Memory and meaning: genealogy of a fertile protest

This essay parses ethnographic and historical research on the political economy of generational and reproductive change. It aims to grasp experiences and transformations related to Italy's 'lowest-low' fertility, a situation that demographers and policymakers; view as dangerous. This paper offers a counter-narrative as it asks: 'What do subjugated memories and everyday practices reveal about Italy's demographic "decline"?' Studies of Europe's demographic transition - one of the most famous yet quiet revolutions of modern times - have largely ignored an examination of transformation through the lens of memory. Using a social - genealogical methodology to merge subjugated and erudite knowledges, I draw on local memories that may upset the 'tyranny' of globabzing discourses. Memories from central Italy reveal a history of hidden traumas and dislocations involving a complex and hidden economy of weavers and wetnurses that are all but forgotten in expert diagnoses of the nation-state's demographic status.