Evicted From Eternity_ The Restructuring of Modern Rome - Michael Herzfeld [222]
CHAPTER SEVEN
i. On the economics of the Sicilian pizzo, see Schneider and Schneider 2006, 77-78.
2. See Silverman 1975, vii, 1-8; cf. Galt 1992, 8; and, more contrastively, Pratt 1994, 57. Silverman in fact anticipates this difference at the outset (197 5, 1(. We should nevertheless avoid assuming clear-cut differences between large regions of the country; on this see, among others, Sabetti 2000, 208.
3. It is tempting, but it would be inaccurate, to describe the mafia as a form of civil society, because its use of violence overshadows and informs the menace implied by its elaborate code of courtesy. Rather, as Jane and Peter Schneider (2001) have shown, the rhetoric of civil society informs the anti-mafia movement, but not always in ways that conduce to concerted or democratic action.
4. See Suputtamongkol (2007, 30, 198) on the exclusion of i diversi (people who are different) by those whose everyday actions, patterned in accordance with a long history of concern with good manners (208-24), marked them as respectable.
5. Requests to help the police are not always refused. Block janitors are often expected to assist the police in this way; they depend on police clearance for their employment. But thieves may also suborn someone internal to a business they are intending to rob; such persons, known as bassisti, are essential to any operation organized from outside the district.
6. A Neapolitan friend living in Monti remarked that a certain storekeeper had been of the Piperno family; he then checked to make sure I knew what that meant, this kind of indirect hinting at Jewish identity being a further reflection of the discretion that is both attributed and directed to Jewish citizens of Rome.
7. See especially folly 1994; Keesing 1982.
8. This illustrates the central point in Verena Stolcke's discussion of "cultural fundamentalism" in Europe (1995).
9. The deep-seated right-wing and popular invocation of genetic explanations for attitudes and aptitudes (see Horn 1994) underlies much of the current rhetoric of racism against Eastern European immigrants (see Herzfeld 2007b). Note also the common Italian metaphor for the strongly entrenched views of a group of people as being "in their DNA." The nature-nurture debate has still barely touched public consciousness and everyday idioms of speech in much of Italy.
To. He did not himself have such a background and felt that this enabled him to make decisions independently because "I don't care in the least who you are" (non mi importa niente chi sei).
11. The use of the Romanesco form de is not only characteristic of his everyday speech but gives a slight emphasis to his working-class credentials in what is an intellectually engaged comment.
12. See also below, pp. 281-84. I have also heard the term fascistone used with pride by a former policeman speaking positively of himself.
13. Putnam 1993, 105.
14. Palumbo zoo3, 371.
15. See especially Smith (2006) for a useful-if rather generalizing-perspective on the political and economic logic of gentrification.
16. Palumbo 2003, 335.
17. Putnam (1993) uses the "civic" in precisely this ideal-typical sense. Palumbo's analysis (2003, 371), however, shows that the key distinction is less between the civil and the civic than it is between two radically different meanings of the civic, the local and the universal, the first of which emphasizes civility-a culturally embedded value in Italywhile the latter assumes that ideals of good governance will have little to do with cultural peculiarities.
18. This nicely illustrates how elites manipulate cultural values