The Culture of Consent

A portrait of the dopolavoro, or leisure-time organization, the largest of the regime's mass institutions.

This is a study of the dopolavoro or fascist leisure-time organization, the largest of the regime's mass institutions. Cutting across economic and regional lines, embracing industrial workers, pesants, and salaried employees, this new arena of public life contributed to fascism's ability to remain in power throughout the depression years.The efforts of fascism to form a 'culture of consent,' or shape depoliticized activities, in Italy between the world wars, make a unique portrait of fascist political tactics. Professor de Grazia focuses on the dopolavoro or fascist leisure-time organization, the largest of the regime's mass institutions. She traces its gradual rise in importance for the consolidation of fascist rule; its spread in the form of thousands of local clubs into every domain of urban and rural life; and its overwhelming impact on the distribution, consumption, and character of all kinds of recreational pursuits - from sports and adult education to movies, traveling theaters, radio, and tourism. The author shows how fascism was able, between 1926 and 1939, to build a new definition of the public sphere. Recasting the public sphere entailed dispensing with traditional class and politically defined modes of organizing those social roles and desires existing outside the workplace.