Study title

Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.

This is a qualitative data collection, comprising 120 oral history interviews conducted in various parts of Italy during 1991-1992 as part of the ESRC-funded project 'Cultural industries, governments and the public in Italy, 1938-1954'. The overall aims of the project were to examine relations between cultural production, consumption and political power in 1938-54, collect a substantial body of new information about mass culture and Italian society in those years and use oral history to elicit evidence about cultural consumption. Further information about the project, including links to related publications, may be found on the ESRC award page.

Users should note that the interview transcripts in this collection have been scanned from paper, so are available as Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) files. The original audio recordings have also been deposited at the UK Data Archive and will be digitised and added to the collection at a future date.

Publication
At present, there is no ESRC End of Award report available for this study, but the main findings are presented in:
Forgacs, D. and Gundle, S. (2008) Mass culture and Italian society from fascism to the Cold War, Bloomington: Indiana University Press. ISBN: 0253219485.


Main Topics:

The interviews cover many aspects of cultural consumption including cinema-going, reading, listening to radio and recorded music, sport, fashion, care of the body and use of branded products. The interview transcripts are in Italian, with no English translation.

Each interview began with an explanation of the project by the interviewer and then had three stages:

• free narration of life story by the interviewee
• his/her answers to a questionnaire
• completion by the interviewee of personal details and release forms