This book began as a political study of Italian fascism, with, as its central focus, the leisure-time organization or dopolavoro of the fascist regime. Inevitably it held certain social implications from the outset: I was concerned to understand how a regime that was so flagrantly anti–working class established any broad basis of legitimacy, and whether, in the process of consolidating its power, Mussolini's dictatorship had in any way succeeded in transforming Italian society. But, at the time I undertook the research, I shared certain commonly held assumptions about the totalitarian nature of fascist rule: awesome in its powers of manipulation and its capacity to infiltrate all levels of society, yet fundamentally removed from the daily lives of those on whom it was so violently imposed. Thus I initially conceived the study as an inquiry into the sphere of “high” politics, and of policy making, an analysis of the propaganda apparatus of fascism based on the examination of government regulations, party directives, and reports on the growth of the dopolavoro itself.

This assumption was immediately challenged as I began to sift through the trivia of bureaucratic orders, endlessly revised and updated, imposed on bocce groups, outing clubs, and choral societies, and to compare the seemingly petty accomplishments of small-town fascist functionaries with the omnipotent designs of the fascist state, as set out, for example, in the speeches of Mussolini. It soon became clear that the world of the dopolavoro, like the popular world in every class society, was viewed with condescension.