Abstract

This dissertation examines the family firms that generated Italy's Nordest boom through the prism of gender and postmodernity. It scrutinizes how gender relations structure these firms to understand how paternalistic authority is inscribed in new “postmodern” ways. Based on a year of fieldwork (2005-2006) conducted in the Veneto region of northeastern Italy, this research considers the impact that the “Nordest miracle” of the 1980s and its model of production had on the lives of the women who grew up in these family firms and, furthermore, the significance of their systematic erasure in the narratives of local economic development. Informed by history, political geography, and economics, this dissertation engages theoretically with feminist anthropology and cultural studies to explore the ways Veneto's development unfolded through a series of disavowals that effaced gender from current debates and concerns. Intervening in a subject traditionally studied by the social sciences, it strategically uses the concept of “corporeality” to tackle this topic and the boundaries of disciplines.

In the first part, I relate the region's industrialization to the wider phenomenon of Third Italy's industrial districts and to the regionalist political turn, as embodied by the Lega Nord (Northern League) party, in order to deconstruct the mystification of the Nordest miracle. I then consider how dominant readings of Italy are imbued with gendered tropes of backwardness and how these, in turn, play out at the regional level. In the second part, I zoom into the everyday life of the families behind Veneto's firms and bring downstage the personal lives of women to spotlight their often-ignored involvement. I trace how the traditional family patriarch transformed into the modern manager, who seemingly discarded old gender biases only to re-enact them. In the third part, I zoom out to view the firms and their global circulation. In analyzing Diesel, the clothing company that epitomizes Veneto firms' global success, I demonstrate how local entrepreneurs deploy postmodernity to achieve a cosmopolitan edge that positions them in a modern global order. My contention is that the project of entering modernity not only superseded women's emancipation but actually backtracked women's struggle for gender equity.