Rossi-Doria at Scandale: a borderline research project

Between 1954 and 1955, in the context of a project launched by the Unesco social research section on the effects of agrarian reform in Italy, Manlio Rossi-Doria took on responsibility for and coordination of the surveys to be carried out at Scandale, a commune in the Marquisate of Crotone, in Calabria. The point we wish to make in this article, based on documentation in the Archivio Rossi-Doria, is that, given also its historical background, the survey carried out at Scandale assumes particular significance in the entire intellectual and scientific development of Rossi-Doria. The methodological and analytic significance of the project is highlighted with reconstruction of two dimensions of the background: a “macro” dimension regarding the configuration taken on by the development of the Italian – and in particular southern Italian – economy around the mid-1950s, and a “micro” dimension concerning the scientific and professional progress of Manlio Rossi-Doria and, closely bound up with it, the role of cultural leadership played by the Agricultural Economics Research Institute in Portici.