Constructing the sterile city: pronatalism and social sciences in interwar Italy

This article explores the construction of the Italian city and the urban population as objects of social scientific knowledge and technical intervention. In the context of a pronatalist campaign launched by the fascist regime in the 1920s and 1930s, the city was identified as a locus of sterility, and urban populations were made the targets of new forms of government aimed at transforming reproductive practices. The links between knowledge and power revealed by this “problematization” of the city are, I suggest, of some importance for genealogies of the social sciences, including urban anthropology. [ cities, urbanism, social science, reproduction, Italy, fascism ]