RICERCA ITALIANA     

Research program

PROFESSIONS AND POWER IN EARLY MODERN AND MODERN ITALY

University Co-ordinator

Università degli Studi di FIRENZE - STUDI STORICI E GEOGRAFICI - ()

Research Unit Leader

Francesca Tacchi

Description

The members of this research group intend to draw on the expertise developed in their specific fields in order to try to bridge boundaries between disciplines, which have resulted in separate histories of "free" professions, of intellectual professions, of public administration and public service, of the bourgeoisies, of women etc.

Our team uses an historical perspective that is attentive to the indications that come from sociological research and consequently tends to equate, in some respects, occupations and professions.
We intend to focus our attention not only on the “free” professions (lawyers, doctors, engineers), but also on some intellectual professions - belonging to the world of public administration and public service - such as secondary school teachers and the magistrates of the judiciary system.

The common denominators of these professions are many, starting from the training process, which separates specific preparation, recognised by means of an educational qualification, from the access to the profession by means of a State exam or a public competition.

Some key moments of this process, which brings together such different professions, are identified in:

a) Granducal Tuscany in the first half of the 19th century (when, for instance, all the levels of the judiciary are present) and in the Risorgimento;

b) the brief period in which Florence was the capital of the Italian State;

c) under Fascism dictatorship, starting from the set of policies known as Gentile reform;

d) Italian Republic (focusing on the last thirty years).

This long-term chronological perspective was chosen, first of all, to account for the passage from a pre- to a post-unitary situation; in the course of this passage, Florence (which looms large in our project), after the 1781 administrative reorganisation of the Granducal State (which established the “Comunità”), performs the double role of State and Municipality.

The long temporal span that we have chosen is also justified by the fact that the process of professionalisation of the categories that we’re examining goes through various phases, which do not always coincide with the phases of political and social history.

Our investigation takes as its pivot the relationship between the professions and power, which must be seen both as the power of the professions and as the relationship of the professions with the various powers (political, economic etc.).

We shall dwell on some particular cases and/or on some historical junctures relevant to national and Tuscan history, articulating our analysis in some wide thematic areas, which in turn can be divided into various work projects:


1) KNOWLEDGE AND POWER

We shall analyse the places where professionals are formed - in the 19th century these places are not only Universities, but are still hospitals, legal offices etc. - both in Florence (the Istituto di studi superiori e di perfezionamento, founded in 1859, which in 1924 merges into the University of Florence) and in the ancient Universities of Pisa and Siena.

With the aid of the archives preserved in the Historical Archive of the University of Florence (1860-1960), of the archives of some faculties (Medicine and Arts in particular), of the census data, it is possible to reconstruct quantitatively the picture of Tuscan university graduates.

Moreover, starting from the 1930s, these data intersect with the data from the University yearbooks, which often contain the title of theses and data on state exams: in this way, it will be possible to follow some professional paths to evaluate the degree to which graduation matches with professional outcome.

Referees for this area: Galfré, Tacchi.


2) THE POWER OF PROFESSIONS

The analysis will in the long run follow certain specific directions:

a) professions in Florence and in other Tuscan cities (quantitative data);

b) social role and status (real or perceived), and professional mobility;

c) the institutional forms of representation (with a map of the various Colleges, Orders, groups, associations, category unions);

d) presence in the places of 19th and 20th century social life (salons, clubs, cafes, groups, cultural institutions and societies of various kinds).

As well as the Municipal and national archives and the archives of the various associations, the archives of the professional Orders are of great importance.

Referees for this area: Tacchi, Baioni, Chiavistelli.


3) THE SPACES OF PROFESSIONAL POWER

Professions occupy a physical and symbolic space inside the city, which is necessary for their power to be recognised, and for them to be able to operate in the market of professional services.
The location of professionals varies in relation to the changes of a city (Florence) which has always been a focus of attraction for the other urban centres in the region, and which expands considerably throughout the 19th century (an expansion in which engineers and architects play a significant role), becoming organised in areas/”citadels” specialised according to their function.

We will analyse some cases:

a) the citadel of knowledge (location of the University and other training centres);
<br />b) the citadel of justice (location of law courts, legal practices and notary’s offices);

c) the citadel of health (location of hospitals and health headquarters, chemists and doctor’s surgeries).

It is possible to represent these spaces visually, using appropriate software and drawing on the archival resources, including drawings, preserved in the Historical Archive of the Municipality of Florence (ASCF: Comunità 1782-1859; Comune 1865-1964) and the archive of the Florence Appeals Court, preserved in the Florence State Archive (ASF, regarding the 20th century).

Referees for this area: Focardi, Tacchi.


4) AT THE SERVICE OF PUBLIC POWER

By using specific archive resources from the pre- and post-unitary period preserved in the ASCF and the ASF, we will analyse the relationships with the central (Granducal) and local (Municipality of Florence) power.

We will account for the role played by the professions in the organisation of the Lorenese State (royal engineers and architects; royal and “erariali” lawyers; the magistrates of the Supreme council of justice etc.).

We will document the acknowledgement on the part of the public administration, of functions relevant to certain professions:

a) doctors become integral part of the Health Services office (district surgeon, local general practitioner);

b) engineers (and architects) work in the municipal technical offices (Public Works and Fine Arts, especially during the great urban transformations while Florence was the capital of the Kingdom of Italy or during the Fascist period);

c) lawyers deal with reports and law cases on behalf of the Municipal Legal Office.

Referees for this area: Tacchi; (Leoncini). <br />

5) PROFESSIONS AND ECONOMIC POWER

Drawing on materials kept at the Chamber of Commerce, we will account for the deep interconnection between the professions (accountants and expecially managers) and the economic and entrepreneurial world, providing data relative to the presence of professionals in public bodies, in the boardrooms of banks, or as auditors in the public companies that were founded in Florence between 1852 and 1972.

In some cases, we will try to connect these data with data relative to professionals’ private capital (their “wealth” or assets) that can be extracted from notaries’ archives (wills or successions), kept at the ASF.

Our analysis in this case will be qualitative as well as quantitative, and will aim to constitute a data base.

Referee for this area: Badon.


6) PROFESSIONS AND POLITICAL POWER

The presence of professionals in the representational and government organisms, both local and national, confirms the power held by professions: both those that traditionally mediate between the public and the private sphere (lawyers and Law graduates in general) and those which at the end on the 19th century and especially in the course of the 20th century acquire increasing social profile (doctors, engineers).

In the long transition from Florence the capital of the Granducal State to Florence regional capital, we pass from a representation based upon narrow elites of prominent community members to a progressive increase of emerging bourgeois/professional classes (also in the economic and financial world), especially after the 1865 reform of the administrative electorate.

The thread that we will follow is the relationship between the extension of political representation (electoral reforms) and the presence of professionals in local assemblies, which is also at the basis of the quantitative analysis of the presence of Tuscan professionals in the places of national political representation (in Parliament, in Governments).

We will dwell on a particularly meaningful moment, the twenty years of Fascist dictatorship, providing data on the degree to which some professions adhered to or opposed the Fascist party and trade union; on Jewish professionals that were discriminated and excluded and then readmitted after the war; on the contradictory purge process of 1944-1946 involving Florentine lawyers and judges, punished according to their role under Fascism.

Referees for this area: Baioni, Tacchi, Focardi.


7) LOOKING FOR POWER

Our analysis will proceed in two directions:

a) the role of women in the Tuscan professions between the 19th and the 20th centuries, which proceeds in parallel with the slow and imperfect acquisition of social and political citizenship. We will provide data on the different timeframes of women’s access to professions, focusing on the last thirty years (feminisation of the University and of some professions, with relevant specialisation areas);

b) we will reconstruct the difficult process of “professionalisation” of secondary teachers, which has a decisive moment with the Gentile reform, when the qualifying competition is equated to the State exam which marks the entry to a profession. In this respect, the associations of teachers waged a significant battle for the equivalence of their role to that of magistrates.

Referees for this area: Tacchi, Galfré.