CULTURE AND POLITICAL ECONOMY IN WESTERN SICILY

INTRODUCTION.

In the course of study in a west Sicilian agricultural community authors identified 3 CULTURAL CODES as particularly interesting and salient:

1. CODE OF FAMILY HONOR (ONORE) asserts the primacy of the nuclear family in society and establishes women as symbols of familial worth.

2. CODE OF FRIENSHIP (AMICIZIA) AND HOSPITALITY – helps solidify the omnipresent coalitions and cliques through which business affairs and other ventures are conducted.

3. CODE OF CLEVERNESS OR ASTUTENESS (FURBERIA) – focuses on the individual and immediate family, and helps legitimate the idea that almost anything goes in defense of one’s personal interests. “Better a devil with a pocket full of money than a fool with five cents.”

All of this codes have in one way or another been associated with the rise of mafia. All have been blamed for the failure of agrarian and industrial reform programs which, had they been successful, would have stemmed the migration of unskilled labor.

We have to know girls that exogenous colonial and neocolonial forces have had an overwhelming impact on Sicily, not only in the recent past but also over centuries, and that the cultural codes at issue were instruments of adaptation to these forces, and not simply residua of a “traditional” preindustrial past.

WORLD FORCES OF THE PRESENT

Applying to Sicily the distinction between dependence and development elites, one is struck by the virtual absence of development elite formation over past 150 years, a period during which changes in the world economy have shaken most societies to the core. Rather, successive regional political leaders have been content to perpetuate, or unable to stop, the drain of basic energy resources from the island. Since about the turn of the century one of Sicily’s most important exportable resources has been unskilled labor. From the late 1800s until the early 1920s, thousands of Sicilians left to seek work in America; since World War II thousands more have gone to northern Europe. Emigration remittances, sent home by these migrant workers, make possible an increasingly modern way of life. This new standard of living is costly in two ways:

1. there are the sacrificies inevitably associated with emigration – families and communities deprived a large proportion of their young men, and young men who must travel long distances and live for long periods from theit families and communities.

2. New life-style is based upon the widespread consumption of other people’s manufactures. Sicily remains incapable of expanding employment opportunies in industry or agriculture at home.

THE MYTH OF TRADITION

Most of history the island, and particulary its western region, exported grain and imported cloth and clothing manufactured abroad. We can’t call all preindustrial social groups “traditional”. Generally useful labels like “feudal lord”, “landed aristocracy”, “rising bourgeoise” and “ peasantry” tell us little about important variations from region to region and offer an insufficient guide to the specific interests of these at any given place and time. Sicilily is a case in point. Exporting wheat several past empires, it still bears the imprint of its colonial history. Especially in the west of the island, specialization in wheat led great latifundia, large estates, on which wheat was raised in rotation with natural pastures. This export-oriented monocrop economy, with its associated patterns of land tenure and settlement, was accompanied by the rise of certain social groups:

(great latifundist lords; a feeble noncommercial, nonindustrial urban bourgeoise made up primarily of lawyers and clergymen who were followers of the latifundist lords and equally committed to foreign trade in wheat; peasants who farmed land under contracts of day labor; pastoralists , under pressure from the spread of wheat over the land, but able to respond with violence and banditry; rural entrepreneurs ( very important )who would ultimately suppland the feudal lords.)

Rural entrepreneurs were the estate superintendents, chief herders, carters, and others who played key roles in organization of the latifundia. At home in the countryside as well as in the towns and cities, this group had as its major base of operations the massaria, the social and administrative headquarters of the large estate. Here pastoral and agrarian economies of latifundium were articulated. Because of their close relationship to the massaria and its associated complex of activities, rural entrepreneurs had contacts with the rest of population, whether rich or poor, did not have.

THE RISE OF MAFIA

- A phenomenon which crystallized over the XIX c. the western part of the island where grain-exporting colonial economy had long been dominant and rural entrepreneurs were numerous and successful. They were favored because the state, needing their support, supplied them with protection and patronage, which in turn sustained their power on the local level. But they were also under pressure because of the unification and industrialization of Italy threatened to render them obsolete. MAFIA ORIGINATED AS AN ORGANIZATIONAL AND IDEOLOGICAL RESPONSE TO THESE CONDITIONS, OF POWER ON THE HAND AND PENDING OBSOLESCENCE ON THE OTHER. By neutralizing the police and the judiciary is protected a wide range of business interests that depended for profit, at least partly, on illegal acts including the use, threat, or implied threat of violence. Most, if not all, of the FIRST MAFIOSI WERE RURAL ENTREPRENEURS.

- For Anton Blok Mafiosi are primarily peasant entrepreneurs-cum-political middlemen of power brokers. It was the prior isolation and marginality of Sicily which led armed entrepreneurs to assume a number of statelike functions, on the basis of which they were later powerful enough to block or arrest the penetration of Sicily by modern state institutions. Above all, their initial power derived from the fact that they policed a

rebellious and bandit-ridden countryside on behalf of the landed class. Block’s thesis that peasant entrepreneurs were so powerful to begin with because Sicily was isolated and had a weak government interestingly reflects the primacy of the political framework in his thinking. In economic terms, the weakness of the central authority in pre-nineteenth-century sicily was the consequence not of isolation –of” relative local and regional self-sufficiency” – but of engagement, because the region was the bread basket of any integrated world economy.

BROKER CAPITALISM

In order to shield their activities from the surveillance of the state, Mafiosi exploited the cultural codes of honor, friendship, and cleverness are in fact fused in the mafia-linked ideology of omerta, according to which justice is a private, not a public matter, and a man of honor will handle his own affairs without recourse to legally constituted authority. Because mafia has this ideological aspect, people are sometimes tempted to view it as product of age-old cultural patterns peculiar in western Sicily. Although in its origins mafia was specific to a particular geographical area, many aspects of the phenomenon had parallels in other parts of the world that were subjected to similar historical forces.

- The rural entrepreneurs characteristic of Sicily- are backbone of an economy we call broker capitalism . Broker capitalism differs from merchant, industrial, and finance capitalism in several important ways.

- Compared with merchants, industrialists, and financiers of the metropolis, broker capitalism control only marginal assets, their most significant resource being their networks of personal contacts. In the local arena they are a viable, full-fledged market force, with the capacity to promote or obstruct change within parameters set by the world system.

- B.C flourishes at the periphery because core interests are unable, or do not choose, to monopolize and administer the local level activities connected with the production, marketing, and export of primary products. It promotes short term speculative investment, reflecting the uncertainties in which ultimate control over markets lies in the hands of unpredictablefereigners.

- B. c advances by means of short-term, fluid, egocentric coalitions, reinforced by friendship ties, rather than by the long-term corporate associations which organize commerce, industry, and finance in the metropolis. Friendship and furberia are broker capitalist codes.

VILLAMURA

Is the town were author conducted his reaserch. This pseudonym is borrowed from Emanuele Navarro della Miraglia, a 19th c resident of the town, who used it as a setting for his novel La Nana. The town is located on a hill about 350 m above sea level, near the southwest corner of the island, in the providence of Agrigendo. Typical of west Sicilian settlements, V. consists of a large densely settled and quasi-urban nucleus of

houses, shops, and public buildings surrounding by a virtually uninhabited countryside. What is called the commune embraces both this settlement, where everyone lives, and the surrounding land, into which agricultural laborers, sharecroppers, and small landholders travel every day to earb their livelihood.

Peasants, Herdsmen and rural entrepreneurs

THE MEZZADRIA SYSTEM – DIFFERENT FROM SLAVERY, SERFDOM, AND FREE LABOR

Several forms of land contract coexist in rural Sicily. Through the Arab-Norman period, there were two common arrangements by which peasants could gain access to the land.

-First one – land held collectively by residents of a community, with the right to pasture animals and collect whatever the land bore: wood, stones, wild berries, and vegetables. Covered by the legal concept of servitudes, usi civici, or use rights available to all citizens of the community.

-Second arrangement guaranteed the peasant access to arable land in a long-term basis(several decades or even generations). Known as emphyteusis, it involved a fixed rent in money or kind but no obligation of military or personal service. The peasant was free to rent or sell his holding and to hire labor for its cultivation. This contract gave security and freedom of movement to the peasant. In western Sicily, however, the Catelan expansion of the 14th and 15th c. dealt a heavy blow to both, such that emphyteusis contracts were thereafter concentrated on the northeastern coast and thinly distributed throughout the rest of the island.

There were 3 major types of contract under the latifundist agrarian regime:

- Sharecropping (mezzandria);

- Terratico

- Hourly or daily wage labor contracts.

Until late 19th c. mezzandria was the most common form. Sharecropers did not have the leverage of yeoman farmers, who owned their land, they were not so constrained as were slaves or serfs. <Or Smurfs> They contributed a share of the capital investment in a holding, participated in the risks and profits, and to some extent worked on their own initiative

LATIFUNDISM AND PEASANT INSECURITY

In Sicily sharecropping peasants lived in agrotowns and negotiated to cultivate several small scattered holdings for a year at a time. Because the land lay fallow or in pasturage after each harvest, the peasant had always to sharecrop different plots in successive years. Nor did his family participate as on a farm. The young unmarried sons helped with the agricultural labor but once married they were on their own.

THE PROBLEMS OF FRAGMENTATION

The conditions of Mediterranean agriculture compounded the insecurity of Sicilian peasants by promoting the fragmentation of land and fragmentation of social units such as the family and the community. Fragmentation of land and labor was the rule.<Gabellotti – well-capitalized rural entrepreneurs. > Once a gabellotto, in negotiations with the landlord, had decided on rotation patterns, he divided the portions of the estate to be cultivated into plots 1-6 ha for distribution among sharecroppers. The majority of sharecropping contracts stipulated an even division of the harvest: half to gabellotto, half to the peasant. BUT the contracts were almost always embellished by various additional burdens on the peasent: interest on borrowed seed, plows, and work animals; contributions to the estate guard’s salary and to the priest who said Sunday mass at the massaria; fees of the cost of transporting grain to the threshing floor, and so on, and so on.

THE POSITION OF HERDSMEN COMPARED TO THAT OF PEASANTS

The arid climate of Sicily made it difficult to contain the movement of animals, and transhumant migration of herds required pastoral specialists who constituated a subgroup of the rural labor force. This group overlapped with the peasantry. Herdsmen as a rule had peasant kinsmen. They worked individually or in association with other herdsmen.

Herdsmen had varying degrees of relationship to the great latifundia. Some formed an integral part of massaria complex, others remained outside the massaria, although depend upon it for some of their grazing land. All of them felt the impact of the latifundist agrarian regime. Herdsmen also competed for access to cultivated land- land which could be grazed after a harvest or in the second or third year of rotation cycle.

Over the centuries, an open, unfenced countryside in which herdsmen and cultivators used the same or contiguous spaces gave rise to a complex set of social arrangements.

In the status of hierarchy of western Sicily, shepherds and cowherds ranked lower than peasants. They spent most of their time with animals in the “barbarian” countryside, away from ”civilization” of the towns. But in many ways, they had greater freedom of movement and more power then peasant cultivators. It was their mobility in particular that gave them leverage in their conflicts with peasants. Herdsmen were most likely to carry arms.

RURAL PLACES AND RURAL ENTREPRENEURS

Of all broker capitalists in western Sicily, by far the most important were those who controlled the production and circulation of the primary exports of the region. Their operations were headquartered not in town but In 4 types of rural place:

-monasteries (with their surrounding arable land)

-rural inns (called fondaci)

-the water driven flour mills

-massarie

Each of this places had a resident staff, depending on the season.

Physically MASSARIA is a rude complex of buildings which form a square around the courtyard. The principal building housed the apartment and offices of the estate owner or his chief administrator. Other buildings contained stalls for draft and transport animals; storerooms for seed, equipment, and cereals quarters for the permanent residents, including kitchen and bakery; and straw pallets for agricultural laborers and sharecroppers who would sleep over during the harvest season. In all, the massaria bore little resemblance to the villa, chateau, or manor house familiar in other regions of Italy and Europe.

Rural monasteries and inns were equally rustic. A monastery was often only a gloriefied massaria staffed by monks. The typical inn consisted of two rooms – a tavern for eating, drinking and playing cards, and a large stall in which men, animals, and carts shared lodgings.

Most of the rural entrepreneurs were directly connected to the massaria.The massaria employed various other specialists: operators of stores, mills, and bakeries, grooms and stall boys for the transport animals; a lead muleteer and subordinates; a smith who made and repaired farming tools; and others…<kill me >

Although he rarely lived in the countryside, the gabellotto. Or chief administrator, was the prime mover in the massaria complex.

Animal rustling strengthened the relationship between pastoral enterprise and rural capitalism. It was organized and financed by rural entrepreneurs. Influental rural entrepreneurs – gabellotti, head shepherds, and estate guards – organized these profitable operations. Even when they did not themselves steal the animals, they gathered and transmitted information, arranged the illicit commerce, and secured refuge for the shepherds and others who did the actual work.

Rural entrepreneurs also dominated the animal markets, or fairs, held in the late summer and early autumn in one interior town after another.

The ability of rural entrepreneurs and their associates to command the routes of transhumance, the rural places, and the people of the interior gave them a considerable advantage over other social groups.

Perhaps the best-known aspect of a rural entrepreneur’s esprit was the theme of violence- his association with violence and with those who regularly used it.

Violence was a part of animal theft and part of protection of animals from rustlers. It was part of banditry. So long as the state was unable to monopolize violence in western Sicily, this institution and those men ejoyed a relatively autonomous way of life in which they responded to opportunities as they occurred.

RURAL ENTERPRISE AND KINSHIP

Another characteristic distinguished the rural entrepreneurs from the rest of population and, like the factors already discussed, enhanced their capacity to accumulate capital and power. It was their ability to form fraternal associations made up of adult, married brothers who jointly exploited land and animal resources.It is unusual in western Sicily for brothers to work together. The most enduring and solidary bond is that which unites a mother with her children. The brother-sister tie are also close, as are relations between mother’s brother and her children and between cross, as opposed to parallel, cousins. Parents expects to lose their sons when they marry, whereas daughters will eventually bring them sons. And after marriage brothers didn’t work together.

Cousin marriage is common.

Common in many Middle Eastern and North African societies, marriage between the children of brothers, i.e., patrilateral parallel cousin marriage, operates less to reflect economic and political solidarity among brothers than to help maintain such solidarity in face of strong competing centrifugal forces.

Villamaura study: Good reason for fraternal solidarity among massariotto families: Upwardly “shepherd – ranches” raised livestock in partnership with others to get an efficient ratio of manpower to herd and flock size; to allow for separating the animals by age and sex; and to achieve the better quality and greater variety of cheeses that a large herd yielded. It is preferable to build a partnership with close agnatic kinsmen because they are more trustworthy than non-kin. With kinsmen it is possible to form what they call a perfect partnership. But : A perfect partnership can work only if animals that are initially pooled are roughly equal in quality and productivity. Consistent with the patriarchal role of the father is an established division of labor in the massariotto: one son, almost always the oldest, administered the entarprise; another attended to its affairs in town; another supervised the shepherds and peasants on the massaria. The genealogies in the census massariotto families showed a much greater tendency to considate kin groups through marriage than was true of the population at large. The most common form of cousin marriage in the population at large was marriage between children of brothers and sisters or between children of sisters. Among massariotti, cousin marriage in general, and patrilateral parallel cousin marriage in particular, was more pronounced. In poor families, cousin marriage reflected already existing patterns of intimacy between two families. Wealthy people had to marry their cousins because the rest of the population was too poor to provide eligible marriage partners.

Chapter 7 Displaced Herdsmen

Sicily’s encounter with North America industrial capitalism in the 19th and 20th centuries resulted in serious dislocations for peasants and shepherds

Sicily’s people supported no development elite and no well-articulated movement for regional autonomy, certain groups in the regional society went into that period( 1900) with enough power to “make trouble” for their rulers and influence the course of change. 3 Major sources of trouble:

- Herdsmen

- Mafiosi

- The new civile class of the 19th century

AGRARIAN REFORM AND THE FATE OF HERDSMEN

The great latifundia of western and interior Sicily were not simply wheat producing estates: additionally they supported a pastoral industry of considerable size and scope.

The first major threat to herding interests in the 19th c. came with the Bourbin program of bonification. As vineyards and tree crops expanded, the cut into winter pastures and interrupted long-distance cycles of transhumance which linked interior to coast. –“more pastoral than agrarian” character of the island. Bla blab la Shepherds did battle with cultivators, stealing their work and transport animals, cutting or burning their crops, and allowing sheep to graze on their fields. Cultivators who reported these acts frequently withdrew their claims under pressure and were sometimes intimidated into renting land to the very shepherds who had abused them. Pressure on herdsmen persisted under fascism.

Looking back over the displacement of pastoralists, we ( yes basia, iwona, petra, ivana, dorota) note that their response was different from the response of peasants. Where peasants joined mass demonstrations and collectively occupied estates, where they organized cooperatives in order to acquire small holdings, herdsmen pursued strategies based on acts of prepotency which were planned and executed by individuals and ad hoc coalitions.- most pervasive and difficult to control of these acts: abusive grazing. In addition to abusive grazing, the most significant “pastoral” response was BANDITRY. Classic bandits of the island’s countryside were shepherds, and the classic act of brigandage was animal theft. Rustling was the constant manifestation, peasant uprisings the occasional symptom, of an ongoing struggle against diminishing resources. Rustlers depended upon rural entrepreneurs and the massaria complex for information, refuge, and access to markets.

Clustered in urban-dominated rural towns, and subject to the rules of local powerholders, peasants had less freedom of movement than shepherds. In contrast to shepherds, peasants found their autonomy seriously damaged by expanding latifundism in the Spanish period. Herdsmen, notwithstanding latifundism, had in the massaria complex a place of refuge from lord, Church, and state. They were free to keep weapons and their way of life required how to use them.

Chapter 8 THE CIVILE CLASS AND PERSISTENCE OF BROKER CAPITALISM

. Rural entrepreneurs was also under pressure (because of industrial capitalism)

Land reform contradicted rural entrepreneurs interest in latifundist economy. They also formed backbone of a new gentry class, and that class, the civile class, bargained successfully with north Italian interests as Italy became a nation. In a pattern perhaps best identified as bossism, its members delivered votes to different and competing segments of the north Italian industrial bourgeoise from the early 1880s through world war 1. FACTIONALISM AND CORRUPTION WERE HALLMARKS OF THIS PERIOD and were measures of the bargaining power of civili.

RIVALRY AMONG CIVILI

The civili of 19th and 20th c. experienced many swings of fortunein which some of them fell by the wayside, unable to expand their family patrimonies and pass them on intact. As a part of their Banifica, restoration Bourbons had removed the advantage of primogeniture enjoyed by the great baronial families of the past. Tactics such as –paralel cousin marriage could at best retard but not reverse the fragmentation of family power.

The wheat tariff having been reduced and peasant latifundism beginning to advance, each of these families showed signs of stress. Poperties were divided, reconsolidated through marriage, then divided again, often among five or more heirs. Not only land but also the free professions suffered from overcrowding, as sons of the new gentry pursued careers in medicine and law.

- Ideally a true civile owned an exfeudal estate and sent at least one son into free professions.

- Competition for space within the gentry meant, of course, that rural entrepreneurs who hoped to move up were often denied opportunities to purchase land, educate their sons, and be approved for membership in the circolo civile.

- A proper civile would build a splendid palazzo on a main piazza in town and build or purchase a villa in the surrounding countryside.

- Members of the civile class competed with each other in the consumption of entirely derivative culture several steps removed from its Parisian source. A civile’s position, was more formal than substantial, and for that reason was quite presumptuous.

THE CIVIL CLASS AND THE NORTH ITALIAN BOURGEOISIE

Push for industrial development in northern Italy. That push, highly organized in the 1880s and 18890 under Crispi, necessitated political mobilization since many unpopular sacrifices were involved. In this period protective tariffs led to higher prices for a wide range of commodities. Most seriously it cheapened labor. They had to minimize popular protest. Their solution was the constant delivery of national patronage to win support and complance from local notables, who in turn organized electoral majorities for parliamentary deputes loyal to Crispi. In Sicily LOCAL NOBELES-THE CIVILI bargained

from the strength of a broker capitalist past and won for themselves a virtual monopoly over police power at the local level.

Bossism:”the combined use of patronage and police power to m a k e e l e c t i o n s.

BOSSISM UNDER GIOLITTI

During the Crispian era, southern Italian and Sicilian bosses were well represented In national governing coalitions. They influenced tariff legislation, they moved the government to discourage emigration and to quell a peasant revolt. Under Giolitti, government reduced the wheat tariff, promoted emigration, and established a dialogue with Socialists.(what is important: corruption, manipulation of public resources to serve private ends, illegal)bla bla

Bossism, and the flagrant corruption that accompanied it, enabled Sicily’s rural entrepreneurs and civili to retard the penetration of state institutions into their island society. They twisted its roads and railroads as they ignored its prefects and police.

HOW TO POLITICAL STRUCTURE THAT FAVORED BROKER CAPITALISM WAS PRESERVED.

The most striking symptom of continuity with Sicily’s broker capitalist past in the structure of the island’s transportation network. (outside Palermo the transportation network has no nodal cities or towns where several major arteries come together. Settlements are linked to each other in lineal fashion by primary and secondary roads) These roads are inefficient as a means of integration, reflecting the absence of symbiotic exchange among mutually dependent population centres. Consistent with poor internal integration, the expanding national bureaucracy found no infrastructure of command through which to extend its influence to Sicily.

ADMINISTRATION BY PREBENDAL CONCESSION SINCE 1860

-it (farming out of prebends and the lax control)enables entrepreneurs to exploit them for private gain.

-throughout the bossism period, e. were able to bid for concessions to transport mail and to transport, store, and sell solt and tobacco.

-contractors ran the public funeral service on so on

- many examples of abuse by concessionaires

-in the bossim period most of the substantial contracts for tax collection, public works, and services went to civili and gabellotti: creditors of the local communes and friends of the local bosses; if not the bosses themselves.

Today a large number of activities once formed out as prebends either are completely private or have been taken over completely by the state.

In imbalance between public and private interest, bureaucracy and entrepreneurs, does not require a prebendal system to survive.

The complex interaction between public and private sectors, and ambiguilty of the boundary between them, cannot help but influence the operations of government. Regional administrations in postwar Sicily have risen and fallen over the allocation of offices to people, as the political parties that form the ruling coalition, and factions within these parties , do battle for control of key agencies such as the land reform agency and the Department of Public Works. Within the agencies themselves there is strange disjuncture between the work done and the decisions made at the top.

It is too much for me, but I think it is not so important. Its about markets. Wheat, beef on so on.

CHAPTER 11, CULTURE AND UNDERDEVELOPMENT

Hypothesis that the island’s lack of economic development is a consequence of its cultural codes. Often cited are the inability of Sicilians to organize collectively for the common good, to invest their earnings in projects that require long-term, stable commitments, to trust each other, and to relinquish the uncertain devices of coalition formation, wheeling and deeling, and corruption. The Sicily has not developed economically has nothing ti do directly with its culture. It has fundamentally to do with the resources and potentialities of its own environment and with those parts of the world that claim and have claimed these resources – with northern Italy, the North Atlantic, the United States.

ALTERNATIVE CULTURAL CODES

1. Universalistic values that stress fairness and impartiality in interpersonal relations and support impersonal bureaucratic and corporate organization

2. Liberation of individuals from local community and kin groups such that obligations to members of these groups do not stand in the way of work and achievement or lead to nepotism and corruption.

3. Self-discipline, thought necessary for long-range investment and commitment to corporate organization

4. An ideology of merit. Said to allocate positions in society according to criteria of talent and performance.

Entrepreneur destroyed his competitors by various means in the process of creating monopolies. This explains the “instinctive, protective preference for monopoly.Cultural codes of western Sicily become less objects of opprobrium than understandable meansof resting the further stratification and centralization of the world economy.

Sicily is no empire <really?!thats so cool> Without recommendations and hanky-panky, without various forms of”negative reciprocity” many fewer would be employed by the national government, fewer would be live off the orchards, and fewer would live off the schools.

Future

Culture and political economy In western Sicily.Chapter 2 - Land use and settlement in historical and geographical perspective.

- History of the Sicily – history successive conquerors – Greeks, Phoenicians , Romans, Byzantines, Saracens, Normans, Angevins, Catalans, Lombards, Spaniards, Frenchmen, Englischmen, Italians, Germans, Americans.

- Independence during Greek, Arab and Norman periods- Most dependence during Romans, Catalans periods and control north Italian lords- Western Sicily always most was more dependent, more exploied

a. Sicily roles in historical world-systems - Greek settlements – from VIII century B.C.

Hellenization of the local population (they had less impact in the middle of the island )

Agricultural surplus, export Syracuse independence

- Roman Tribute system Eastern cities supported the rebellion of Brutus and Cassius

- Arab invasions IX – XI Improve technologies of agricultural production – irrigation, work skills → increase

crops → export (wheat, lemons, oranges, melons, sugar, cane, silk, cotton, rice) Hereditary dynasty in Palermo (link with Egypt) – political independence

- Late XI century – Norman conquest Restored the Latin Church Introduced feudal institution Retained Moslem craftsmen, administrators, peasants “golden age” – economic development Production wool, woolen cloth, wheat,

- XIII- Angevins- XVI – Habsburgs from Spain

Import textile from Italian cities ( Florencja) Export wheat, silk cloth

- XVIII- Bourbons from France Production wheat Import manufactures from North

b. The relationship of animals to agriculture in Sicily- Production: wheat, vine and tree crops, nuts, olives, fruits, citrus, vegetables – irrigation

(along the coast, especially eastern )- Livestock: cattle, sheep, goats, mules, donkeys ,a few horses –transhumance on

meadows, seasonal migration

- Wheat and pasturage reinforced each other → undermine production vine, fruits and vegetables

- Latifundia 1000-2000ha but was about 200 ha- Coastal zone was better- Wheat always was the most important

c. Colonial pressures and settlement patterns- none (or almost none) of trees on the east and middle of the island → lower population

destiny, large agglomerations on hilltops- coastal zone of eastern Sicily – population is dispersed in farmsteads, hamlets. Peasants

dwellings( 1 or 2 rooms) - town is located on a small hill in the middle of alluvial basin → better for agricultural

crops- the agrotown arose XIII-XV ( confict between Catalan and Latin barons) →good

communication with center of power, administrative- After conflict - the growing importance of livestock- 1570-1650 over 100 new communities were founded in western Sicily

d. Causes: the role of environment in latifundism- Heavy rains in the winter months, May – October almost without rainfall- Aridity- Deforestation- Mediterranean area and mountain areas - less food for the animals than in northern Europe- province of Syracuse ground is enriched by lava →increase crop productivity- western and central Sicily are mountain areas and the valleys are rich in nutrients →

Easy cultivation- in summer irrigation on the coast is necessary - location of ancient Greek settlements in eastern - probably because there were better

agricultural land, west – less urbanized and less used- impact of roman latifundism - deterioration of the environment- XIX, XX century – further degradation

Chapter 5 – Cultural Codes.

a. Furberia (cunning, slyness)- During World War II used insecticides ( DDT) to eliminate malaria →Oranges was

unsuitable for export- People from Palermo had exracted some of the juice from oranges with a syringe and

sold this oranges - People can be furbo ( shrewd and cunning) or fesso (naive and gullible) –

people( women and men) prefer to be furbo but often they are neither furbo nor fesso- Selfless persons are fool- People rewarded furberia in their children ( in each social class) – eg parents favored

mischievous their children- furberia is sometimes an excuse to use violence or illegal behavior

- through cleverness powerless peasants can sometimes outmaneuver entrepreneurs for which they work

b. onore (honor) - honor is an attribute not only individuals but also kinship group - Sicilian code of honor implies a society organized, honor is a “national anthem” and

ideology - 3 respects : property, prestige or status, and the loyalty of women - Family is the basic of the society- Nicknames are used for family, 2 or 3 generations deep- Vendetta- defend the interests and reputation of the family- show respect for the whole family when a family member is ill or has died- man must be a “good father to his family” – his daughters well married, his sons

securely employed, he must defend the chastity of the women in his family- women must be be virgins before marriage, when daughter lost virginity, can kill that

boy, rule “ blood washes blood”- old maids have come to church every day- after the wedding night to show the bloody sheets symbolizes purity and honor of the

family- women are isolated from men, are at home. Because of the small flats most domestic

do out.- women work together with a friend, daughters, giving them support- but it also happens that a woman companion to their husbands in going to the office, or

other institutions-c. origins of the honor code honor in Mediterranean societies from classical antiquity, Bronze Age comes from the pastoral society relationship with religion (Islam and Catholicism)- both religious had the same aim:

centralized power and the integration of society Catholicism women (mothers) are responsible also for the honor, know the law Catholicism eg virginity and Holy Family → motherhood is important Religions protect against divorce rules of inheritance are also defined by honor and religion honor code defended family against political pressure of ancient empires When was created the code of honor the men worked, women stayed at home.

Society was pastoral, and peripherals. After the industrial era it changed, women went to work in factories, people lived in cities. Previously been kidnapping ( ancient, Middle Ages) women so honor could protect them from violence.

d. Honor and Inequality Good marriage for daughter Show disrespect of everyday life Jealous neighbors

e. Amiciza (friendship) relationship in an informal group

eg mafia, patron – client chain, individual bank customers – this coalitions are temporary

benefits, exchange information and emotions men come together eat and drink, joke banquets – made deals, formed coalitions or reconciled important for rural entrepreneurs and other buisiness

Chapter (?) Mafia

- mafia originated in the XIX century, west Sicilian

a. the foundation of the political shield after 1800 the importance for the development of the mafia was functioning police

and judicial-penal apparatus increased then the number of crimes: theft, robbery, kidnapping for ransom

(western and middle of island) district manager encourage bandits to robberies outside of their province mafiosi protected property and persons against bandits, peasant rebels but outlaw

also mafiosi had “office” in bars they were peacemakers and were more effective than police people asked their mafia “advisors” how they should vote

b. recruitment to mafia Vito Cascio Ferro – most famous Mafiosi (early XX c) and Don Vito Former Mafiosi are civil class but de facto they aren’t civil bandits lived outside society, mafiosi lived in lawful society “boys” learn how to be mafiosi and work for mafia

c. evolution of mafia domain increase in violence used by the mafia At first, the mafia which help protect rich landowners decades before fascism, mafia

sale meat, engaged in lending, protected, controlled the work of villagers relationship with politics, big business 50.60 years - drug trafficking, cigarette smuggling

d. Some secrets of mafia’s success Mafia controlled politics Civile class

e. The core of mafia organization : the Cosca

simplest form of organization of the mafia, which appeared after the year 1860 cosca protected activities local all mafiosi Cosca means plants with one root and several leaves. This is to illustrate the scheme

of the organization, headed by the mafioso ( godfather) who is the patron saint of "care for" their charges, which provides "kindness"

Local Cosca regularly meets ( eg on Sundays) they drank and ate, sometime went on the hunt

When someone of the members were arrested, Cosca provided a lawyer, took care of his wife and children “family insurance plan”. Such help reinforces relationship

the Mafia as an organization is perceived as strong and even a long absence or illness of a member is not a threat

mafia defended notice also from people who have too much of it they say. For such foul can even die

godfather of one cosca could work with others from another city

f. Omerta: Mafia and ideology This is conspiracy of silence This law prohibits a member of the mafia information on persons unconnected with

the crime, in particular, judges and police. For this reason, mafia crimes were so difficult to resolve

Breaking omerta danger of execution Ideology of mafia: honor, friendship, furberia, omerta Thanks omerta mafia to develop, make new goals of crime

g. Explaining mafia Messina, Catania, Syracuse (east) – at the beginning clean of mafia Mafia controlled agrotowns, politic capital of island

h. Mafia and the world system During and after world war – mafia become international problem Distribution of drugs, protection powerful figures United States - the highest emigration, the same structure of the Mafia due to emigration increased exports of capital from the island emigration to the mafiosi gave better growth opportunities

Chapter 3. Political structure under the Spanish empire. (Chapter is focused on establishing relationships to the political structure of western Sicily ans Spanish empire)Diarchy. In the 16th and 17th century baronage was strong enough to competet with the royal crown and the island was govened by the “diarchy”<two powers>not monarchy. Spain viceroyality instituted a number of financial and administrative reforms against borange. Plan was: a new land registed and standarized weights and measures; while viceroys were building opulet baroque palaces to symbolize public intrest. Reforms were inadequate in various towns. [In Latin America under the Spanish empire situation was quite the same . Impose trade monopolies in New World, but did not have energy to control entirely its own settlers; and did not have administrative energy to create a large bureaucracy.

Feudalism and isolation: misleading issue At these times Sicilian political structure was understood as a result of feudalism. The Normands were first who introduced feudal institutions in Sicily- from Arab period. In 15th century barons owned 16 of 244 communes; their hegemony was the biggest in Western Part. They were avoiding royal claims to their holdings.There was increased feudalism..it spread on land, towns, cities, offices and sources of revenice (dochody). Sicilian feudalism was different than in Western E., Advanced infeudation (the act of putting a vassal in possession of a fief(lenno) when in E.it was receding. Much of sicilian feudalism structure survive French Revolution, even till 19th century. And in 13th century feudal institutions were helping underominate and destroy island’s autonomy believing that in the future urban and commercial life would be a mere adjunct to foregin intrests. Royal bureaucraicies outwitted Burbons attempt to control export of wheat in late 18 th

century. The prebendal official has certain incentive to exercise his office above nad beyond the call of duty, and where public and private interest clash, the tax farmer's loyalty to the state may be tenuous. An important ingredient in these tactic was collusion between the producer and exportes and administrative staff warehouses. The state attemp to descipline warehouse administrators by rotating them from post to post, subjecting them rigorous standarts. High discipline only inspeared them to sophisticated grauds.Relations among settlements The structure of settelments in the latifundist area became less differentiated and less complex. The four major towns (Corleone, Piazza Armerina, Salemi and Sciaccia) ceased to function as specialized commertial centers. Abandoned structure in which villages, towns and cities were integrated through bureaucratic and commercial hierarchies.The new structure was different: settelments were eachinternally stratified but each resembled the others. There was no division of labor and little hierarchical order among settelments; each settelment was linked to the outside world through grain exports. [The same system in Latin America and southern Italy]. Agrotawns or colony towns were internally heterogenous. People were strongly connected with they place of birth, often stay in one place all life; dialect words and phrases that are unique to particural towns, also with religious festivals – in the past each community had its own patron saints and madonnas who were honored by processions,etc.Insecurity in the countryside The nucleated agrotown was surrounded by uninhabited barren and desolate countryside, where travel was extraordinary difficult and dangerous. Bandits were displaced persons, casualties of the processes of state formation and economic change. In peripherial regions state institutions were weak, and unable to solve these problem.In 18 th

century Neapolitan Burbons started program of road construction in Sicily they want also deal with problem of rural inseciurity but their resources were realitivly to small to task. Borker capitalism and political structure “In conclusion! We would suggest that (1) a diarchic form of government in which barons shared power with the crown; (2) a feeble bureaucracy understaffed and undercapitalized from the center; (3) a poorly infrastructure of relations among towns and; (4) proliferation of banditry in the countryside all gave support to the pursuit of profit by short-lived, task-specific coalitions employing extralegal means. Neither feudalism nor isolation can explain these phenomena, for western Sicily was neither feudal (in usual sense) nor isolated. It was not a traditional society. Rather, iis particural role in the capitalist world economy created the political structure so congenial to broken capitalism”.

Chapter 12. Modernization without developmnet. Sicyly has change a lot since II World War. Bu it was modernization (perpetuates a

relationship of inequality between depended area and its metropolitan core) without

development (change society’s relationship to the world-system) because changes were contributed with an unskilled labour.Evidences of change during (1945 – 1970s.) : more and more houses with bathtubes, electricity, radio, TV, washing machines, sewing machines, refrigerators, etc. Developmnet in construction and eductaion: numbers of educated draftsman-surveyors, agronomists, accountants, elementary school teachers. Social change: women and man at late age than before war get marry; smaller families. Population more urban, migrations to towns. Italization process has started by mass education and TV (new bieliefs and honour code). Emigrations A lot of people decide to fo to work abroad; they are not exactly migrants, because they were back home when they save some money. Techniclly they are commuters. Phenomenon of wifes, who were living alone in their houses waiting for husbands.. they were treat like widows, or womens whose husband was in jeil.Underemloyment and fragmentation in agriculture agrarian ferorm defeat. Fragmentation was always problem of sycylian agriculture becouse of: pressure of expanding empires and live-stack rising on neutral pastures. Most people have a small-scale investments where machines have a small impact in productin (execpt where mafia have contacts). Underemplyment and fragmentation in nonagricurtular In most economic sectors at all social levels resources are broken into units too small to sustain integreted enterprises. In most economic sectors, there are more people than there is room for them, and new opportunities dissolve as many people attemp to exploit them. (Example, problem with to much artisians; such as: shoemakers, forniture makers,etc. who have to extens their martkets to survive, or emigrate) In industrial sector the same situtation; small companys who are renting equipment and tools. And “ improvised builders” were handicapped by the lack of any sensibility tradition, technical capacity or professional experience. There were some deviations from buliding codes (to high or to close to the street) – but it was a problem just for neighbours.. until commerce of buildings permit developed.

A chronic state of underempoyment is manifested in overcrowding and resource fragmentation regardless of every economic sector.Educational envolution Teachering schools : scuola magistrale for prospective elementary schoolteachers: public, state-run schools; and private schools acredited by the state. Now they have reputation “diploma mills” When a person want to take s/his certifying exam is good to have “recommendation” to one or moer examination commisioners. After graduation, many people can not find a job in their professions, emigration is not an option because it would have to be physical work, such persons are not able to find themselvs also in social life, do not marry, are more connected with their parents.Modernization and cultural codes Cultural continuity with the past. - Code of cleverness –fuberia (foxiness). - Code of frienship – amizicia, “friend of the friends”, in mafioso world is a kind of idealogy; in business partnerships.- Code of honore – onore. Sicilian are easily cought up in a web of tension, in status of competition, traditionally woman as a symbol of family honor.

Chapter 6. From the export of wheat to the export of labour. In this chapter: failure of the land reform, presistence of broken capitalism, rise of mafia

as a distinctive feature of the transition of western Sicily from preindustrial to a postindustrial pherpheral region. New types of pressure:

1) Change from a source of wheat (deceline in export market, even they start import wheat, in 20th cent. chemical cultivators added to wheat) to source of unskilled labour.

2) Import of cheap manufactures (shoes, nails, glass, rope, wool and other cheap textiles make that local crafts disappeared).

3) Producing rapid population growth (in 18th cent. from 1mln to 1,5mln, than 3,5 mln by 1900 and in 1945 it was 4,5mln).

The burbon bonifica: a formula for confronting the new world-systemIt was the program which estabilished change type of agrarian regime from latifunadlism to diversified type. (reforesting mountains, restore hydrographic system, irrigation, plant diversified, resettled peasants of latifundist west in villages or hamlets on the land supported by constructions of buildings and roads. In short change ecology of region. Landholders who joined this programme were tax free for 20 years. Bonifica was intended to facilitate more intensive use of land, and create class of small or medium landholders loyal to the central power. But result was almost opposite of intentions. From the beginning cent. to 1860 number of large landholders increased 10fold, and small holder did not form.1860-1880 The pattern repeated again: the Moderate’s scheme of economics growth, consistent with their advocacy of free trade and similar to the Burbon Bonifica, was accumulate capital for industry out of agricultural exports largely by improving agricultural producton. 1880-1890: A closed economy phase of Italian development Prime minister Cripsi whose government was completely disaster for latifundist region of the south and Sicily (canceled trade with France, deterioration of peasants conditions – the wheat tariff inflated the price of bread in the same time population has grown, peasants diet worsened, the death rate rise extremely high. Bread riots were always a threat. Troubled decade, riots and revolts. The ultimate response Sicilians and south Italians to the repression of the Cripsi era, is well known. Between 1876 and 1925, over 1,5 mln people left Sicily, principally to North America.Land reform in the 20 th century Government of Giolitti; in these time the size and coherence of the latifundium began gradually to change as a consequence of emigration remittances. Slowly in the 20th century remittances from America came to play a major role in the creation of a new kind of agriculture, one which involved modest advances in tree crops but whose thrust was to intensify the cultivation of wheat. (With these money peasants start to acquire for example a mules and donkeys; apply the fertilizers to eliminate fallow year in rotation cycle). The postwar land reform: a type of welfare Peasant rebellion again, they were trying t occupy land on latyfundia. New law limited landholdings to 200 hectars. But still...failed to provide the support system which would transform latifundism into diversified agriculture. Postwar land reform was in the effect a type of walfare designed to soften displacement by subsidizing peasants who stayed in the wheat production interior , buying off peasants rebellion by redistributing parcels of land. It doesn't help. A lot of people were emigrants again. Industrial development after war was also weak. Government encourage industrial growth by offering tax exemptions and credit facilities, reducing railroad tariffs.Business development not affect the economic development of Sicily. The Government has received small gains taxes, and in large factories was the high level of technology, what require few employees needed (mostly from United States and northen Italy –skilled workers).The causes of underdevelopment. In tehse times Sicily has confronted with preasure of postindustrial world. First cause is past latifundism, cos impact on the envirment,complicated the transformation of agriculture and made it costly. Second factor: Sicily’s subordination to north Italian economic developmnet. In Sicily never appear development elite because it isa region not notion; and too small and to poor in resources.

Also Sicily’s leadership structure was inherited from the expierience of colonization of Spain. These expierience blocked formation of the state institutions.

Close to II ww, a numver of special interests coalesced in separatist movement sicily. rather than be a source of leadership and initiative for regional development. It has become a source of office job. A short range and partial solution to unemployment in the middle class. It was failure.

Separatist army severing a chain that bond to mainland Italy, while others were building a new chain that would link the island to teh NY . The irony of it is that while the proposed new relationship with america might have helped to reunite families split by emigration. USA had been to that point the greates importer of sicilian labour.