oliver;
(2011)
Conservation Song: A History of Peasant-State Relations and the Environment in Malawi, 1860--2000
(/isis/citation/CBB001422348/)
Book
Eve E. Buckley;
(2017)
Technocrats and the Politics of Drought and Development in Twentieth-Century Brazil
(/isis/citation/CBB646941276/)
Book
Sigrid Schmalzer;
(2016)
Red Revolution, Green Revolution: Scientific Farming in Socialist China
(/isis/citation/CBB163907239/)
Article
Freschet, Grégoire T.;
östlund, Lars;
Kichenin, Emilie;
Wardle, David A.;
(2014)
Aboveground and Belowground Legacies of Native Sami Land Use on Boreal Forest in Northern Sweden 100 Years after Abandonment
(/isis/citation/CBB001421440/)
Article
Nataliia Kovalenko;
(2021)
Vasyl Pastushenko’s Scientific School in the Development of Soil Protection Technologies in Ukraine
(/isis/citation/CBB703628311/)
Article
Diaper, Jeremy;
(2014)
The New English Weekly and the British Organic Husbandry Movement: A Reassessment
(/isis/citation/CBB001421786/)
Article
Armiero, Marco;
Hardenberg, Wilko Graf von;
(2013)
Green Rhetoric in Blackshirts: Italian Fascism and the Environment
(/isis/citation/CBB001421395/)
Article
Dunaway, Finis;
(April 2019)
Gallery Editor's Note
(/isis/citation/CBB903367667/)
Book
Marco Armiero;
Roberta Biasillo;
Wilko Graf von Hardenberg;
(2022)
Mussolini's Nature: An Environmental History of Italian Fascism
(/isis/citation/CBB022333357/)
Article
Saraiva, Tiago;
Wise, M. Norton;
(2010)
Autarky/Autarchy: Genetics, Food Production, and the Building of Fascism
(/isis/citation/CBB001022620/)
Book
Matteo Giuli;
(2021)
L'opulenza del Brasile coloniale. Storia di un trattato di economia e del gesuita Antonil
(/isis/citation/CBB721924775/)
Article
Denning, Andrew;
(April 2019)
Infrastructural Propaganda: The Visual Culture of Colonial Roads and the Domestication of Nature in Italian East Africa
(/isis/citation/CBB754917712/)
Article
Rindzeviciute, Egle;
(2010)
Purification and Hybridisation of Soviet Cybernetics. The Politics of Scientific Governance in an Authoritarian Regime
(/isis/citation/CBB001023660/)
Book
Federico Paolini;
(2020)
Environment and urbanization in modern Italy
(/isis/citation/CBB227766130/)
Be the first to comment!