Countryside regions with strongest patriarchalism show 30 percent family incest rates
Evidence
There is a split, in this field, between city and country, but with no idyllic bias in favour of the country, where the most frequent and the most monstrous sexual crimes take place and where bestiality and sodomy are widespread. In the parliamentary enquiry on the South in 1911 it is stated that in Abruzzo and the Basilicata, which are the regions where there is most religious fanaticism and patriarchalism and the least influence of urban ideas (to such an extent that, according to Serpieri, in the years 1919-20 there was not even any peasant unrest in those areas) there is incest in 30 per cent of families. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1096
Categorization
Category: Factual Claims
- QUESTION: Would be worth tracking whether Gramsci’s rural-urban split on sexuality carries a parallel in colonial constructions of the Oriental or subaltern body.
- SHARE: The 1911 parliamentary enquiry statistic that the most patriarchal, religious regions had incest in 30% of families — a striking data point for someone interested in Italian social history.