Periodic Reporting for period 3 - DICTATOREXPERIENCE (Dictatorship as experience: a comparative history of everyday life and the 'lived experience' of dictatorship in Mediterranean Europe (1922-1975))
Periodo di rendicontazione: 2021-09-01 al 2023-02-28
The project is the first to comparatively explore ‘everyday life’, the subjective lived experience and practice of dictatorship in four Southern European countries, all subjected to authoritarian or fascist(ic) rule in the twentieth century: Fascist Italy (1922-1943/5); Salazar’s Portugal (1933-1974); Francoist Spain (1936/9-1975); Greece under Metaxas and the Colonels (1936-41; 1967-1974). It is guided by the following research questions:
• How did the dictatorships seek to intervene and remodel key spaces and practices of everyday life?
• What happened to dictatorial policies, propaganda and rhetoric as these moved from the centre of power to the localities in which they were put into effect and experienced?
• What range of modes of behaviour, comportment and attitudes can be detected in ‘ordinary’ people's experiences of and responses to dictatorship?
• How far did the intended dictatorship diverge from the 'actually-existing' dictatorship?
• What commonalities and differences can be seen in the ways in which Southern European societies and individuals experienced and responded to dictatorship?
We examine multiple everyday practices, spaces and relations including, domestic spaces, family relationships and friendship networks, the consumption of everyday goods and materials, recreational and leisure time and practices, and transient public spaces of everyday life.
Our research aims are to:
• show how the dictatorships were effectively constructed – made and unmade – in localities and 'from below' as well as in the centre and from 'on high';
• indicate overlaps and gaps between the 'intended' dictatorship and the 'actually-existing' dictatorship by uncovering everyday actions, comportment and practices of individuals living through dictatorship;
• move beyond conventional historiographical binaries of consent and dissent, resistance and oppression, persuasion and coercion, perpetrator and victim;
• engage and make links with existing scholarship on 'everyday life' in non-European dictatorships and to point to fruitful areas for future research in other historical and geographical contexts.
The project is important because it enables us to better understand how dictatorships and other illiberal regimes function in actuality. Moreover, our investigation into ‘ordinary’ people’s modes of behaviour, practices, speech acts, ways of relating and of exercising agency in the context of an illiberal regime hold relevance for understanding functions of agency, subjectivity and practice in illiberal contexts in diverse geographical and temporal settings.
• How did the dictatorships seek to intervene and remodel key spaces and practices of everyday life?
• What happened to dictatorial policies, propaganda and rhetoric as these moved from the centre of power to the localities in which they were put into effect and experienced?
• What range of modes of behaviour, comportment and attitudes can be detected in ‘ordinary’ people's experiences of and responses to dictatorship?
• How far did the intended dictatorship diverge from the 'actually-existing' dictatorship?
• What commonalities and differences can be seen in the ways in which Southern European societies and individuals experienced and responded to dictatorship?
We examine multiple everyday practices, spaces and relations including, domestic spaces, family relationships and friendship networks, the consumption of everyday goods and materials, recreational and leisure time and practices, and transient public spaces of everyday life.
Our research aims are to:
• show how the dictatorships were effectively constructed – made and unmade – in localities and 'from below' as well as in the centre and from 'on high';
• indicate overlaps and gaps between the 'intended' dictatorship and the 'actually-existing' dictatorship by uncovering everyday actions, comportment and practices of individuals living through dictatorship;
• move beyond conventional historiographical binaries of consent and dissent, resistance and oppression, persuasion and coercion, perpetrator and victim;
• engage and make links with existing scholarship on 'everyday life' in non-European dictatorships and to point to fruitful areas for future research in other historical and geographical contexts.
The project is important because it enables us to better understand how dictatorships and other illiberal regimes function in actuality. Moreover, our investigation into ‘ordinary’ people’s modes of behaviour, practices, speech acts, ways of relating and of exercising agency in the context of an illiberal regime hold relevance for understanding functions of agency, subjectivity and practice in illiberal contexts in diverse geographical and temporal settings.
The research team was established in Sept-Oct 2018, comprising the PI, 2 PDRAs, and 2 PhD students. In the first semester, the research team conducted weekly methodology reading groups, bi-monthly team meetings, set up the project website, developed a detailed archival research plan, and completed required PhD training and review procedures.
The archival research phase of the project began in Jan 2019, involving extensive source material collation in the following archives:
Italy: Archivio Centrale dello Stato, Roma; Archivio Provinciale di Stato, Bologna; Archivio Provinciale di Stato, Palermo; Archivio Nazionale Diaristico, Pieve di Santo Stefano.
Spain: Archivo general de la Administración; Archivo histórico Nacional; Archivo del Partido Comunista Espanyol; Archivo Histórico Municipal, Sevilla; Archivo Histórico Provincial, Sevilla; Archivo de la Diputación provincial, Sevilla; Archivo histórico de Comisiones Obreras de Andalucía, Sevilla; Archivo Histórico Provincial, Valladolid; Archivo Histórico Municipal, Valladolid; Archivo General e Historico de Defensa; Archivo Histórico Provincial, Cadiz; Archivo de la Real Chancillería, Granada; Archivo Histórico Provincial de Asturias; Archivo Histórico Provincial de Málaga; Archivo Regional de la Comunidad de Madrid; Centro Documental de la Memoria Histórica, Salamanca.
Portugal: Arquivo Nacional Torre do Tombo; Arquivo Municipal de Lisboa; Arquivo Distrital do Porto; Arquivo Distrital de Évora; Fundação Mário Soares; Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal; Biblioteca Municipal Figueira da Foz
Greece: General State Archive; Contemporary Social History Archives; Hellenic Broadcasting Corporation.
Between April 2019 and April 2021, PDRA1 conducted 162 oral history interviews. Archival research in Italy is complete; research in Spain, Portugal, and Greece was delayed by archival closures due to Covid-19 and will be complete by summer 2021.
The writing-up of research findings will take place in the second half of the project’s term. The project team is currently analysing the source material collated for each country. Planning meetings to examine comparative findings and map the major co-authored book are scheduled for June 2021. To date, we have submitted 3 articles to leading journals based on source material and methodological arguments connected to the project, with a further article at an advanced stage.
We have initiated important dissemination and public engagement activities. PI and PDRA1 have established a regular podcast series. Subsequently, we are in negotiations with a UK university press to produce an open access source book. The project team participated in the UK’s ‘Being Human’ festival, a major festival for the humanities, in 2020. Collectively, we have presented material at 3 international conferences/workshops in Italy, Germany, and Portugal, 3 seminars in the UK, and a further 5 conferences on-line. We have held one of six planned 'masterclasses' by international experts (Feb 2019, Dr Nikolaos Papadogiannis, University of Bangor, on using oral history testimonies to uncover histories of sexuality in post-dictatorship Greece). Subsequent masterclasses were postponed due to the pandemic and will be rescheduled.
The archival research phase of the project began in Jan 2019, involving extensive source material collation in the following archives:
Italy: Archivio Centrale dello Stato, Roma; Archivio Provinciale di Stato, Bologna; Archivio Provinciale di Stato, Palermo; Archivio Nazionale Diaristico, Pieve di Santo Stefano.
Spain: Archivo general de la Administración; Archivo histórico Nacional; Archivo del Partido Comunista Espanyol; Archivo Histórico Municipal, Sevilla; Archivo Histórico Provincial, Sevilla; Archivo de la Diputación provincial, Sevilla; Archivo histórico de Comisiones Obreras de Andalucía, Sevilla; Archivo Histórico Provincial, Valladolid; Archivo Histórico Municipal, Valladolid; Archivo General e Historico de Defensa; Archivo Histórico Provincial, Cadiz; Archivo de la Real Chancillería, Granada; Archivo Histórico Provincial de Asturias; Archivo Histórico Provincial de Málaga; Archivo Regional de la Comunidad de Madrid; Centro Documental de la Memoria Histórica, Salamanca.
Portugal: Arquivo Nacional Torre do Tombo; Arquivo Municipal de Lisboa; Arquivo Distrital do Porto; Arquivo Distrital de Évora; Fundação Mário Soares; Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal; Biblioteca Municipal Figueira da Foz
Greece: General State Archive; Contemporary Social History Archives; Hellenic Broadcasting Corporation.
Between April 2019 and April 2021, PDRA1 conducted 162 oral history interviews. Archival research in Italy is complete; research in Spain, Portugal, and Greece was delayed by archival closures due to Covid-19 and will be complete by summer 2021.
The writing-up of research findings will take place in the second half of the project’s term. The project team is currently analysing the source material collated for each country. Planning meetings to examine comparative findings and map the major co-authored book are scheduled for June 2021. To date, we have submitted 3 articles to leading journals based on source material and methodological arguments connected to the project, with a further article at an advanced stage.
We have initiated important dissemination and public engagement activities. PI and PDRA1 have established a regular podcast series. Subsequently, we are in negotiations with a UK university press to produce an open access source book. The project team participated in the UK’s ‘Being Human’ festival, a major festival for the humanities, in 2020. Collectively, we have presented material at 3 international conferences/workshops in Italy, Germany, and Portugal, 3 seminars in the UK, and a further 5 conferences on-line. We have held one of six planned 'masterclasses' by international experts (Feb 2019, Dr Nikolaos Papadogiannis, University of Bangor, on using oral history testimonies to uncover histories of sexuality in post-dictatorship Greece). Subsequent masterclasses were postponed due to the pandemic and will be rescheduled.
The innovation and importance of this research lies in how it extends our understanding of how historical dictatorships have functioned, in praxis, and posits a new way of interpreting dictatorship in 20th century Southern Europe. It develops novel methodologies around spatial framings of ‘the everyday’ and applies methodologies and conceptual tools associated with Alltagsgeschichte / everyday life history approaches to national cases where these have been largely absent or under-developed and it brings Southern Europe into the comparative frame of existing scholarship.
The expected results to the end of the project are as follows:
- monograph by PI on a) novel theoretical and methodological approaches to study of 'everyday spaces' in dictatorship, b) empirical examination of practice, interaction and space in Fascist Italy and Francoist Spain.
- monography by PDRA1 based on oral history interviews on the lived experience of the Colonels' dictatorship in Greece.
- co-authored book setting out findings of comparative and entangled examination of everyday life in all four dictatorships.
- PhD thesis on everyday patterns of drug consumption in late Francoist Spain.
- PhD thesis on play, gaming, and recreation in Salazar's Portgual.
- international conference, planned for end year 4 of the project.
- journal article by PDRA2 examining the urban/rural divide in lived experiences of dictatorship, developing an alternate spatial frame of city/town peripheries.
- journal special issue in European History Quartely, co-edited by the PI.
- multiple public engagement and media dissemination activities, including podcast series.
The expected results to the end of the project are as follows:
- monograph by PI on a) novel theoretical and methodological approaches to study of 'everyday spaces' in dictatorship, b) empirical examination of practice, interaction and space in Fascist Italy and Francoist Spain.
- monography by PDRA1 based on oral history interviews on the lived experience of the Colonels' dictatorship in Greece.
- co-authored book setting out findings of comparative and entangled examination of everyday life in all four dictatorships.
- PhD thesis on everyday patterns of drug consumption in late Francoist Spain.
- PhD thesis on play, gaming, and recreation in Salazar's Portgual.
- international conference, planned for end year 4 of the project.
- journal article by PDRA2 examining the urban/rural divide in lived experiences of dictatorship, developing an alternate spatial frame of city/town peripheries.
- journal special issue in European History Quartely, co-edited by the PI.
- multiple public engagement and media dissemination activities, including podcast series.