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By Root 700 0

belonging was not the product of older social ties; indeed, he said, it took place in "a context relatively disengaged from social life." He came to realize that many others, globe-trotters and intellectuals like himself their number included several journalists, had been drawn into a social network by the needs of their children, and that as they walked around the area they all came to understand that involvement as a central part of their lives. It was a new social aggregation, one that had little to do with the older forms of social life in Monti except for those few who participated in the Monti Social Network and found themselves involved in the dying agonies of the old order as much as in the ambitions of the new.

The relatively happy conditions of life that financially secure newcomers enjoy, however, come at a heavy price for others. In particular, the evictions that have wrought the most fundamental demographic and structural changes relied on an atmosphere of intensifying fear, and contributed to it; the fewer of the old residents are left, the greater the terror they face. Fear of one's neighbors and even of a local boss was a manageable part of life under the old order. Even the fear of the Vatican, powerful though it was, dealt with a familiar presence in everyday life; it offered negotiable terms of redemption through the confessional and the indulgence. The new fear, by contrast, comes from forces that refuse to negotiate-forces that are extraneous to the local society, economically overwhelming, and institutionally beyond the control of the local municipal authorities or the pressure of conscience from familiarly Roman allies such as the Jewish community leaders, city politicians, or even the officials charged with executing the order of eviction. This is fear of a very different order.

CODA

The Future of Eternity

ow should we react in the face of such new dispositions? Should we shrug our shoulders along with the left-wing district counselor, whose ironic awareness of his acceptance of market logic was not enough to commit him to a fight he felt no one could win? Should we accept the instrumental morality of entrepreneurs who argue that their active role in gentrification is a form of urban renewal (riqualificazione) and a rejection of degradation (degrado) rather than gentrification that has destroyed the solidary base of a once well-established working-class population? Should we be persuaded that these are inevitable changes that have at least left some middle-class people basking in the sunlight of a new Roman spring, their children cavorting happily in newly pedestrianized spaces and enjoying the security of a zone practically closed off to unwanted immigrants and homeless paupers? Should we accept the argument that those who were living in the historic center were not the rightful beneficiaries of a concern better invested in the far more marginal populations suffering in the suburbs?

While my rhetorical framing of these questions should make my own political attitudes clear, I want to emphasize the complexity of the situation. I recognize that the intense attachment to place that aroused my sympathies can also be the source of some no less intensely forms of cultural fundamentalism and racism.' Just as the Monticiani turned their hearts against Ukrainians and other eastern European immigrants who flooded into the square, for example, I have seen Thai localists who were fighting against eviction and for the right to remain in their home community assert those rights on the grounds that "we are Thai people"-thereby implicitly if perhaps inadvertently endorsing a national policy of denying Thai citizenship to certain groups of "hill tribes" and refugees. I am aware that in many corners of Europe, Fascism has begun to feed on discontent with the nation-state's failure to recognize local forms of autonomy. The Roman situation is in this sense far from unique.

But it is also easy to oversimplify; and the media will encourage that tendency if given the chance. In particular, we cannot assume