The Very Grounds Underlying Twentieth-Century Authoritarian Regimes: Building Soil Fertility in Italian Libya and the Brazilian Cerrado (2021)
Biasillo, Roberta (Author)
Silva, Claiton Marcio da (Author)
Comparative Studies in Society and History
Volume: 63
Issue: 2
Pages: 366-399
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.
...MoreSimilar Citations
Book
Ash, Mitchell G.;
(2010)
Psychoanalyse in totalitären und autoritären Regimes
Book
Boyer, Christopher R.;
(2012)
A Land between Waters: Environmental Histories of Modern Mexico
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
Book
Prakash Kumar;
(2025)
A History of India's Green Revolution: Reign of Technocracy
Book
Matthew P. Johnson;
(2024)
Hydropower in Authoritarian Brazil: An Environmental History of Low-Carbon Energy, 1960s–90s
Book
Manuel Vaquero Piñeiro;
(2024)
«Un territorio che sta sul nascere». I Caetani di Sermoneta e la trasformazione agraria della pianura pontina secc. XIX-XX
Book
Gregory Brew;
(2022)
Petroleum and Progress in Iran: Oil, Development, and the Cold War
Book
Rogers, Thomas D.;
(2010)
The Deepest Wounds: A Labor and Environmental History of Sugar in Northeast Brazil
Book
Roberta Biasillo;
(2023)
Una storia ambientale delle Paludi pontine. Terracina dall’Unità alla bonifica integrale (1871-1928)
Article
Rindzeviciute, Egle;
(2010)
Purification and Hybridisation of Soviet Cybernetics. The Politics of Scientific Governance in an Authoritarian Regime
Thesis
Jonathan Earl Coulis;
(2020)
Marching Rows of Coffee: The Pursuit of Modern Agriculture in Brazil, 1950–1990
Article
Gretchen Heefner;
(January 2017)
“A Fighter Pilot’s Heaven”: Finding Cold War Utility in the North African Desert
Thesis
Cecilia Ramona Martinez;
(1990)
Energy, technics and postindustrial society: The political economy of inequality. (Volumes I and II)
Book
Paolo Nicoloso;
(2022)
Mussolini, Architect: Propaganda and Urban Landscape in Fascist Italy
Book
Eve E. Buckley;
(2017)
Technocrats and the Politics of Drought and Development in Twentieth-Century Brazil
Book
Matteo Giuli;
(2021)
L'opulenza del Brasile coloniale. Storia di un trattato di economia e del gesuita Antonil
Article
Diaper, Jeremy;
(2014)
The New English Weekly and the British Organic Husbandry Movement: A Reassessment
Book
Sigrid Schmalzer;
(2016)
Red Revolution, Green Revolution: Scientific Farming in Socialist China
Book
Shannon Stunden Bower;
(2025)
Transforming the Prairies: Agricultural Rehabilitation and Modern Canada
Article
Jongsik Christian Yi;
(2021)
Dialectical Materialism Serves Voluntarist Productivism: The Epistemic Foundation of Lysenkoism in Socialist China and North Vietnam
Be the first to comment!