VENDRAME, Maíra Ines. Power in the Village: Social Networks, Honor and Justice Among Immigrant Families from Italy to Brazil. Abingdon: Routledge, 2020 (244 pp.)

Abstract

The image of the Italian immigrant who, due to the socioeconomic problems of the place where they lived, aggravated especially by the unification of the country, had no choice but to try their luck in the New World is commonly widespread in the Brazilian social imaginary. Italians who, according to this line of understanding, would have arrived in Brazil - mainly in the southern region of the country - and formed cohesive and harmonious colonial nuclei. However, research that focuses on Italian immigration to Brazil, especially those that use the microhistory method, show how these stereotypes hide tensions, conflicts, power issues and divisions that existed in these communities. From these works, we can perceive immigrants not as passive subjects who accept a specific destiny, but in fact as active agents, who assumed a central role in transatlantic displacements. The book Power in the Village: Social Networks, Honor and Justice Among Immigrant Families from Italy to Brazil, by Maíra Ines Vendrame, is an excellent example of a work that, through extensive and diversified documentary research, presents new horizons for historiography on immigration and colonization, not only in southern Brazil. Published in 2020 by Routledge, it is the English version of the work O poder na aldeia - Redes sociais, honra familiar e práticas de justiça entre os camponeses italianos, published in Brazil in 2016. Immigration, Italy, Brazil, peasants, microhistory