Evicted From Eternity_ The Restructuring of Modern Rome - Michael Herzfeld [115]
Almost all that is left of this petty protectionism (pizzo~ today consists in extracting fees for guarding cars left in exposed parking lots. The term pizzo, which literally means "goatee beard," and thus a covering of the face, metaphorically signifies the polite gesture of generosity that actually covers up an expected bribe.' But in earlier times the bosses had a more respected role. So conscious are they of their emasculated power and of the values associated with the new civic order that one surviving kinsman of a formerly powerful local boss-the latter had been killed in a car crash following a dramatic police pursuit-mournfully denied that their family had ever been part of the underworld (malavita); they had instead, said he in a sepulchral tone of hurt and reproach, been people of integrity and humility who had enjoyed the respect of their neighbors: "We were never arrogant bullies" (Non siamo mai stati prepotenti). Yet such respect was, we should not forget, backed by a capacity for restrained but exemplary violence-because, said this same man of the typical petty crook (mascalzone), "if you do not intervene with these types, well, they'll continue to do [those things], to harass people's wives."
Accommodations Civil and Civic
In the sense that such practices are closely associated with urban life, they are also, paradoxically, marks of civiltd, of civilization, being civile. This concept, which gives free play to models of courtesy and social ease, is the subject of a justly famous discussion by Sydel Silverman, who considers a number of related terms in English-including "civic"-and concludes that none quite fit the Italian term, with its deep roots in the idea of the city and its manners as the ideal model for good living. Matters are further complicated by the evidence that in some parts of Italy the urban model does not get the respect Silverman found in Umbria; Anthony Galt's discussion of town and country in Locorotondo, in Puglia, shows with great clarity that peasants there even express a modicum of contempt for the ways of the town, although here the difference maybe partly one that subsists between central as opposed to southern Italian culture.' Rome, one would think, should in any case be the ultimate exemplar of civiltd, a concept historically based on citizenship-being a member of the civitas-and thus also of civic virtue.
What we find instead, however, is that Rome, a self-consciously "southern" city, loses out to the great centers of Renaissance culture as the source of civil style and virtue. In Rome, moreover, the sense of opposition between the civic and the civil is often remarkably strong; civility often means the kind of urbanity that disguises abut also communicates arrogance, power, and hierarchy, and that subverts the formal rules of governance in the name of sociability. That implies in turn that the civil may on occasion not only be compatible with what a civic conscience would dub "corruption" but can actually include it. In this sense, the underworld, with its attention to the correct comportment of men toward women and its active protection of the weakest members of the local community, can justly lay claim to the title of "civil society"-not, to be sure, in the sense that nongovernmental organizations are often so labeled, but still with a powerful implication of providing a morally coherent alternative to official, bureaucratic norms.3
It follows from this that, while ordinary