Abstract
The stereotype of Southerners claims that they are politically and socially backward individualists who lack social sense and cannot be trusted. With specific reference to Naples, I focus on the attendant displacement of citizenship in the conviction that a balanced relationship between citizenship and governance, critical to democratic society, is directly dependent upon the recognised legitimacy of obligations and responsibility on both sides of the spectrum. Ethnographic evidence suggests that policies continue to be implemented that foster ordinary people’s disadvantage and exclusion, giving my informants at the grassroots reason to feel that they continue to be mistreated as second-class citizens. Change, they feel, is overdue. I discuss the nature and ramifications of the kind of change promised by a ‘revolutionary’ rhetoric promoted by élite groups historically adept at riding roughshod over ordinary people’s instances and bent on teaching the ‘populace’ what to think, do, even feel.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
This man is a long-standing (ex)Communist who held high-ranking positions both in the Party and in the Chamber of Deputies.
- 3.
See Pardo (1996: Ch. 7 and 2018). Between 1975 and 1983, Naples was ruled (with a brief interruption) by PCI-led coalitions. In 1984, three Christian-Democrat majors ruled for a total of six months; then Socialist majors took over. In 1993, a Communist major was elected (in 2000, he moved on and governed Campania, the Naples Region, until 2010). His allies ruled the city until 2011, when they were replaced by a new breed of radical leftists. For a complete list of Naples majors since 1944, see www.comune.napoli.it.
- 4.
- 5.
Pretexts are regularly found to reiterate it. For a recent instance, see the typical remarks made by the research institute CENSIS (Centro Studi Investimenti Sociali) and widely reported in the media; see, for example Adnkronos (13 June 2017; available at: http://www.adnkronos.com/fatti/cronaca/2017/06/13/napoli-mancano-legalita-senso-civico-analisi-del-censis_tUFTH3kvRNOOQ7gc1UKajP.html) Il Roma (13 June 2017; available at: http://www.ilroma.net/news/cronaca/%C2%AB-napoli-mancano-legalit%C3%A0-e-senso-civico%C2%BB-lanalisi-del-censis-de-magistris-non-affatto) la Repubblica Napoli (13 June 2017; available at: http://napoli.repubblica.it/cronaca/2017/06/13/news/il_censis_e_il_mercato_del_falso_a_napoli_deficit_di_senso_civico_e_cultura_della_legalita_-167999086/?refresh_ce).
- 6.
- 7.
- 8.
This was widely reported and debated in the national media. See: https://www.la7.it/in-onda/video/achille-occhetto-molto-spaventato-dalla-sottocultura-05-09-2019-281002. See also Prato (2020). For Gramsci (1971), we know, those he called ‘organic intellectuals’ (party activists, trade unionists, school teachers, etc.) were supposed to be the ‘mediators’ indispensable in the ‘Prince’s’ (the Party’s) strategy to hegemony and power.
- 9.
Gaining long-lasting influence in powerful intellectual circles, the folklorist Ernesto De Martino (1961) and his students explained certain popular behaviours as neuroses.
- 10.
In addition to the comparatively very high council tax, residents must pay heavy tax for rubbish collection. In 2018, they were charged 422 Euros, one of the highest in Italy. For more detailed information, see https://www.idealista.it/news/finanza/economia/2018/11/29/129084-quanto-costa-la-tari-la-mappa-delle-tariffe-per-regione.
- 11.
As informants have reported to me, rubbish peddling has taken place in central Naples during the Covid-19 pandemic, too. This has attracted the attention of the local press (De Simone 2020). In a forthcoming essay I examine the large body of evidence—empirical and statistical—on how this kind of inequality kills people, including high increase in cancer-, cardiac- and pulmonary-related deaths.
- 12.
See, for instance, the investigative report of 3 December 2019 produced by Daniela De Crescenzo and Gennaro Di Biase and their telling photographs: https://www.ilmattino.it/napoli/cronaca/emergenza_rifiuti_napoli-4901491.html.
- 13.
For meaningful examples of such action, see Folle (2019a).
- 14.
The expression sottogoverno refers to backstage interpersonal bargaining between politicians and other notables whose allegiances may lie with different parties. Prato (2000) has produced a throughout ethnographically informed examination of these dynamics, which are still rampant today.
- 15.
For more on this, see Pardo (2020). The Italian Chief of Police, Franco Gabrielli recently noted that in 2016, out of 893 thousand people reported and arrested, 29.2% were foreigners. In 2017, this percentage rose to 29.8%; it further increased to 32% in 2018 and 2019. Illegal immigrants are obviously difficult to count. However, from experience, Gabrielli estimates that there are 1.993.466 such people in Italy; that is, 3.3% of the population (Palazzini 2019).
- 16.
In Lincoln Archives Inc.: https://lincolnarchives.com/.
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Pardo, I. (2021). Making Second-Class Italians: A Progressive Fabrication and Entrenchment of Inequality. In: Pardo, I., Prato, G. (eds) Urban Inequalities. Palgrave Studies in Urban Anthropology. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-51724-3_2
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