L'Uso delle fonti orali nello studio delle culture popolari: la transizione dal fascismo al Piano di Rinascita in Sardegna

Oral sources are usually associated with community studies and local history in the first place; yet – more generally –they may improve the ability of both the latter to provide us with more insight and with more awareness of the actual meaning of world events to the very people who were affected by them. The thesis adopts a mixed approach by which oral sources are matched with both secondary and archival ones in order to reassess the impact of World War II and its immediate aftermath on the evolution of Sardinian society and culture.Of course, the acquisition of fresh oral evidence is becoming more and more difficult, as the few testimonies that may still be collected about the fascist era are either indirect or produced by people who were very limitedly conscious as they were perceiving the facts they recall. However, the oral evidence that may be acquired in these cases may also show us how further cultural developments do interact with earlier first-hand perceptions either to influence commonplaces or even to challenge some.Obtaining fresh oral evidence about the early times of the new democratic regime is still relatively less difficult than about the fascist period. Of course, “modernization” is a keyword whenever the former is recalled, and that is why such a single specific issue as the growth of women’s public activism through the Sardinian branch of theUnione Donne Italianesince 1944 is paid special attention, and at length, in the final section.As a conclusion, most popular perceptions of things gone seem to accrue to the need of basing the development of Sardinian society on less volatile assets as those provided by the so-calledpoli di sviluppoduring the 1960s, through whose rapid exhaustion the island is now left with a desperate lack of home-based job opportunities and life chances.