Out of the ordinary: Everyday life and the “carnival of Mussolini”

Heywood, Paolo

Abstract

Ordinary life is in many ways the quintessential object of anthropological analysis. Yet little attention has been paid to contexts in which it is important to people themselves that they and their actions are seen to be ordinary and to the work that goes into making something or someone appear ordinary. An exploration of ordinary life in Predappio, Italy, birthplace and grave of Benito Mussolini and premier site of neofascist tourism, reveals just how much effort has to go into producing a scaled sense of ordinariness in this extraordinary place. In this way, ordinary life is exposed as the object, not the site, of such work. This suggests the need to reconsider our usage of ordinary life in order to attend to situations in which the category itself—not just its particular contents—has ethnographic relevance.

Citation

Heywood, P. (2023). Out of the ordinary: Everyday life and the “carnival of Mussolini”. American Anthropologist, 125(3), 493-504. https://doi.org/10.1111/aman.13850

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Oct 21, 2022
• Online Publication Date: May 29, 2023
• Publication Date: 2023-09
• Deposit Date: Oct 25, 2022
• Publicly Available Date: May 30, 2023
• Journal: American Anthropologist
• Print ISSN: 0002-7294
• Electronic ISSN: 1548-1433
• Publisher: American Anthropological Association
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 125
• Issue: 3
• Pages: 493-504
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/aman.13850
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1190777