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By Root 622 0

sacred spaces of Rome, which reproduce such religious dramas of spatiality as the Stations of the Cross and processions to all the shrines of the Virgin Mary, have today largely given way to secular, streetbased organizations of artisans and shopkeepers, and now-with the help of computer technology-to the Monti Social Network. The Network has come the closest of any to achieving a semblance of unity-by rejecting it as a political format. Scandurra's thinking is shared by many of its members, some of whom can recall too many instances where calls to unity ended up as consolidations of power and thereby provoked collapse.

The instability of social relations is all of a piece with the fragmentation of the lived urban fabric, expressed in the city's baroque aesthetic, a promiscuous stratigraphy that is tolerant of the remnants of other eras even as it incorporates new ones and thus challenges the purism of most statesupported scholarship.40 Such political liability also fits conveniently with the Catholic model of authority and administration known as subsidiarity.41 That model holds that all matters should be handled by the smallest and most localized segment of the administrative system; the Vatican, for ex ample, does not consider it appropriate to intervene in parish affairs. By logical extension, subsidiarity thus recognizes the autonomy of each parish priest, and indeed of every member of the religious hierarchy, from interference by others of equivalent rank, since this would imply an encompassing and higher level of authority; issues are considered appropriate to particular levels, and each cleric, representing a specific level of competence, must arrive at a disposition to the best of his ability and in accordance with the promptings of his conscience.42

The segmentary quality of Roman social life fits neatly with the subsidiarity principle. What goes doctrinally for the church also applies sociologically to the laity, whose collective sins are embedded in an unstable moral geography of material interests, and who make a practical virtue of minding their own business-or, at least, of telling each other to do so. By the same logic, they affect indifference to others' curiosity about their own affairs; they "couldn't care a fuck" (me ne frego). And even this principle of studied indifference-often expressed by a corresponding physical stance of insouciance43-is subject to a segmentary logic: the cautious avoidance of interference in others' affairs by one's own side becomes the indifference, the "couldn't care less" attitude (menefreghismo), of those with power, and especially of the officials of state and city. When one thinks that the city police should target those who break the laws regarding opening times and parking, their failure to do so is taken as indicative of this indifference; when it works in one's favor, it merely shows that the speaker is an adept survivor who can evoke a similar respect for others' socially recognized rights even in the most pedantically legalistic of bureaucrats.

Menefreghismo and subsidiarity are two sides-the social and the ecclesiastical, respectively-of the same coin. The often rough expression of indifference that Romans express toward to others' affairs has no obvious religious justification in itself; the idea that one should not intervene in others' escapades with the law is largely a matter of tact-that is, of everyday civility. Just as priests can ignore the sufferings of parishioners facing eviction by other churches on the grounds of the subsidiarity principle, neighbors can loftily refuse to get involved in the plight of evictees because one is supposed to mind one's own business-particularly if they happen to be of a different political ideology.

This internal fragmentation of collective interest makes it extremely difficult for police and other authorities to gain much purchase against minor crime, even if they wished to do so-and that commitment is constantly subjected to public scrutiny and doubt. Fragmentation, whether ecclesiastical or social, weakens any sense