Evicted From Eternity_ The Restructuring of Modern Rome - Michael Herzfeld [136]
In this microcosm of what is happening in the wider society, the spreading infusion of civic rhetoric and governance into the condominial meeting and the events surrounding it builds on the continuing presumption of civil relations among neighbors. The vociferous eruptions of the two older working-class men notwithstanding, the meeting was mostly conducted with an air of mutual respect laced with humorous asides and the occasional expression of true rancor. Members usually addressed each other with the formal lei and by surnames preceded by appropriate titles. Here, too, we see local sociality colored by national idioms of respect, but these are not in themselves indicative of a particular devotion to civic values. Nonetheless, overall the picture that emerges is that of a group of close neighbors who are skilled at managing the conflicts that divide them, with one side emphasizing this common social ground and the importance of saving money, while the other portrays itself as the champion of legality and of the longer-term maintenance of the condominium-moving, in effect, toward the more bureaucratic perspective, in which permanence and conformity trump provisionality, contingency, and social adaptability.
Lessons in Civic Civility
The story of the condominial meeting shows how sophisticated younger actors, some of them new to the district, engage with residents of long standing as well as with the nostalgic authority of the Roman self-stereotype. Because all social action emerges from a mixture of consensus and conflict, it is vital to understand the new civic pride in the context of preexisting structures of sentiment, loyalty, and identity, and especially of the deep tradition of civility and courtesy that constrains and channels the emergence of civic engagement. The civic does not entirely displace the civil; on the contrary, it must draw on it in order to be effective, and this means that norms of civility channel and constrain the uses of civic procedure as well.
Manners are vitally important; in business, they can make at least as much difference to a client's loyalty as price. Knowing how to talk to customers is an art in which politeness must balance jocular familiarity and even teasing, and in which informality can sometimes seem as studied as formal courtesy. Rudeness, conversely, can sometimes serve as a form of self-defense within a larger idiom of intimate civility. An elderly itinerant vendor who made a point of dressing in disreputable old clothes, his unshaven chin and aggressive speech emphasizing his refusal to play polite games, was charged double the price of a coffee in a bar belonging to a woman with whom he enjoyed a cordial friendship [and who would have charged him a mere i,ooo lire instead of the 3,000 the waitress was demanding). He was convinced that the staff wanted to discourage him from returning because of his scruffy appearance. The waitress did not answer his query about the price in words, but simply held up three fingers in a peremptory and disrespectful gesture; she also insisted that he pay right away. He could have called the proprietress over, but she was busy with customers at the tobacco counter at that moment. So when the waitress squeaked for help from the male waiters, he simply raised his voice even louder: "I want to see the price, [damn] your dead ancestors!" [Vojo vede' 'rprezzo, li mortacci tua!)
Behind the shifting balance between rough humor and formal courtesy lies a sense of movement, away from the clientelistic