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 18th 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 18th 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-system
It 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 20th 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.