Becoming Policemen in Nineteenth-Century Italy

In this chapter I explore the representation of masculinity as it emerges from professional manuals that were published over the course of the nineteenth century, aimed at Italian policemen. Such publications did not explicitly address gender as an issue, being more strictly concerned with professionally training police officers. As all police personnel were male, the working environment was inclined to be universalized, and gender profiles remained invisible. This was typical of all professional areas involving the exercise of institutional powers. In the absence of any interactions between men and women, the authors of such handbooks overlooked gender as a discourse-orienting category. ²