Nicola Pizzolato
Biographic Data
| ID | 238043 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Nicola Pizzolato |
| GIVEN NAMES | Nicola |
| FAMILY NAME | Pizzolato |
| SIGNATURE | PIZZOLATO N |
| AFFILIATIONS | Middlesex University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-3618-5188 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 22 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 22 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 21 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2002 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Protesting Imaginatively in Italy
Spatializing the Factory
How do spatial approaches and the methodological lexicon of space, place, and scale contribute to understanding the industrial workplace?And how does a "spatializing" perspective intersect with traditional foci in the study of the workplace, such as industrial relations, the labor process, or state labor law and policy?Taking a cue from the seminal work of Henri Lefebvre, Michel Foucault, Michel de Certeau, Doreen Massey, Edward Soja, David Harve…
Reconceptualising the Factory as Plantation
In the late 1960s, Chrysler’s auto factories in Detroit were among the most regimented, fast-paced, and gruelling industrial workplaces of the United States. Their production lines employed a majority of Black workers who toiled under a racialised form of labour control, safety hazards and no leverage in the local union. In these circumstances, Black radicals mobilised support by crafting a discourse that drew on notions linked to slavery and in …
Introduction
This introduction to the special issue ‘Gender and Work in Twentieth-Century Italy’ draws on key strands of historical scholarship on gender and work, including women workers’ experiences, labour market discrimination, domestic work, the impact of gender norms, and ideas of masculinity and femininity on work identities. It traces the development of feminist influence within this scholarship, from making women workers’ experiences visible to chall…
The Hidden Labour of Digital Capitalism
Rapid technological development means that the ground on which recent academic studies and public debates about the future of work organisation are based is shifting too rapidly for predictions to be credible. Organisational studies scholars have provided a counterpoint to this futuristic, speculative debate about the world of tomorrow with studies that contextualise seemingly new trends within a longer history of industrial capitalism. In this a…
Il lavoro attraverso lo sguardo femminile
An exhibition titled Through the Female Gaze: Women and Work in Italy since the 1950s was held in London (December 2021) and then Edinburgh (March-May 2022). The curator and the organisers discuss in this article its content and importance. The exhibition combined photos of militant female photographers such as Letizia Battaglia, Marcella Campagnano, Lisetta Carmi, the Collettivo Donne Fotoreporter, Cristina Omenetto, Lori Sammartino, and younger…
The BioS4You European Project
In this contribution, we present the BioS4You project and analyse the results obtained in the first 18 months of its activity. The “Bio-Inspired STEM topics for engaging young generations” (BioS4You) Erasmus+ KA2 Innovation project aims to bridge the gap between STEM national curricula (which include Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) and the needs of Z-generation students, uninterested to basic themes, but enthusiastic in issues …
The Class Strikes Back
Book Review| March 01 2021 The Class Strikes Back: Self-Organised Workers’ Struggles in the Twenty-First Century ed. by Dario Azzellini and Michael G. Kraft The Class Strikes Back: Self-Organised Workers’ Struggles in the Twenty-First Century, Azzellini, Dario; Kraft, Michael G., eds., Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2018, 321 pp., $28.00 (paper) Nico Pizzolato Nico Pizzolato Middlesex University, London Search for other works by this author on: This S…
Back to the factory
Factories remain significant sites of employment, crucial to capitalism. In the twentieth century, scholars registered achievements in documenting their history, but since the late 1980s, and for a generation, the field lost impetus within labour history although insights continued to accumulate through work in adjacent disciplines. The factory has not featured on the agenda of ‘transnational’ and ‘global’ labour history, but we suggest that it c…
Harvests of shame
This article reframes the discussion on vulnerable and exploited agricultural labour in twentieth-century United States using the overarching category of unfree labour. In order to do so, it bridges two usually distinct historiographies by linking the phenomenon of ‘peonage’ during the New Deal, with the one of immigrant contract labour in southern Florida, under the H2 visa. Archival research on the practices at the U.S. Sugar Corporation in sou…
Tactics of Refusal
This is article is part of the forum on 1968 of the American Historical Review. The article is an historical and political assessment of the diverse social movements that comprises the Italian 1968, their legacy and the country's relationship to the divisive collective memory of that period.
The influence of professional doctorates on practice and the workplace
This paper investigates the influence that undertaking a professional doctorate has on the practice of the graduate and their workplace or organisation. There is a growing literature on how undertaking such advanced development influences the individual graduate at the personal and professional level but there is little evidence of a wider impact on practice in general or at the organisational level. This study seeks to address this issue through…
Antonio Gramsci
The IWW in Turin
This article analyses how in the 1970s a segment of Italian radical activists belonging to the tradition of operaismo (workerism) appropriated and interrogated the history of the International Workers of the World (IWW) using it as a tool of political intervention in the Italian context. Following the upheaval of the ‘Hot Autumn’, the IWW provided to the Italians an inspiring comparison with a militant labour organisation in times of changing com…
A new revolutionary practice
The social protest that engulfed Italy in the 1970s found a theoretical analysis in the work of the operaisti. Through a series of concepts, they outlined a new revolutionary practice that aimed to return to a more authentic reading of Marxism. This article focuses on the notion of 'refusal of work' and the ancillary concept of 'appropriation' and examines how these theoretical tools emerged out of radical protest in factories and were put forwar…
“As much in bondage as they was before”
This chapter examines peonage, a form of unfree labour, in the US during the New Deal. It puts this practice in a comparative perspective with similar forms of unfree labour practice within the British and French colonies. The US, however, were not intensively scrutinised by the international organisations such as the ILO or the Economic and Social Council of the UN. In the 1950s, some American political activists attempted to bring the US accoun…
William Lloyd Garrison and Giuseppe Mazzini
For the past twenty years, Enrico Dal Lago has been working consistently to demonstrate how American history can be fruitfully juxtaposed, compared and connected to Italian history, showing how a c
I Terroni in Città’
This article proposes a revision of the predominant view of southern Italians during the ‘Hot Autumn’ of 1969 in Turin, one of the most remarkable moments of working-class mobilisation in modern European history. The representation of southern Italians as ‘primitive rebels’ and ‘spontaneous’ radicals has its roots in an earlier notion of southerners as social deviants and has obscured a much more complex historical reality. This image, endorsed b…
Transnational Radicals
This article investigates the entangled histories of radicals in Detroit and Turin who challenged capitalism in ways that departed from “orthodox” Marxism. Starting from the 1950s, small but influential groups of labour radicals, such as Correspondence in Detroit and Quaderni Rossi in Turin, circulated ideas that questioned the Fordist system in a drastic way. These radicals saw the car factories as laboratories for a possible “autonomist” workin…
Revolution in a Comic Strip
Between 1969 and 1975, in Turin, a social movement with migrants from southern Italy as its protagonists addressed the issues of working conditions in the automobile plants, and housing and living standards in the city's overcrowded working-class neighbourhoods. Southern migrants, from different regions and speaking sometimes mutually incomprehensible dialects, forged a collective identity as Meridionali – “southerners” – and claimed recognition …
Workers and Revolutionaries at the Twilight of Fordism
The New Rank-and-File
Much has changed for workers in the years since Staughton and Alice Lynd's classic Rank and File: Personal Histories by Working-Class Organizers was first published in 1973. The New Rank and File presents interviews with working-class organizers of the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s who face the challenges of a new economy with the same determination and creativity shown by those profiled in the earlier book. Reflecting the increasing globalization of l…
Back to the factory
Factories remain significant sites of employment, crucial to capitalism. In the twentieth century, scholars registered achievements in documenting their history, but since the late 1980s, and for a generation, the field lost impetus within labour history although insights continued to accumulate through work in adjacent disciplines. The factory has not featured on the agenda of ‘transnational’ and ‘global’ labour history, but we suggest that it c…
Transnational Radicals
This article investigates the entangled histories of radicals in Detroit and Turin who challenged capitalism in ways that departed from “orthodox” Marxism. Starting from the 1950s, small but influential groups of labour radicals, such as Correspondence in Detroit and Quaderni Rossi in Turin, circulated ideas that questioned the Fordist system in a drastic way. These radicals saw the car factories as laboratories for a possible “autonomist” workin…
Workers and Revolutionaries at the Twilight of Fordism
Harvests of shame
This article reframes the discussion on vulnerable and exploited agricultural labour in twentieth-century United States using the overarching category of unfree labour. In order to do so, it bridges two usually distinct historiographies by linking the phenomenon of ‘peonage’ during the New Deal, with the one of immigrant contract labour in southern Florida, under the H2 visa. Archival research on the practices at the U.S. Sugar Corporation in sou…
Revolution in a Comic Strip
Between 1969 and 1975, in Turin, a social movement with migrants from southern Italy as its protagonists addressed the issues of working conditions in the automobile plants, and housing and living standards in the city's overcrowded working-class neighbourhoods. Southern migrants, from different regions and speaking sometimes mutually incomprehensible dialects, forged a collective identity as Meridionali – “southerners” – and claimed recognition …
The influence of professional doctorates on practice and the workplace
This paper investigates the influence that undertaking a professional doctorate has on the practice of the graduate and their workplace or organisation. There is a growing literature on how undertaking such advanced development influences the individual graduate at the personal and professional level but there is little evidence of a wider impact on practice in general or at the organisational level. This study seeks to address this issue through…
I Terroni in Città’
This article proposes a revision of the predominant view of southern Italians during the ‘Hot Autumn’ of 1969 in Turin, one of the most remarkable moments of working-class mobilisation in modern European history. The representation of southern Italians as ‘primitive rebels’ and ‘spontaneous’ radicals has its roots in an earlier notion of southerners as social deviants and has obscured a much more complex historical reality. This image, endorsed b…
The New Rank-and-File
Much has changed for workers in the years since Staughton and Alice Lynd's classic Rank and File: Personal Histories by Working-Class Organizers was first published in 1973. The New Rank and File presents interviews with working-class organizers of the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s who face the challenges of a new economy with the same determination and creativity shown by those profiled in the earlier book. Reflecting the increasing globalization of l…
The New Rank-and-File
Much has changed for workers in the years since Staughton and Alice Lynd's classic Rank and File: Personal Histories by Working-Class Organizers was first published in 1973. The New Rank and File presents interviews with working-class organizers of the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s who face the challenges of a new economy with the same determination and creativity shown by those profiled in the earlier book. Reflecting the increasing globalization of l…
Workers and Revolutionaries at the Twilight of Fordism
Revolution in a Comic Strip
Between 1969 and 1975, in Turin, a social movement with migrants from southern Italy as its protagonists addressed the issues of working conditions in the automobile plants, and housing and living standards in the city's overcrowded working-class neighbourhoods. Southern migrants, from different regions and speaking sometimes mutually incomprehensible dialects, forged a collective identity as Meridionali – “southerners” – and claimed recognition …
Transnational Radicals
This article investigates the entangled histories of radicals in Detroit and Turin who challenged capitalism in ways that departed from “orthodox” Marxism. Starting from the 1950s, small but influential groups of labour radicals, such as Correspondence in Detroit and Quaderni Rossi in Turin, circulated ideas that questioned the Fordist system in a drastic way. These radicals saw the car factories as laboratories for a possible “autonomist” workin…
I Terroni in Città’
This article proposes a revision of the predominant view of southern Italians during the ‘Hot Autumn’ of 1969 in Turin, one of the most remarkable moments of working-class mobilisation in modern European history. The representation of southern Italians as ‘primitive rebels’ and ‘spontaneous’ radicals has its roots in an earlier notion of southerners as social deviants and has obscured a much more complex historical reality. This image, endorsed b…
“As much in bondage as they was before”
This chapter examines peonage, a form of unfree labour, in the US during the New Deal. It puts this practice in a comparative perspective with similar forms of unfree labour practice within the British and French colonies. The US, however, were not intensively scrutinised by the international organisations such as the ILO or the Economic and Social Council of the UN. In the 1950s, some American political activists attempted to bring the US accoun…
William Lloyd Garrison and Giuseppe Mazzini
For the past twenty years, Enrico Dal Lago has been working consistently to demonstrate how American history can be fruitfully juxtaposed, compared and connected to Italian history, showing how a c
Antonio Gramsci
The IWW in Turin
This article analyses how in the 1970s a segment of Italian radical activists belonging to the tradition of operaismo (workerism) appropriated and interrogated the history of the International Workers of the World (IWW) using it as a tool of political intervention in the Italian context. Following the upheaval of the ‘Hot Autumn’, the IWW provided to the Italians an inspiring comparison with a militant labour organisation in times of changing com…
A new revolutionary practice
The social protest that engulfed Italy in the 1970s found a theoretical analysis in the work of the operaisti. Through a series of concepts, they outlined a new revolutionary practice that aimed to return to a more authentic reading of Marxism. This article focuses on the notion of 'refusal of work' and the ancillary concept of 'appropriation' and examines how these theoretical tools emerged out of radical protest in factories and were put forwar…
Harvests of shame
This article reframes the discussion on vulnerable and exploited agricultural labour in twentieth-century United States using the overarching category of unfree labour. In order to do so, it bridges two usually distinct historiographies by linking the phenomenon of ‘peonage’ during the New Deal, with the one of immigrant contract labour in southern Florida, under the H2 visa. Archival research on the practices at the U.S. Sugar Corporation in sou…
Tactics of Refusal
This is article is part of the forum on 1968 of the American Historical Review. The article is an historical and political assessment of the diverse social movements that comprises the Italian 1968, their legacy and the country's relationship to the divisive collective memory of that period.
The influence of professional doctorates on practice and the workplace
This paper investigates the influence that undertaking a professional doctorate has on the practice of the graduate and their workplace or organisation. There is a growing literature on how undertaking such advanced development influences the individual graduate at the personal and professional level but there is little evidence of a wider impact on practice in general or at the organisational level. This study seeks to address this issue through…
Back to the factory
Factories remain significant sites of employment, crucial to capitalism. In the twentieth century, scholars registered achievements in documenting their history, but since the late 1980s, and for a generation, the field lost impetus within labour history although insights continued to accumulate through work in adjacent disciplines. The factory has not featured on the agenda of ‘transnational’ and ‘global’ labour history, but we suggest that it c…
The BioS4You European Project
In this contribution, we present the BioS4You project and analyse the results obtained in the first 18 months of its activity. The “Bio-Inspired STEM topics for engaging young generations” (BioS4You) Erasmus+ KA2 Innovation project aims to bridge the gap between STEM national curricula (which include Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) and the needs of Z-generation students, uninterested to basic themes, but enthusiastic in issues …
The Class Strikes Back
Book Review| March 01 2021 The Class Strikes Back: Self-Organised Workers’ Struggles in the Twenty-First Century ed. by Dario Azzellini and Michael G. Kraft The Class Strikes Back: Self-Organised Workers’ Struggles in the Twenty-First Century, Azzellini, Dario; Kraft, Michael G., eds., Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2018, 321 pp., $28.00 (paper) Nico Pizzolato Nico Pizzolato Middlesex University, London Search for other works by this author on: This S…
Il lavoro attraverso lo sguardo femminile
An exhibition titled Through the Female Gaze: Women and Work in Italy since the 1950s was held in London (December 2021) and then Edinburgh (March-May 2022). The curator and the organisers discuss in this article its content and importance. The exhibition combined photos of militant female photographers such as Letizia Battaglia, Marcella Campagnano, Lisetta Carmi, the Collettivo Donne Fotoreporter, Cristina Omenetto, Lori Sammartino, and younger…
Reconceptualising the Factory as Plantation
In the late 1960s, Chrysler’s auto factories in Detroit were among the most regimented, fast-paced, and gruelling industrial workplaces of the United States. Their production lines employed a majority of Black workers who toiled under a racialised form of labour control, safety hazards and no leverage in the local union. In these circumstances, Black radicals mobilised support by crafting a discourse that drew on notions linked to slavery and in …
Introduction
This introduction to the special issue ‘Gender and Work in Twentieth-Century Italy’ draws on key strands of historical scholarship on gender and work, including women workers’ experiences, labour market discrimination, domestic work, the impact of gender norms, and ideas of masculinity and femininity on work identities. It traces the development of feminist influence within this scholarship, from making women workers’ experiences visible to chall…
The Hidden Labour of Digital Capitalism
Rapid technological development means that the ground on which recent academic studies and public debates about the future of work organisation are based is shifting too rapidly for predictions to be credible. Organisational studies scholars have provided a counterpoint to this futuristic, speculative debate about the world of tomorrow with studies that contextualise seemingly new trends within a longer history of industrial capitalism. In this a…
Spatializing the Factory
How do spatial approaches and the methodological lexicon of space, place, and scale contribute to understanding the industrial workplace?And how does a "spatializing" perspective intersect with traditional foci in the study of the workplace, such as industrial relations, the labor process, or state labor law and policy?Taking a cue from the seminal work of Henri Lefebvre, Michel Foucault, Michel de Certeau, Doreen Massey, Edward Soja, David Harve…
Protesting Imaginatively in Italy
Political science (18 works) · Sociology (18 works) · Law (16 works) · Politics (13 works) · Law (12 works) · History (8 works) · Italian Fascism and Post-war Society (8 works) · History (7 works) · Art (6 works) · Engineering (6 works)