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By Root 720 0

a proud town and its environs take in their traditions of governance, feeds on strong sentiments of local attachment, which it nurtures by emphasizing "our" ways of conducting political business. Against official accusations that Sicilians had concocted a plot that somehow typified their insubordinate ways, for example, Sicilian leaders retorted that the plot was instead a "Roman concoction" ~pasticcio romano), thereby recasting the state's rationalist and universalist logic to the level of just one among many local styles of spoor) governance." This is a very different view of the civic than that promoted by the state or, for that matter, by some anthropologists and other social scientists."

Because civility is as much about the mastery of form as it is about political engagement, and indeed privileges form over participation, it furnishes the idiom with which dissenters can be threatened into submission without a single violent blow. The current desire of intellectuals and educated community leaders to permit the expression of anger and conflict is thus in part an attempt to recapture the eccentric energies of those who have found themselves marginalized by a dire combination of the old civility and the state's unimaginative application of civic normativity. It is also a way of resisting the adaptive posture of noninvolvement that, if we are to believe the stereotypical history Romans repeat about themselves, kept potential dissenters in check during the days of the pontifical state, and that today serves the interests of neoliberal speculators and shadowy underworld operators.

There have been brave attempts to recapture the ideals of civilized behavior for the people of the district, as when the Monti Social Network information sheet condemned speculators' depredations against the older and poorer residents "in a city that wants to define itself as civil" (in una citta the vuole definirsi civile). This move entailed turning the tables on those who claimed to have a definitive claim on the cultural forms of civility by suggesting that those who mistreated the less fortunate were in fact decidedly less civil than their victims; in the center of Rome, few residents are so lacking in the rudiments of good manners in practice that such a tactic would not carry some weight. But here the celebrated uncouthness of the Roman self-stereotypes works against the residents' interests; the speculators respond with haughty claims that by gentrifying the old buildings they are upgrading the neighborhood socially-that, they say, is their contribution to the improvement in standards of living.18 With their massive injections of money, moreover, they are able to drive thick wedges among the remaining residents, dividing those who are simply holding out for the best deals from those who are resisting on principle or because they feel that no monetary compensation for the loss of their familiar spaces can suffice.

Condominial Civilities

As Monti gentrifies, its inhabitants increasingly reject older ways of managing their relations with each other and with the authorities. To find the roots of such changes, it is easier to explore small-scale local meetings and interactions than the grand political theatrics in which a rhetoric of "common good" tends to outweigh practical concerns.19 A condominial meeting that I attended, a surprisingly dramatic affair, provides an exceptionally rich illustration.

The municipal administration has long been concerned about the often acrimonious conduct of condominial meetings. Members wrangle over the color of a newly restored facade or whether they should maintain scaffolding that is taxed for the use of public space; the expected answer to inquiries about the conduct of a meeting is "Terrible! (Pessimo!)" So, at a late stage in my fieldwork, the administration introduced the festa dei vicini, the feast of neighbors.20 Such bureaucratic efforts met with predictable irony and cynicism; few Romans were inclined to go along with its cheerful rhetoric.21 The administration touted its new invention as