Evicted From Eternity_ The Restructuring of Modern Rome - Michael Herzfeld [207]
43. Some of these usages also rest on a bedrock of amused recollection; an artisan told me that once a baby had been abandoned at a church in front of a wheel device specially designed for that purpose (see Kertzer 1993) with a note saying "figlio di m. ignota" for figlio di madre ignota, son of an unknown mother) and that this had been read as figlio di mignotta! The pun is suggestive of both the dishonored origins of the child's mother and the intimacy of a world in which such unfortunate incidents occur and are resolved.
44. For example, Er Cipolla, "The Onion." Mayor Rutelli was sarcastically known as Er Cicoria, "The Chicory." A lightly ironic title for the toughest of bosses was Er Mejo, "The Best."
45. For comparative examples, see Kapferer 1988, 155-61; Papataxiarchis 1991. Kapferer's recognition of the links between Australian (masculine) egalitarianism and racism (1988, 192-200) is suggestive.
46. Detienne (2007, 2) has recently reminded us that "anthropologists" were, for Aristotle, "chatterboxes" as well, as they had been "scandal-mongers" for Aristophanes a few decades earlier-the latter genealogy offering an identity that the profession has seemed as happy as my Roman friends to claim in celebratory terms (Gluckman 1963).
CHAPTER TWO
i. One especially indignant right-wing entrepreneur, implacable in his opposition to the left-wing city administration and national government of the time, saw this as yet another example of the way the authorities were destroying the glorious Italian tradition of small-scale entrepreneurship (on which see Piore and Sabel 1984; Yanagisako 2002) in order, he claimed, to create larger units more amenable to control by the central authorities under the guise of adjusting to European Union regulations.
2. Parisi (2002, 1 5s ) , writing of a town in Basilicata, shows that artisans there nostalgically employ the categories of artisti and scienziati to recall the higher prestige they claim to have enjoyed in the past.
3. This appears in Article 45, which nevertheless places artisanship in the context of a general concern with promoting social development over economic gain and therefore, ironically, sidesteps the practical economic concerns of artisans struggling to survive. The article begins, "The Republic recognizes the social function of cooperation in the form of reciprocity and without goals of private speculation. The law promotes and favors its increase by the most suitable means and assures, given appropriate controls, its character and purposes." Only then, in a separate paragraph, does it continue, "The law provides for the stewardship and development of artisanship."
4. On Italy, see Angioni 1989; Lai 2004, 20-21; and Maher 1987. For discussions of equivalent expressions in other cultures, see also Herzfeld 2004, 107-8, 115; and Singleton 1989, 26-27. See also Lanoue 1991. Grasseni's work (2003, 180-85; 2007) suggests that closer attention to the links between epistemology and the social uses of vision might usefully challenge the conceptual distance between educated observers and skilled workers.
5. Some young immigrants have been happy to work as apprentices and assistants, often illegally, as they could thus at least acquire skills that allowed them to escape the lowest levels of the labor market. Their goals are usually explicitly economic, the newly acquired skills a basic instrument of survival.
6. Jacqueline Leavitt, a member of the United Nations commission that investigated the situation in Rome in 2005, notes that the effects of such displacements fall disproportionately on women; as wives and mothers, they must care for the children while often being unable to find work of their own. Her observations were incorporated into the final report of the commission JAGFE 2005, 115-27 ); see also "Onu: 'Roma libera dagli sfratti: Missione internazionale per capire l'emergenza abitativa," La Repubblica, Rome section, 17 February 2005, p. II. The report also discussed Pom Mahakan, the Bangkok community where I have been working