In Gold We Trust: Social Capital and Economic Change in the Italian Jewelry Towns (review)

In the mid-1970s, Italy was a sort of mystery for international observers. After the glorious years of the ‘economic miracle,’ everything seemed to be going wrong. Both State-owned and large private corporations, which had made an outstanding contribution to the fast growth experienced in the 1950s and the 1960s, were hit by serious problems of governance (for the former, the inappropriate intervention of the political power while the latter operated under the weight of inefficient ownership) and seemed to be trapped in an insurmountable crisis. Social conflict in the factories was impossible to channel into peaceful solutions, so much so that it led to a diffused phenomenon of terrorism. The international energy and monetary crises brought about a kind of South American inflation. In the end, the country appeared to be falling apart. Still, regardless of all these complications, Italy was positioned among the most advanced industrialized nations even in the terrible 1970s, the one with the highest rate of growth after Japan.

A mystery! But, a mystery that could quickly be solved by the capacity of some researchers (economists such as Giacomo Becattini or Giorgio Fua or sociologists such as Arnaldo Bagnasco), and by the strength of the evidence: the discovery of the vitality of small business in the so-called traditional sectors (industries aimed at satisfying the needs of consumers and their households). Often small firms did not appear to be isolated in the arena of economic competition but, rather, they were organized in industrial districts, homogeneous territories that concentrated on the production of one good. In order to reach this goal, the districts were almost always able to activate a sophisticated division of work (both horizontal—manufacturing of the good was divided into separate phases—and vertical, which means the machinery and intermediary products necessary for manufacturing the good were fabricated). When in 1991 a bill was passed in the parliament to protect and support the districts, they numbered almost two hundred and their 2.5 million employees represented 40 percent of the total industrial labor force in Italy.

Dario Gaggio’s book, In Gold We Trust, is the twentieth-century story of the important Italian industrial districts active in the manufacture of jewelry, and offers a significant and precious contribution to our understanding of the phenomenon. In fact, while everyone recognizes the absolute necessity of using the historical dimension to explain the long accumulation of tangible and intangible resources in a territory resulting in its transformation into an industrial district, there are indeed very few historiographical research works on the topic.

Gaggio’s work has a precise focus. It aims to fully explain the intertwinement between social relationships, cultures, political struggle, and characteristics of productive output. This is especially evident in the first four chapters dedicated to Valenza Po, a small town in northwestern Italy whose transformation from a rural center to the headquarters of some distinguished jewelry manufacturers can be explained only by mixing political and economic stories and emphasizing the initial socialist hegemony; to Vicenza, an old town in the Venetian region where a long tradition of craftsmanship found a place in the production of modern jewelry within a struggle between anarchist and socialist workers and their Catholic owners, a contradiction that accelerates mechanization and standardization processes; and, to the Tuscan city of Arezzo, where a strong conflict between the most important company—Gori & Zucchi, one of the world’s major exporters—and its workers, brought about a markedly decentralized production structure.

In the second part of the book, Gaggio is concerned with the inclusion of the Italian centers within the international competitive scenario—in the last chapter Italian jewelry towns are compared with a possible US counterpart, Providence, Rhode Island. Gaggio stresses that it is within a dynamic global dimension that the Italian style has been shaped, in a combination of tacit...