Factions, Friends and Feasts: Anthropological Perspectives on the Mediterranean 9780857458452

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Factions, Friends and Feasts

FACTIONS, FRIENDS AND FEASTS Anthropological Perspectives on the Mediterranean

Jeremy Boissevain

Berghahn Books New York • Oxford

First published in 2013 by Berghahn Books www.berghahnbooks.com © 2013 Jeremy Boissevain

All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission of the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Boissevain, Jeremy. Factions, friends and feasts : anthropological perspectives on the Mediterranean / Jeremy Boissevain. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 978-0-85745-844-5 (hardback) -- ISBN 978-0-85745-845-2 (ebook) 1. Ethnology--Malta. 2. Ethnology--Italy--Sicily. 3. Italians-Canada--Social life and customs. 4. Malta--Social life and customs. 5. Sicily (Italy)--Social life and customs. I. Title. GN585.M3B65 2012 306.09458--dc23 2012037874 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Printed in the United States on acid-free paper ISBN 978-0-85745-844-5 (hardback) ISBN 978-0-85745-845-2 (ebook)

To Inga-Britt For sixty years of encouragement, help, companionship and patience

CONTENTS

List of Tables List of Figures

ix x

Introduction

1

Patterns Chapter 1. Chapter 2.

Seasonal Variations on Some Mediterranean Themes Unhealed Scars: Religious and Ethnic Diversity around the Mediterranean

13 20

Communities Chapter 3. Chapter 4. Chapter 5.

Factions, Parties and Politics in a Maltese Village Poverty and Politics in a Sicilian Agro-town The Italians of Montreal

28 42 87

Questions and Puzzles Chapter 6. Chapter 7. Chapter 8. Chapter 9. Chapter 10.

The Place of Non-corporate Groups Towards a Sociology of Social Anthropology Beyond the Community: Social Process in Europe Of Men and Marbles: Reconsidering Factionalism When the Saints Go Marching Out: Reflections on the Decline of Patronage in Malta

115 130 145 157 168

viii

Contents

Ritual, Insiders and Outsiders Chapter 11. Chapter 12. Chapter 13. Chapter 14.

Ritual and Tourism: Culture by the Pound? Revitalizing European Rituals ‘But We Live Here!’: Perspectives on Cultural Tourism Insiders and Outsiders: Mass Tourism in Southern Europe Chapter 15. Tourists, Developers and Civil Society

182 197 212 229 243

Reflections Chapter 16. On Predicting the Future: Second Thoughts on the Decline of Feasts and Patrons

263

Bibliography Index

275 297

LIST OF TABLES

4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 9.1 13.1

Occupation and Class in Leone Occupation and Class in Two Southern Italian Communities Leone Election Results Leone Town Council Election Results Class and Party in the 1960 Leone Town Council Bases of Factional Alignment of Govindapur Voters Growth of Tourist Arrivals in the Maltese Islands 1960–1993 13.2 Attitudes towards Tourism and Tourists: General Public Compared to Mdina Residents

50 51 59 73 75 164 214 216

LIST OF FIGURES

3.1 Fireworks for the 1960 centenary celebration and the men who made them 37 4.1 Returning home: a street in the central part of the town (1963) 45 4.2 Jesus and Maria reunited on Easter morning (1963) 58 4.3 Members waiting in front of the Circolo Civile for the Easter morning procession, watched from the shadows by a nonmember (1963) 62 11.1 The statue of Christ carrying his cross leaves the Naxxar church during the Good Friday procession (1998) 186 13.1 Government-sponsored re-enactment of the Knights of Malta entering Mdina 218 15.1 The Midi Consortium’s development on Tigné Point 257

INTRODUCTION

This book is about my explorations into aspects of some societies in and from the European Mediterranean; it is not about Mediterranean society writ large. There has been lively and at times fierce debate among anthropologists about the extent to which ‘The Mediterranean’ is a social or cultural unity. This discussion, in which I also participated some thirty years ago (see Boissevain 1976, 1979a, 1979b and 1979c), has been ongoing since the 1960s. Dionigi Albera and Anton Blok (2001) have fortunately provided a timely, thorough and sensible analysis of the copious and often acrimonious attempts to delineate or challenge the existence of a pan-Mediterranean cultural area. They conclude that the solution is to avoid defining the Mediterranean area as an object of study. Instead they consider it a field of study that embodies similarities and differences. It is a field in and from which one can study and compare special aspects and problems of general scientific interest. And so I have found it. My own fascination with the area began in 1956 when my wife, one small daughter and I moved from New Delhi to Malta. After having previously been responsible for CARE (Cooperative for American Relief to Everywhere) programmes in the Philippines, Japan and India, I welcomed the prospect of returning to Europe and of having only a small operation to look after in Malta. However, I did have mixed feelings about one aspect of my new assignment as my predecessor had personally become entangled with Malta’s fiery Prime Minister, Dominic Mintoff. An election poster calling on the Maltese to ‘Vote Labour and get CARE Food’ had been sent to Washington and the U.S. State Department subsequently gave CARE firm instructions to stay out of politics. My special assignment was thus to separate CARE from Mintoff’s embrace and so to restore the organization’s non-partisan legal status and reputation. I succeeded and in the process learned a good deal about the island’s social relations and tense factional politics.

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This experience, and others with Mindanao natives, devious Manila bureaucrats, aspects of Japanese culture I had read about, the difficulties of Punjabi peasants, and, especially, a visit to William and Charlotte Wiser and hearing their account of life in village India (see Wiser 2001), combined to make me consider a change of career. I wrote for advice to my former college French teacher, Lawrence Wylie, who had described his experience of living for a year in a little village in the south of France with his family in order to learn about the day-to-day life of the people about whose culture he had been teaching for years (Wylie 1961). He advised me to study anthropology and thanks to his strong letter of recommendation, I was offered a place at the London School of Economics and Political Science. So in the summer of 1958, Inga and I, now with two daughters, left CARE and Malta for London and a new career. * * * The LSE anthropology staff, with the exception of Paul Stirling, who had done research in Turkey, and part-time lecturer Lorraine Baric, who was interested in Yugoslavia, were all specialists in the Pacific, Africa and Asia: for them southern Europe was unknown territory. My most important teachers were Raymond Firth, the head of department who chaired the Friday graduate seminar, my supervisor, Lucy Mair – both of whom had been students of Malinowski – and Paul Stirling. As a graduate student with no background in the social sciences, I had much to learn. During that first year I read the classic texts of British social anthropology and others my teachers considered relevant. They included Malinowski, Firth, Evans-Pritchard, RadcliffeBrown, Schapera, Gluckman, Fortes, Leach, Mair, Mauss, Colson, Turner, Lévi-Strauss, Durkheim and Van Gennep. I discussed and/or wrote essays on the classical subjects being debated at the time: among others agnatic lineages, matrilateral cross-cousin marriage, gift exchange, cross-cutting ties, balanced opposition, the peace in the feud and the logic in witchcraft. During the academic year of 1958/59 I read a massive number of books and articles and wrote tutorial, class and seminar papers. In short, I received a thorough grounding in classical British anthropology and at the end of this first year I passed the MA qualifying examination and formally became a graduate student reading for a Ph.D. in social anthropology. That summer I replaced the CARE representative in Tripoli for the two months he was on leave and so was able to reconnoitre Libya as a possible research site. But Libya proved to be too costly for our savings and logistically too complicated for field research with a family. In the end I chose to focus on Malta, with which we were familiar and where we felt very much at home. I spent my second year at the LSE preparing for Malta. During the time I had lived in Malta I had been particularly interested in the bitter antagonism between the Malta Labour Party and the Catholic Church and the fierce

Introduction

3

competition between village social clubs whose brass bands celebrate parish patron saints. So I decided to concentrate on local politics. Thanks to Lucy Mair’s vigorous support I received a grant for fifteen months from the British Colonial Social Science Research Council (CSSRC) to study and report on ‘The place of voluntary associations in the social structure of rural Malta and the values and forces determining Maltese social behaviour at the village as well as the national level with particular reference to the important national issues which . . . divide the island’s people’. I was indeed fortunate, for it was one of only four open competition grants the CSSRC made in 1960. * * * I was not so fortunate in my quest for published material on the social anthropology of Europe, Malta and the European Mediterranean. In the British Museum and the Colonial Office library I found helpful background material on the history and geography of Malta, but little on social aspects of the inhabitants. The LSE library had a fine collection of material on voluntary associations. I had thought that these social formations would be key elements of the ‘social structure’ of the society I was to study, for had not EvansPritchard described the social structure – the grail that my generation of anthropologists must find and describe – as the ‘relations between groups of persons within a system of groups’ (1940: 262)? The voluntary associations I had been reading about were not very useful in understanding the fierce factionalism I encountered. Maltese society proved to be much more complex. Except for Julian Pitt-Rivers’ monograph on an Andalusian village (1954), John Barnes’ (1954) examination of class and committees in a Norwegian parish and Elizabeth Bott’s book on family and social networks in Britain (1957), Raymond Firth’s study of kinship in London (1956) and Ronald Frankenburg’s examination of religion, politics and football in a Welsh village (1957), there was a pronounced lack of interest among British anthropologists, my reference group, in their own society and in Europe. This is quite remarkable as in the 1930s the American anthropologist Conrad Arensberg (1937) had made an excellent study of rural communities in Ireland and so demonstrated that Europe was a fascinating field for anthropological research. Much later I discovered that Charlotte Gower Chapman had made an anthropological study of the Sicilian village of Milocca in the early 1930s but had been unable to find a publisher for it. Forty years later Professor Fred Eggan at the University of Chicago discovered a copy of her manuscript in the files of the Department of Anthropology and helped arrange for it finally to be published, in 1971. Also see Wim Ravesteijn (1979). American anthropologists were thus well ahead of their British counterparts in discovering southern Europe as a field of research. There was research on rural Italy by Pitkin (1959), on land tenure, family organization and peasant–city relations and by Moss and Cappannari (1960) on

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godparenthood; on dowry and inheritance in Greece by Friedl (1959) and, by political scientist Banfield (1958), on amoral familism in Italy (also see Cassin 1959). These provided interesting comparative data alongside PittRivers’ material on Spain. This then was the sum total of the material on social relations in southern Europe that I had managed to locate in London before setting out for fieldwork in Malta in June 1960. British anthropologists, though long established as researchers on the Middle East, Africa, India, Australia and America, only became active in the European Mediterranean after the Second World War. They were slowly and reluctantly accepted as colleagues by the academic establishment. Julian Pitt-Rivers was without question the founding father of the anthropology of the Mediterranean. His monograph on a village in the Spanish Sierra (1954), first presented as an Oxford Ph.D. thesis, established the research agenda for Mediterranean studies for the next two decades. He recounted an anecdote that vividly illustrated the prejudice and power of the British academic establishment then. His supervisor at Oxford, Edward Evan Evans-Pritchard, suggested he show his newly completed doctoral thesis to the director of Clarendon Press. Since Evans-Pritchard was an advisor to the Clarendon Press, then the most prestigious academic publisher in Britain, he assumed that it would be accepted and that his entrance to British academe was assured. A month later he received a letter from the director who pointed out that anthropologists should limit themselves to the study of primitive peoples and not tread on the territory of historians. Though discouraged, he persevered and eventually found the publisher Weidenfeld and Nicolson willing to bring out his book, but only if he agreed to write them an interesting travel book, something he never got around to doing. His book was well received in the United States and he made contact there with Robert Redfield at the University of Chicago and George Foster at Berkeley. Both were interested in anthropological research in Europe (Pitt-Rivers 2001: 59–60). In 1959 he convened the first conference on the anthropology of the Mediterranean at the Wennergren Foundation’s centre at Burg Wartenstein in Austria. This conference effectively marked the birth of Mediterranean anthropology and created a network that in the following two decades linked researchers from the universities of Chicago, Berkeley, Michigan, Oxford, London, Kent, Amsterdam, Paris, Aix en Provence and Athens.1 The next decade saw the publication of anthropological monographs on communities in Spain by Pitt-Rivers (1961), Kenny (1961) and LisonTolosana (1966); on Malta by Boissevain (1965, 1969); and on Greece by Friedl (1963) and Campbell (1964) – as well as the publication of three collections of conference proceedings edited by Pitt-Rivers (1963) and Peristiany (1965, 1968). Members of the network organised conferences in Athens in 1961, 1963, and 1966; in Ann Arbor, Michigan in 1963; in Aix en Provence in1966; and at the University of Kent, Canterbury in 1967. Besides these

Introduction

5

developments, anthropologists studying aspects of Mediterranean societies in this period published a host of articles in academic journals. These activities firmly established anthropological research in the Mediterranean area as a legitimate field of study. Interest in the area has continued to expand and so has the number of researchers, topics and publications.2 * * * Let me now sketch in crude brush strokes some of the developments taking place in the societies along the northern shore of the Mediterranean while anthropologists were busy discovering it. In the 1950s and 1960s the countries along the Mediterranean’s European coast represented the poor underbelly of Western Europe. They form the background and context of the initial research I carried out in the area. To begin with, and dating back to the late nineteenth century, there was heavy emigration from the area’s rural communities to the Americas and Australia. After the European labour market opened following the Treaty of Rome (1957) there was also a veritable exodus to industrial northern Europe. By 1970 there were some six million Mediterranean workers serving the rapidly expanding economies of Belgium, Germany (FDR), France, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland and Britain. In Germany alone in 1970 there were 1.8 million immigrants of whom 293,000 were Italian (Kiljunen 1979: 317, Table 55). This movement depopulated many villages and caused a labour shortage that, in turn, promoted the mechanization of some agricultural operations. The money the migrants sent back home brought badly needed ready cash into these impoverished areas. In the 1970s the dire economic situation of the south began to ease somewhat. The Italian industries began to expand. Emigration began to slow down, and emigrants began to trickle back. The new and half-built houses that began to dot the area were evidence that migrants were investing their earnings and improving the standard of living in their native communities. The European Economic Community and, later, the European Union also began investing in the underdeveloped south, thus supplementing the work of the massive Italian government-funded programme to develop the country’s southern regions, the Cassa per il Mezzogiorno, which for many years had been wrestling with this problem. The northern coast of the Mediterranean forms the gateway to the European Union for those coming from the south. The political stability and growing economic prosperity of the European Union increasingly attracted hopeful economic migrants and asylum seekers fleeing the poverty, corruption and violence that ravaged Africa and the Middle East. In the 1980s an ever-swelling stream of migrants legally and clandestinely began crossing the Mediterranean seas from south to north and east to west, often in rickety boats. They inundated Greece, Malta, Cyprus, Italy, Spain and Portugal.

6

Factions, Friends and Feasts

Their arrival caused economic and social problems and exacerbated the endemic latent xenophobia in the region. The influx of tourists also increased steadily. Between 1965 and 1975 annual tourist arrivals in the peripheral countries of southern Europe (Greece, Malta, Portugal, Spain, Turkey and Yugoslavia) increased from 18 million to 42 million bringing some U.S.$5,260 million into the region (Boissevain 1979: 126; Kiljunen 1979: 311–14, tables 51 and 52). By 1995 some 260 million tourists were visiting Mediterranean countries annually (Lanquar 1995: 133). The financial bonanza they brought was of course not distributed equally over the region. Old established tourist resorts along the coast initially received the lion’s share where the number of hotels, apartments and other tourist amenities multiplied rapidly. These developments provided work and were very profitable, but they also increasingly encroached on the environment and in some places led to tension between tourists and some inhabitants of the coastal areas. * * * This book deals with aspects of south European society that have particularly fascinated me over the years. It explores the relation between the region’s climate and its social life, the legacy of ethnic and religious conflict, the fierce family loyalty, the effect of factionalism and patronage on local, academic and national politics and the networks of kin, friends, patrons and mafia. It also notes the impact of mass tourism on the economy, social relations, celebrations, privacy and environment. The chapters consist of a selection from the many essays I have written and are generally arranged chronologically. Thus they echo the changes taking place in the area and the related shifts of my own interests over the years. They also, and perhaps more faintly, reflect my own engagement with the prevailing theoretical interests explored by colleagues working in the same field and developments in our own society. For that reason I have not attempted to update them except to correct and add a few new relevant references. As the ethnographic details in several articles are drawn from my own fieldwork there is some unavoidable repetition. The book begins with two chapters that were inspired by Braudel’s majestic The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II. To my mind this is still the most outstanding book in the field of Mediterranean studies, especially his long discourse on the influence that environmental parameters have on the cultural boundaries that incorporate memories and customs. The first two essays thus examine the effect the climate and spatial boundaries have on the patterns of behaviour, settlements and systems of belief in the area. The next section, ‘Communities’, examines social aspects in the three very different communities that I investigated between 1960 and 1965. Community is one of the most common and loosely used words in the social

Introduction

7

sciences. It is an omnibus term that I use in the sense of a social entity whose members have common ties and sense of belonging that may be, and often is, derived from shared space and/or may stem from shared values or activities and experience (cf. Azarya 1985: 135–37). But conceptually communities are also containers of a bewildering assortment of social relations, diverse groups, formations, patterns of conflict and memories. In short, they contain the raw ethnographic data that the anthropologist must describe, analyse and interpret. The communities among whose inhabitants I did research were a small Maltese village and an agro-town in the Sicilian province of Agrigento as well as the Italian immigrants in Montreal, many of whom in fact had come from Agrigento. In each case my research was problem oriented. That is, it set out to answer questions that had social and political, if not always explicitly theoretical, dimensions. In Chapter 3, ‘Factions, Parties and Politics in a Maltese Village’, I explore the relation of factional village politics to the polarized national level politics and became entangled in the many competing social formations that crisscrossed the village. The chapter is my first attempt after I began teaching to sort them out for colleagues and students. They were much more complex than the ethnic and kinship-based groups that I had read about at the LSE. Chapter 4, ‘Poverty and Politics in a Sicilian Agro-town’ is a mini monograph of a town notorious in Italy for its poverty. Here I set out to uncover the roots of its apparently endemic poverty in a period when the national economy of Italy was beginning to boom. I had planned to return and extend my research, but never quite made it. However, I recently made several short visits to the town and have recorded some observations in a short epilogue. In Chapter 5, ‘The Italians of Montreal’, I explore the relations between diverse generations of Italian immigrants and their French-Canadian and English-Canadian neighbours. In the early 1960s there was very little published anthropological research on local-level politics in south European societies or on settlements of Mediterranean migrants abroad. My research in these three communities provided answers to some of the questions I was investigating, generated a number of analytical problems and furnished an enormous fund of ethnographic material on which I have repeatedly drawn over the intervening years. The next five chapters in the section ‘Questions and Puzzles’ deal with some of the specific problems that arose when analysing my own fieldwork. In the 1960s the structural–functional theoretical paradigm still dominated social anthropological analysis. Very briefly, it postulated a concept of society as a system of enduring groups supported by a set of values and related sanctions which maintained the social system in equilibrium. I found this notion difficult to reconcile with my own experiences. There was no place for the concept that people were also instrumental in shaping their own destiny, that they were more than just members of a group acting according to its norms. In short, there was no place for what has now come to be called agency. I had dif-

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ficulty in finding a place in the structural–functional view of society for transient social formations like patron–client chains, friends-of-friends, factions, action groups and cliques. I also had difficulty using the structural–functional paradigm to accommodate the global diasporas of Maltese and Italian immigrants who still considered themselves as forming part of their communities of origin, or the network of Italian immigrants in Montreal who, though scattered all over the city, still conceived of themselves as having a unity of sorts. In 1966 I came into contact with a body of literature that I assembled for a course on rural sociology that I was asked to teach at the University of Sussex.3 I was truly excited to discover that I was not alone and that others were also seeking to come to grips with social arrangements and formations similar to those that I had encountered during my own fieldwork. These works were seminal for me. I discussed them with students at Sussex and a year later at the University of Amsterdam. But on thinking through the approach of these articles, in retrospect to be sure, I realized that most of their authors had tried to accommodate these social formations within the structural–functional paradigm. I thought it best to approach the problem more radically by rejecting accommodation. But I was left with the question of why the structural–functional paradigm had been able to dominate social anthropological research for so long and why, in spite of manifest objections, it had continued to frame the teaching of anthropology in Britain through to the end of my own training at the LSE and my research in the 1960s. Chapter 6, ‘The Place of Non-corporate Groups’, which formed the basis of my inaugural lecture at the University of Amsterdam (1968), sets out a number of difficulties I encountered within aspects of my own research in Malta, Sicily and Canada. I argue that it is necessary to step outside the old models of society, to shake off the restrictive legacy of Radcliffe-Brown’s social structure and accept that people have choices and can connect via networks, patronage and coalitions and so are able to reach out beyond the limits of kinship and corporation. Chapter 7, ‘Towards a Sociology of Social Anthropology’, is a brief excursion out of the Mediterranean area into academia in an attempt to answer the question of why the structural–functional paradigm had been able to dominate social anthropological research for so long. I argue that the paradigm’s persistence – besides its convenience as a concept that guided the production of many excellent monographs – was largely a consequence of the hierarchical power structure prevailing in British and European universities that discouraged innovation. While I began thinking about this students were actually challenging this hierarchy by occupying universities in Paris, Amsterdam and London. I drafted the chapter for the session on ‘Transactional Approaches’ of the conference on ‘New Directions in Social Anthropology’ organized by the Association of Social Anthropologists of Great Britain and the Commonwealth, Oxford, in July 1973. It was placed

Introduction

9

last on the list of papers to be discussed, but the session ran out of time so, of course, it could not be discussed. That it was not discussed, I think, had less to do with its listing and the lack of time than with the fact that the charismatic Professor Max Gluckman was present and had recognized himself in an episode described in the paper, as had some of his colleagues and ex-students, including the organizer of the session, who were also present. This episode, if nothing else, illustrates the central point I tried to make in the chapter. Chapter 8, ‘Beyond the Community: Social Process in Europe’, discusses a series of case studies that examine some of the effects of the processes of increasing industrialization, geographical mobility and urbanization in the complex societies of Europe. They also examine less obvious processes. These include the growing centralization of power at higher integration levels, the progressive decline of small-scale, autonomous units and the increase in extensive cooperative arrangements. Although all the cases discussed are based on field research, they do not specifically focus on local communities as objects of research in themselves. Most are ‘village outward’ studies. The authors have used the local community or regional locus as niches from which to examine problems of wider relevance that directly affect the inhabitants of these communities. Chapter 9, ‘Of Men and Marbles: Reconsidering Factionalism’, argues that all factionalism is about change and this, the essence of factionalism, cannot be grasped until we abandon the naïve belief in balanced opposition and the benign, system-maintaining function of rebellion – as opposed to changeproducing revolution (Gluckman 1959: 28) – and the notion that systemic change can only come from outside the system. The asymmetry of power that is present within all societies harbours the seeds of change. I have been chided about my Chapter 10, ‘When the Saints Go Marching Out’, because the saints as such did not go marching out. I demonstrate that changes taking place in Maltese society were reducing the power of the oldstyle patrons – the parish priests, lawyers and landowners – and thus that the traditional system of patronage was being replaced by new social arrangements. These traditional patrons did lose power, but I left other developments – new and even more powerful saints – out of the picture. I return later to this omission in Chapter 16. The next section, ‘Ritual, Insiders and Outsiders’ may seem like a strange potpourri, but one thing led to another. When I began research into tourism during the 1970s, I initially shared the optimistic view held by the Maltese themselves concerning the impact it had on their island and I criticized the more pessimistic view of others who had seen the impact of tourism in developing non-European societies. Chapter 11, ‘Ritual and Tourism: Culture by the Pound?’, examines the extent to which tourism was responsible for the growth of parish rituals in Malta and thus, as was proclaimed, ‘is destroying the meanings by which people organize their lives’. I conclude that it was not,

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but the relation between them is complex. In 1990 I organized a workshop at the EASA (European Association of Social Anthropology) conference in Coimbra to explore whether the escalation of public festivals that I had observed in Malta was also taking place elsewhere in Europe. It was, and Chapter 12, ‘Revitalizing European Rituals’, discusses our findings and suggests why this escalation was occurring. After I was pensioned in 1993, I spent part of each year in Malta and began to notice and experience the dark side of mass tourism. Tourist arrivals had continued to increase, as had the efforts of the government to develop quality/cultural tourism. Chapter 13, ‘ “But We Live Here”: Perspectives on Cultural Tourism’, reports some findings on the disruptive impact that the annual visit of some 700,000 visitors had on the three hundred inhabitants of the minuscule walled town of Mdina. During this period I also wrote and lectured on the destructive impact of tourism on the island’s intangible heritage and the environment and helped introduce tourism studies to the University of Malta (1994a, b, c). Chapter 14, ‘Insiders and Outsiders: Mass Tourism in Southern Europe’, presents an overview of the findings and implications of much of the social and cultural research that had been done on tourism in southern Europe up to 1997. Chapter 15, ‘Tourists, Developers and Civil Society’, describes the impact that the tourist-related building industry and property speculators are currently having on Malta’s coastal environment and the attempts of the island’s environmental NGOs to stop this assault. In the concluding section ‘Reflections’, in Chapter 16, ‘On Predicting the Future: Second Thoughts on the Decline of Feasts and Patrons’, I belatedly discuss, with the wisdom of hindsight, the problems of predicting trends, given anthropologists’ methodology of a brief period of participant observation and its (past?) ahistorical orientation and my own biases and shortcomings during my fieldwork.

Acknowledgements The acknowledgements for help and support I received for the original publications are mentioned at the end of each chapter. That this book saw daylight and took on this form is entirely due to the encouragement, advice, comments, suggestions and help I variously received from Godfrey Baldacchino, Anton Blok, Teun Bijvoet, Henk Driessen, Gerald Mars, Birgit Meyer, Rudo Niemeyer, Ann Przyzcki, Tom Selwyn, Jojada Verrips and the four anonymous readers of the manuscript. But most important of all was the constant enthusiastic encouragement and help I received from Inga Boissevain who commented on and proofread the chapters after I had wrestled with the hidden codes, twisted words and weird behaviour embedded in manuscripts scanned from off-prints and books dating from the pre-computer typewriter era.

Introduction

11

Notes 1. The proceedings of the Burg Wartenstein conference were subsequently edited by Julian Pitt-Rivers (1963) and John Peristiany (1965). For further details on the history of Mediterranean anthropology consult the Anthropology of the Mediterranean (Albera, Blok and Bromberger 2001: 11–103). John Davis (1977) has also provided a most detailed and helpful examination of much of the social anthropological research carried out in the region up to the mid 1970s. 2. See the forty-three chapters and bibliographies published in the proceedings of the Conference on the Anthropology of the Mediterranean held in Aix en Provence, 14–17 May 1997 (Albera, Blok and Bromberger 2001). 3. This included J. Barnes’s article, ‘Class and Committees in a Norwegian Island’ (1954), Elisabeth Bott’s Family and Social Network (1957), Eric Wolf’s ‘Aspects of Group Relations in a Complex Society’ (1956) his ‘Kinship, Friendship and Patron–Client Relations’ (1966), Mayer’s ‘The Significance of Quasi-Groups in the Study of Complex Societies’ (1966) and the manuscript of Fred Bailey’s innovative Stratagems and Spoils (1969) that I was fortunately able to discuss with him at length since he was also teaching at the University of Sussex.

CHAPTER 1

SEASONAL VARIATIONS ON SOME MEDITERRANEAN THEMES*

Social life does not continue at the same level throughout the year, it goes through regular, successive phases of increased and decreased intensity, of activity and response, of exertion and recuperation. M. Mauss, Seasonal Variations of the Eskimo. A Study in Social Morphology The sea’s climate, with its two clearly defined seasons, regulates Mediterranean life into two phases, year in, year out, sending the Mediterranean people by turns to their summer then to their winter quarters . . . only the months matter here . . . The ‘gates of the year’ open and shut at the appointed time. F. Braudel, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II

Many writers have attempted to link climate to social behaviour.1 The French, perhaps because their country embraces such diverse climates – but perhaps also because they have a penchant for grand theories – have given this interesting subject considerable attention. The ideas of Mauss and Braudel have been particularly significant. Mauss (1979) examined the impact of seasonal variation on the social life of the Eskimo. He showed how the starkly contrasting summer and winter seasons are accompanied by equally distinct patterns of social behaviour. While the details of this difference need not concern us here, the seasonal variation of social behaviour he identified does. Braudel (1972) reworked this theme in a specifically Mediterranean context. In his classic study of the Mediterranean world in the age of Philip II he demonstrated that the economic, social and political life of Mediterranean societies in the sixteenth century was strongly influenced by the seasons. Winter was a time of hardship and rest. In contrast, summer was a period of hyperactivity. Four centuries have passed since Philip II reigned. During this period humanity has become more independent of Originally published as ‘Seasonal Variations on Some Mediterranean Themes’, Hyphen (Malta) 3 (1981): 9–15. Reprinted by permission of the Editors.

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seasonal constraints. In what measure has this independence affected the relationship between seasons and social behaviour in the societies bordering the Mediterranean? The climate of Mediterranean coastal areas is characterized by two distinct seasons. A long, hot and exceedingly dry summer extends roughly from April to October. The first rains in September herald the arrival of the raw, wet and stormy winter season, which lasts from November to March. The break between the two seasons, often announced by a sudden, violent deluge, brings much the same excitement as the onslaught of the monsoon in Asia. It signals in dramatic fashion the transition between two social seasons. Braudel described sixteenth-century winter in the Mediterranean as being at a standstill. It was a period during which there was little traffic: many ships were laid up between October and April to avoid the fierce winter storms. Travel and commerce were thus severely restricted. During these months the agricultural cycle required minimal labour. Winter was a period of introversion and limited communication. It was also a time of hardship: the extreme discomfort of winter life in houses built to withstand heat rather than cold, with lofty ceilings, draughty windows and dirt or tiled flours, must be experienced to be understood. Winter was a time of harsh poverty as food and energy supplies dwindled (cf. Chambers et al. 1979) but it was also a period when quiet diplomatic negotiations and planning took place. Since transportation was limited by storm at sea and floods and mud inland, piracy, revolts and military expeditions were also severely restricted. Winter was thus a time of consolidation, introspection, hardship and peace. Summer, in contrast, brought renewed activity; April was perhaps the busiest month. Ships were fitted out and military expeditions prepared for and embarked upon. Above all, in societies heavily dependent on both agriculture and trade, crops and commerce demanded increasing attention. Late ploughing took place in April. Then a succession of harvests followed: grain, figs, grapes and olives. At the end of summer the ground had to be ploughed again before winter rains made the soil too heavy to work. Summer, with its warm weather and abundant food supply, was also a period of feasting: patron saints were honoured and weddings celebrated. Such celebrations were also traditional times of courtship. The tight social control characteristic of small inward-looking communities relaxed somewhat in summer. The celebrations and much of the daily round of business and domestic activities took place outdoors, in public. With no rain to interrupt them, people who met accidentally in public spent hours in conversation. Summer was a time of intense transaction with travellers from near and far. But summer was also the season of piracy and war. Braudel noted that most major Mediterranean battles, governed as they were by the movement of men across water, occurred in the summer, when the sea is often as tranquil as a pond. Summer was a period of work, travel, celebration, and war – of activity and relaxed conversation.

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It is significant that for the north European, if not for locals, the summer became emblematic of the Mediterranean world. The feasting, dancing, swimming and singing in summer became familiar through the writings of north European travellers who rarely stayed later than September.2 The winter season, no less typical of the Mediterranean, remained largely underreported and, therefore, unfamiliar to the northerner. There have been many striking technological and political–economic developments since the age of Philip II. Transport technology has reduced to a lake what was once a vast, almost limitless sea. It can be crossed now at any time of the year. Airports have replaced harbours as the most important communication centres. Marseilles, Barcelona, Genoa, Venice and Ragusa have ceded pride of place to Madrid, Rome, Belgrade and Beirut. Telephones, radio, television and teleprinters link cities to their hinterlands, and northern Europe to the Mediterranean world. Communication that took months in the sixteenth century can now take place a matter of minutes. Even the constraints of climate have been softened by new sources of energy applied to heating, air conditioning and irrigation. The Mediterranean area has entered into a more intense symbiotic relationship with northwest Europe. The industrialization, urbanization, even the labour relations and climate of northern Europe now directly affect the lives of millions around the Mediterranean. The rapid industrialization of Europe was in part made possible by the reserve army of Mediterranean labourers that surged northward following the Second World War. Economies of scale have brought about industrial concentration, urban overcrowding, assembly-line specialization and environmental pollution in the north. Growing protest about these conditions is providing some relief. This has included both the right to holidays away from work and the financial means to enjoy them. During the past fifteen years most north European workers have obtained the right to take a two- or three-week break in order to physically and mentally recharge themselves. The need to use this possibility to escape and recover increases as the pressure for higher productivity continues to mount. It is in this sense that northern Europe and the Mediterranean are becoming increasingly interdependent. North Europeans, whether executives or manual workers, look for as complete a change as possible during their annual holiday. They prefer rural to urban environments, agrarian to industrial surroundings, sunny and warm weather to their habitual cool and cloudy climate. They also look for a sociable, gregarious lifestyle to contrast with the reserve of their customary social surroundings. Because the Mediterranean in summer offers these contrasts, over 150 million visitors swarm into the region annually and spend some U.S.$25,450 million (OECD 1976: table 51). Paradoxically, many of the same attributes that forced Mediterranean workers into northern industry – the ubiquitous sea, the hot, dry summers, the rough terrain, the primitive rural technology

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and the agro-pastoral setting – are now attracting tourists. For centuries these conditions were responsible for much of the region’s relative poverty. They have now become major economic resources. Have these sweeping, radical developments fundamentally changed the traditional pattern of summer activity and winter standstill that Braudel noted? Summer by the Mediterranean is still characterized by great activity. From June through August the new tourist harvest takes place. In three months an important supplement to (if not the entire annual) income must be gathered from summer visitors. To do this locals often work thirteen-hour days, seven days a week for three or four months on end. Many need to use stimulants to keep going (Hermans 1980; Stott 1979). A 22-year-old waiter in Cambrils described the experience: Your income for a whole year is there waiting if you work like crazy for those three months. Fine, you don’t look forward to it; you have no life for those three months; you take pep pills but are still so exhausted you can hardly see straight . . . When it’s finally September and a bit less hectic, you’re too tired to go out or enjoy the weather. Often I’m sick, not really sick but lifeless and not interested in anything. That can last weeks – and then it’s winter again. (Hermans 1980: 103, 104)

During summer there is not only an exaggerated movement into the region, there is travel within it and out of it. If they can afford it, Mediterranean urbanites and, increasingly, people from rural towns and villages move to the mountains and seaside to escape the summer heat; they also travel to the north of Europe. Growing affluence is increasing summer dispersion of Mediterranean peoples away from their normal places of residence. Communal rituals are becoming more intense in summer. Traditional ritual events and the joyous celebration of community patron saints are not only prime tourist assets: more than ever they serve as symbols of community identity for the indigenous minority flooded by waves of strangers. In Malta, if not elsewhere, the scale of such celebrations is growing (Boissevain 1984). Winter festive celebrations are being shifted to summer. This is done as much to provide entertainment for visitors as it is to protect the growing treasure of decorations from winter storm damage. Secular entertainment has also intensified. Nightclubs, restaurants and discos have sprouted all along the Mediterranean. Built ostensibly for foreign tourists, they cater increasingly to locals. Escalation of summer entertainment and long hours of work away from family control heighten the traditional summer relaxation of moral standards. The holiday influx of hoards of unattached, provocatively dressed north European girls with different sexual morals is turning the erotic dreams of countless Mediterranean seaside machos into reality. Mediterranean young

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women are under increasing pressure to relax their own stricter sexual codes or risk virtually losing sight of their young men until winter (Boissevain 1979a; Hermans 1980; Stott 1979; Zinovieff 1991). The increased workload and the flux of outsiders have reduced interaction between locals. Those older than thirty are too involved in their exhausting work to socialize; the younger ones use their greater energy after work to interact with tourists (Boissevain 1979b). The pressure of work has also altered traditional patterns of summer leisure. Those involved in the tourist harvest have no time for family meals, siestas, beach outings, fishing expeditions and conversation in the cool of the evening. These were once important components of the traditional Mediterranean way of life. Many summer visitors are not foreign but are migrants returning to celebrate their annual holidays at home. To the locals they are very special. They are neighbours and kinsmen who must be welcomed home and feasted. Family prestige depends upon the lavishness of such hospitality. Summer, when hospitality can take place outside, in public, is thus also the season during which competing for prestige is most pronounced. Money carefully saved during the rest of the year in summer flows like water. Summer is a time for spending; winter for saving. Despite increased technology that has made it possible to travel almost instantly between Mediterranean countries at all times of the year, most people still move in the summer. They do so not solely for pleasure – many travel for war. Summer is still the time of Mediterranean coups and invasions. Most major military acts in the Mediterranean area since the 1943 allied summer invasion of Italy have taken place between April and October (Steinberg 1979): 1948 1952 1956 1965 1967 1969 1974

1980

May July June Oct. June April June Sept. April July Aug.

War erupts in Palestine. General Naguib seizes power in Egypt. British and French attack Suez. Israel invades Egypt. President Ben Bella of Algeria deposed by Colonel Boumedienne. Military coup in Greece. Six-Day War between Israel and Egypt. King Idris of Libya deposed in coup. Portuguese government overthrown by the military. President Makarios overthrown by military coup. Turkey invades Cyprus. Libyan warship threatens Maltese offshore oil operations.

The list can, and alas in future will, be extended. Armed military violence is still as much a summer activity as it was in the sixteenth century. Summer by

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the Mediterranean Sea thus still embraces the work, travel and celebration that characterized it in the age of Philip II. But in tourist zones these characteristics are becoming grossly distorted and dissonant. More than before, winter is the period during which Mediterranean societies repair the ravages of summer. Many people take months to recover from the summer work frenzy, from the tidal wave of visitors, and from the exhausting demands of pleasure. As the wave recedes, traditional social rhythms are re-established. Social control tightens as neighbours become visible once again. Church-going becomes more pronounced and the movement of girls more carefully watched; interaction between locals increases as they rediscover each other during the evening promenade and in cafes. In town, locals again stage operas, plays and exhibitions for each other. Communal and personal bonds are consolidated and tightened. As in the past, winter is still a period of standstill, of rest and peace. Thus despite sweeping developments, the seasonal variation of social behaviour is today just as pronounced as it was five centuries ago. If anything it has become more extreme. Technology and political–economic developments have not changed the underlying realities; they have exaggerated them. But there has been a change of another order. Increasingly, Mediterranean people no longer welcome summer as a release from the idleness and hardship of winter, as a time of joyous celebration; winter now provides release from summer. For many, the winter standstill, not the summer frenzy embodies the quintessence of Mediterranean life and culture. But perhaps it always has. Braudel notwithstanding, it seems likely that Mediterranean artists, architects and scientists were most active and creative after September’s oppressive humidity and before the onset of the debilitating heat of summer.

Acknowledgements These preliminary thoughts were formulated in March 1981 while I was Visiting Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex. I am grateful to Dirkjan Beukenhorst, Inga Boissevain, Joe and Theresa Friggieri, Dymphna Hermans and Maja Naur for discussing the weather with me.

Notes 1. Among others: Montesquieu (1754); de Stael (1800); Taine (1865); Durkheim (1897); Huntington (1924); Markham (1947).

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2. A random selection of travellers to Malta and Sicily demonstrates their preference for the summer: Brydone (1776) travelled from May 14 to August 1, 1770; De Non (1790) travelled between May and September 1778; Melon (1885) from 10 April until 11 June 1884. Only De Borch (1782) visited the islands in the winter. Perhaps for this reason he disagreed sharply with some of Brydone’s observations.

CHAPTER 2

UNHEALED SCARS: RELIGIOUS AND ETHNIC DIVERSITY AROUND THE MEDITERRANEAN*

The Mediterranean is criss-crossed with cultural frontiers, both major and minor, scars which are never completely healed and each with a role to play. F. Braudel, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II

Although Fernand Braudel wrote about the Mediterranean world in the age of Philip II, the unhealed scars to which he referred still exist. They are scars of hatred, prejudice, stereotype, suspicion and xenophobia. Some are centuries old, others are more recent; but all inhibit cultural exchange and contain the festering germs of conflict. These scars were once attached to specific geographical characteristics, for physical features provide the underlying reality of the religious and ethnic diversity around the Mediterranean Sea. Some, have travelled with migrants from the southern to the northern shores and thence, along with other scars, transported onward to northern Europe, are still visible and affect society today. The Mediterranean Sea divides the region into a northern and a southern shore. Peninsulas, mountains, islands and seas break up the northern coast. These fragment the area, engendering and preserving a greater ethnic, linguistic and religious diversity than is found on the southern shore. There the more uniform terrain and relatively unbroken coastline have permitted a greater ethnic and cultural unity to develop. It is a paradox of the Mediterranean region that in the past it was far more united than it is today: the geographical separation caused by the seas was bridged by imperial and colonial hegemony. Communication followed conquest. War, conquest and the trade that flourished along protected routes were the greatest stimulus Originally published as ‘Unhealed Scars: Some Notes on Ethnic and Religious Diversity around the Mediterranean’, in F. Lindo and M. van Niekerk (eds), Dedication and Detachment. Essays in Honour of Hans Vermeulen. Amsterdam: Het Spinhuis (2001), pp.  61–70. Reprinted by permission of Het Spinhuis.

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to cultural exchange but introversion and the withering of communication between the two shores followed the end of empire. The Mediterranean Sea increasingly has become a divide, not a bridge. There was far greater commercial and cultural traffic between Spain, France and Italy and the Maghreb countries in the past than there is today. As the locus of power shifted over the centuries between the various shores, the dominant culture also changed. At one time it emanated from Phoenicia, then from Greece. Rome then unified the region as never before, or since, with one dominant language and one political structure, confining diverse ethnic groups to specific boundaries until Arab expansion along the North African coast to the Atlantic and much of the northern shore. Crusaders also penetrated the region, ruthlessly driving a corridor through to the Middle East. The centuries of Arab domination brought new agricultural techniques and – through its universities – science and philosophy while the Ottoman Empire had an eastern focus: its relatively tolerant system of government embraced ethnic and religious minorities, permitting them to survive as long as they paid tribute to and acknowledged Ottoman hegemony. The relatively mild hegemony of Constantinople was ultimately replaced by one much harsher as the centre of power in the Mediterranean shifted once again towards the end of the sixteenth century and European countries sought to incorporate North Africa and the Middle East. This conquest also transferred new languages, architecture and technology to the southern and eastern shores and established new trade links. Empires can foster cultural exchange and trade but they also create dependency and exploitation; colonial hegemony leaves a bitter aftertaste. There may be awe, even respect, but there is little love of Europe in the Maghreb. Recent colonial experience is a memory shared by the entire southern shore of the Mediterranean. This shared experience, together with a common language and religion, provide a unity to the North African shore that the European shore lacks. The common background of colonial dependence forms one of the scars that have not healed. There are other, older scars that also influence communication. The wars, conquests and pogroms of the more remote past have formed underlying folk memories that shape and channel emotions. Like the shells and sharks’ teeth preserved for millennia in the Mediterranean limestone, prejudices generated in bygone ages are sustained and perpetuated in common rituals, proverbs and popular sayings. Together with the natural barriers of sea and mountains, these folk memories and prejudices help to explain why the peoples on the shores of the Mediterranean continue to view each other with suspicion. There are many examples of these ritualized scars, one being the Jewish celebration of Passover. Each year, during Passover, Jewish families commemorate Jewish suffering at the hands of the Egyptians. This ritual commemorates

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the miraculous escape of the children of Israel from their slavery and oppression in Egypt thousands of years ago. It is the responsibility of every Jewish father to recount this event to his sons each year (see Exodus 13:8). During the Passover meal, the eldest son asks his father why this, the Passover night, is different from all other nights. Why do we eat unleavened bread and bitter herbs, he asks? The father may answer, ‘. . . Unleavened bread’ because our forefathers were delivered from Egypt; ‘bitter herbs’ because the Egyptians made the lives of our ancestors bitter in Egypt . . . Therefore we are in duty bound to give thanks, to praise . . . Him who performed for our forefathers and for us all those miracles; He brought us forth from slavery to freedom, from sorrow to rejoicing, from mourning to festivity, from darkness to light, and from servitude to redemption; and let us say before Him, ‘Praise yet the Eternal (Rabban Gamaliel, in Blackman 1965: 219).

This ritual has been celebrated for thousands of years. Each Jew grows up with an image of Arabs renewed annually by means of the Passover ritual; such feelings enter into the subconscious and influence attitudes and actions. It is a cultural dimension that is relevant to the current situation in the Middle East and is similar to the deep-seated, though generally unvoiced, anti-Semitism encountered among the rural population of Sicily, many of whom still hold the Jews responsible for the crucifixion of Christ. The hegemony of the Arabs and Turks and the later incursion of their raiding parties are also preserved in the folk memory of southern Europe. In Spain, Malta, Italy and Greece mock battles between Christians and Turks or Moors are symbolically fought again annually at festivals and during carnival. These ritualized encounters take various forms, but common to all such pageants is the scenario of a battle between the forces of good and evil. Invariably the Turks or Moors are portrayed as cruel, treacherous, wicked, lascivious, ruthless and subhuman. The personification of barbarism: they represent evil. The Christians, of course, are presented as the embodiment of good, of faith, humanity and spiritual health – in short, as the epitome of civilization (Driessen 1985: 112). Although such mock battles appear to be nothing more than colourful pageants often acted out by children, as in Malta’s carnival Parata, they are folk dramas that incorporate a dichotomous worldview. They are both models of and models for a basic orientation to the world. As Driessen (1985) observes: Every society that claims to be civilized needs a model of barbarism. Moors have constituted the prototype of everything that was felt to be alien and inferior to Spanish culture and society. They served as a mode against which Spaniards could affirm and express their religion, collective identity and way of life . . . [T] he proximity of the ‘Others’ to Spain’s south, helped to clothe the ‘Others’ with factuality. Today, los moros still serve as a model of what Spaniards are not. The despised peoples who live in modern Spain are popularly attributed Moorish (or Jewish) origins (cf. Freeman 1979: 244).

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For the south European, the ‘other’ to hand is the Arab/Turk/Moor/Black, the inhabitant of the shore just over the horizon. This ‘other’ is not only personified once a year in the pageantry of mock battles: his cruel, ugly, bloodthirsty, cowardly and wicked persona is incorporated, at least in Malta, into early vernacular literature (Cassola 2000: 54–77). The North African ‘other’ is still present in the legends and sayings that form part of the lore through which children are socialized. All Maltese children have heard or read the legend of the beautiful Mosta maiden who was captured by Turkish pirates. Maltese mothers still admonish their children to behave by frightening them with ‘the Turk’: ‘Ara gej it-Tork ghalik! (Mind! the Turk is coming for you). When it rains and shines at the same time, the Maltese say twieled Tork (a Turk has been born). Angry adults still shout at each other to Mur sib xi Tork! (Go find a Turk!) (Cassar Pullicino l948: 189; Cassola 1997). In Andalusia mothers also invoke the threat of el Moro to train their children, and ambulant North African traders are treated with contempt and distrust (Driessen l985: 112). In Malta children used to taunt Tunisian vendors passing through their villages, crying Alla kbir. Mawmettu hanzir (Alla is great. Mohammed is a pig): among Mediterranean peoples, and especially among Arabs, referring to someone as a pig is an extremely offensive insult. Though since the Second World War these vendors no longer come to Malta, the taunts have not been forgotten, as the following episode shows. A few years ago a colleague at the University of Malta recounted how several days earlier his son had been playing football with a neighbour, the son of a North African diplomat. Apparently the North African boy made fun of the way my colleague’s son crossed himself before he took a free kick. Quick as a flash, the Maltese boy shouted back, Alla kbir. Mawmettu hanzir! My friend was surprised, not to say shocked to hear this. His son had not heard it from him. Later he discovered that the boy had learned it from his grandmother. The insults apparently rolled off the backs of the young footballers, although they might well have led to a fight had they been older. Such deeply embedded prejudices that surface unexpectedly in moments of anger can spark off crises. Some may say that this little episode also offers evidence that such prejudice is dying. After all, the boy had learned the insult from his grandmother, not from his parents. I fear that this is not the case. The antipathy to the Turk/Arab/Black, though often silent, is deep-seated and still widely held in Malta. This prejudice was dormant from l940 until the l970s but surfaced again when Libyan tourists and students began going to Malta as a consequence of the pro-Arab foreign policy of the Socialist government (1971– 1987), in the course of which Libyans were defined as ‘blood brothers’. The 1990s brought a growing stream of dark-skinned asylum seekers, irregular immigrants, exchange students and tourists from the Middle East and Africa. This influx exacerbated existing prejudices. A few first-hand reports and press

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accounts have detailed how some Arab men in fact harassed or even assaulted Maltese women. These accounts, avidly retold and embellished have served to confirm and feed existing stereotypes. They demonstrate that discrimination against Arabs and blacks is very much alive and appears to be increasing. See below for some examples of prejudice in Malta: A hotel manager refused accommodation to an Arab businessman. When asked for an explanation, the manager declared, in strong language, that it was the hotel’s policy to refuse entry to Arabs. He later apologized excusing himself by explaining that ‘We were not aware of the . . . regulations of 1972 . . .’. (it-Torca, 2 June 1991) An indignant English woman living in Malta, commenting on the growing racism, described how during a recent bus trip, she saw a young black English tourist sit down next to a middle-aged Maltese woman who then ‘immediately stood up as if struck by the plague and moved to a seat as far away as possible from the “offending” party’. (The Times, 3 March 1998) A French-born mathematics professor of Arab descent complained that he was repeatedly refused entry to Paceville nightclubs because of his Arab looks. (The Times, 23 November 1998) Three black British dancers, members of a British dance company in Malta to perform at the national theatre, were refused entry to a club by a bouncer who allowed the other – white – members of the company to enter. (The Malta Independent on Sunday, 20 February 2000)

Laws do not eliminate prejudice, they merely camouflage it. * * * The noted Yugoslav writer and liberal politician Milovan Djilas gave a chilling and prophetic account in 1958 of how an embedded prejudiced worldview held by an ethnic group can take on a concrete and terrifying form. He described the exploits of a Montenegrin who took part in the slaughter of Moslems following the First World War: ‘Sekula who cut the ligaments of the Moslem’s heels . . . hated the Turks . . . He regarded the Moslems, whom he called Turks, as naturally responsible for every evil, and he held it equally to be his inescapable duty to wreak vengeance on this alien creed and to extirpate it’ (Djilas l958: 210–11, quoted in Simic 1991: 29). These same scars and sentiments gave rise to the horrendous atrocities committed during the Second World War. For several decades after the war these violent sentiments were contained by Marshal Tito’s iron discipline. After Tito’s death, the scars again opened and the triggered the widely reported orgy of bloodshed and rape between Muslims and Christians and between Greek Orthodox Christians and Catholics during the 1990s (cf. Bax 1995, 1996, 1997; Glenny 1992).

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Scars of long standing all too often accompany religious and ethnic differences. Political leaders use these differences as resources to revive deeply embedded prejudices and folk memories in times of crisis, causing them to resonate emotionally. Politicians use these differences as symbols to transform political manoeuvrings into religious and/or nationalistic movements. Realpolitik is legitimized by religion and nationalism. Saddam Hussein in 1992 portrayed resistance to his annexation of Kuwait as an attack on Islam. He claimed that he, like Saladin, was defending Islam and the Arab world against the European (neo-)colonial infidels. It worked in part, although ultimately it failed. The technique is as old as history itself. * * * I have occasionally heard people in conversation opining that tourism brings cultures together. But it is unlikely that the increasing tourist traffic between and along the Mediterranean shores will stimulate cultural exchange. As MacCannell (1984: 387) perceptively observes, ‘[T] he relationship between the tourists and the local people is temporary and unequal. Any social relationship that is transitory, superficial and unequal is a primary breeding ground for deceit, exploitation, no trust, dishonesty and stereotype formation’. Numerous studies also show that in the course of time, initial enthusiastic hospitality gives way to commercialism: social relations become commodified. Describing the impact of tourism on traditional values and beliefs in Tunisia, Bouhdiba observes, ‘What would once have been regarded as unpardonable coldness, unworthy of the Tunisian character and tradition, becomes a necessity... Hospitality has become just another technique of selling a set of standardized goods and services for the best price’ (Bouhida 1976, quoted by De Kadt 1979: 63–64).1 Tourists transact culture with their hosts, they do not exchange it. Moreover, all too often tourists are poor representatives of their own culture. They have stepped outside it to enjoy themselves, escaping from the established routines, constraints of time and place and behavioural codes that normally rule their daily lives. Hence tourists often behave in ways that would be unacceptable in their own society. For example, many of the inhabitants of the tiny Maltese medieval town of Mdina (with a population of 350), which is visited by close to one million tourists annually, complain that the visitors litter their streets, are excessively noisy, urinate in public and walk around in beach attire. They are particularly offended when tourists enter their churches unsuitably dressed or barge into their houses and courtyards, uninvited, for a quick look around (see Chapter 13). Some tourists are patronizing, and use their hosts’ poverty, unusual behaviour or exotic rituals to confirm their own prejudices and sense of superiority. A personal experience demonstrates this forcefully: several years ago I was in Malta watching the Good Friday procession in Naxxar. A tourist couple stood

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nearby filming the event. Suddenly the man leaned over to his partner and muttered in Dutch, ‘Jezus! Wat een heidens gedoe!’ (Jesus! What a heathen business). Obviously the colourful pageantry merely served to confirm the anti-Catholic prejudice that is still widespread in the Netherlands and, consequently, his own feeling of superiority. Such insensitive behaviour by tourists is far from uncommon (see Abbink 2000; Chapter 11). Ulla Wagner pointedly asks how tourism can possibly lead to cultural understanding when tourists behave in ways that deeply offend the people among whom they stay (1981, cited in Crick 1989: 328). It is questionable how far state policy can stimulate cultural exchange. Increased interaction with the ‘other’ does not necessarily generate understanding and empathy or reduce stereotypes. A government can enjoin dialogue, even cooperation, but cannot eradicate prejudice embedded in the culture. Studies have shown that actual contact with the ‘other’ appears merely to confirm and exacerbate already held prejudices (see Brewer 1984; Khattab 2001; Abbink 2000: 8–14). This appears to be taking place in Malta. The political measure enacted in the 1970s redefining Libyans as ‘blood brothers’ did not bring about the cultural rapprochement that the Socialist government of Malta had hoped for. Nor has the steady increase in tourist arrivals, asylum seekers and irregular immigrants increased Maltese tolerance of the ‘other’. Quite the contrary: a recent study documented a sharp rise in intolerance of tourists and other races during past two decades. In 1999 twice as many residents as in 1991 said they did not want Muslims or different races as neighbours (30 per cent and 15 per cent respectively), and compared to 1984, four times as many in 1999 said they did not want tourists living nearby (Abela 2000: 219–220, Figure 6.11).2 The massive immigration of North Africans to Spain is also provoking xenophobic reactions. So much so that the wife of the regional premier of Catalonia recently lost her cool, claiming that Muslim migrants were the main beneficiaries of social security payments to large families. ‘These benefits go to people who do not even know what Catalonia is’, she irately exclaimed, adding that Catalonia’s churches would soon be overshadowed by mosques (The Guardian, 1 March 2001: 6). The expansion of the European Union may well unite the Mediterranean countries of Europe into a single market. But because of unhealed scars of long standing, exacerbated by recent developments, this union is most unlikely to weld them into a cultural unity. On the other hand, the division of the Mediterranean into two unequal trading blocs is likely to reinforce, and thus intensify, existing cultural, religious, ethnic, political and, of course, economic differences.

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Acknowledgements Some of these ideas were first presented at a colloquium on ‘The Mediterranean: Bridge or Divide?’, Mediterranean Academy of Diplomatic Studies, University of Malta, May 1991 and at the conference on ‘Stereotypes and Alterity: Perceptions of “Otherness” in the Mediterranean’, UNESCO and Foundation for International Studies, Malta, November 1997. I am grateful to the participants and to Franklin Mamo and Paul Clough for their helpful comments.

Notes 1. Pi-Sunyer (1977) and Greenwood (1977) make similar observations about the impact of tourism in Spain. But also see Pi-Sunyer (1989). 2. The increase in xenophobia may also have been stimulated by the Maltese Labour Party’s repeated warning that European Union membership would open Malta to an unwelcome invasion of EU citizens who would spread AIDS, take jobs from Maltese people and in general threaten traditional values.

CHAPTER 3

FACTIONS, PARTIES AND POLITICS IN A MALTESE VILLAGE*

Introduction In writing up my fieldwork I puzzled about which English terms to use for the various collectives and contentious divisions that criss-cross Farrug, the Maltese village in which I was staying.1 In spite of the fact that almost thirty years ago Linton (1936: 229) suggested that the study of factions presented ‘an interesting and still almost unexplored field’, relatively little work has been done on the subject. Though Siegel and Beals recently discussed factionalism at considerable length in two interesting papers (1960a and b), they said little about factions, for their primary interest was the study of conflict. But regardless of where it is classified on the conflict continuum, factionalism is conflict between factions. It would thus seem that a more profitable approach to the study of factionalism would be to begin by examining the groups between which there is conflict. The term faction is often employed loosely to designate groups of very different levels of structural complexity whose only characteristics in common seem to be that they are in conflict with other similar groups. The use of specific terms in the analysis of social organization assumes comparisons and ultimately leads to the formulation of comparable problems (cf. Barth 1961: 13). Yet it is obvious that comparison is meaningless if the things being compared are not of the same order. For example, the term faction is used by Murdock (1949: 90) to designate competing regional districts, tribal moieties and enduring village political divisions; by Lewis (1954) for rival kinship groups with important social, economic and ceremonial functions; and by Mayer (1961: 122 ff.) for temporary groups recruited for particular disputes. But are these factions in the OK conventionally accepted sense? Originally published as ‘Factions, Parties and Politics in a Maltese Village’, American Anthropologist 66 (1964): 1275–287. Reprinted by permission of www.anthrosource.net.

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Harold Lasswell defined a faction as ‘any constituent group of a larger unit which works for the advancement of particular persons or policies’. He also noted that ‘the term itself drops out of usage when certain lines of cleavage have become rather permanent features of the political life of a group; these divisions are accepted as parties’ (Lasswell 1931: 49). Many years later, Raymond Firth, in summing up the findings of a symposium on factions in Indian and overseas Indian societies, pointed out that they are loosely ordered groups; that their bases of recruitment are structurally diverse; and that they tend to become activated on specific occasions and not as a regularly recurring feature. He also drew attention to the fact that regular structural units of a subsociety may be regarded as factions by the society at large (Firth 1957: 292). This referred specifically to a matter stressed by H.S. Morris, one of the contributors to the symposium, who noted that though Europeans and Africans in Uganda regard the caste and sectarian groups of the Indian Community as factions, they are actually permanent corporate groups for which the term faction is inappropriate. He observed that the term might have been appropriate at an earlier stage of history before these groups ‘solidified into permanent elements of the structure of Indian society’ (Morris 1957: 316). A faction is thus seen as a loosely ordered group in conflict with a similar group over a particular issue. It is not a corporate group, though at a certain point in time it may undergo a change and become a group of a higher order for which the term faction is no longer appropriate. This apparently takes place when a faction solidifies and assumes certain permanence. But we are not told very much about the criteria used to judge the relative solidness and permanence of factions. This is a matter to which I shall give some attention. With these preliminary remarks in mind, we can now look more closely at the conflicting groups whose members tried to get me to commit myself to their particular causes during the period I lived among them. In describing these groups I avoid the term faction: which groups may and which may not be appropriately called factions is a matter with which I deal at the end.

The Setting The 330,000 inhabitants of the former British colony of Malta are crowded onto three small islands with a total area of 122 square miles. Malta’s history has been determined by its small size and strategic location in the centre of the Mediterranean; for centuries it was run as an island fortress. All government services are administered from Valletta, the capital, by Maltese civil servants; there are no mayors, headmen, or councillors who represent or administer the individual. In the absence of secular authorities at the village level, the parish priests have emerged as the traditional spokesmen in both religious and secular affairs for the fervently Roman Catholic population.

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Though Malta has a long history of limited self-government, when I carried out fieldwork between 1960 and 1961, the parliament had been suspended and the islands were under the Governor’s direct rule. The colony became an independent nation on 21 September 1964. Farrug, the village with which this chapter deals, is a small, compact parish of about 1,400 inhabitants, who are chiefly dependent upon wage labour for their livelihood (see also Boissevain 1965, 1969, 2006b). Most work for the Government of Malta or the British Armed Services stationed on the island. Though it is somewhat smaller than most Maltese villages, the central features of Farrug are much the same as those of its larger neighbours. Authority is distributed between the parish priest, the police, and a host of elected and appointed office holders representing the interests of the many formal and informal associations and groups in the community. Of these, only the parish priest and the police are able to back up their commands with sanctions that compel respect, if not obedience. The current parish priest is the sixth to be assigned to the village since the end of the war. Most were transferred after running afoul of the village’s many conflicting groups. The people of Farrug occasionally remark that there are too many clubs and societies for the size of the village. There are two brass band clubs, a football club and an active Labour Party committee. There are also two sections of Catholic Action, a male branch of an ascetic lay society (MUSEUM) and three confraternities, or devotional brotherhoods, dedicated to the Blessed Sacrament, the Holy Rosary and St. Roque. The only time the village meets as a group is in a religious context: that is, for worship and certain devotional processions and feasts. In each village, the most important of these is the annual festa of the patron saint. These festi provide the chief public entertainment of the countryside, and the good name of a village depends upon its ability to celebrate with a lavish feast. Thus most of the issues and decisions that affect the entire village have to do with religious matters.

Patterns of Conflict Although Farrug tries to present a tightly united front to outsiders, cleavages cut across it at various levels. Some of these divisions are temporary, others have become permanent; but regardless of their duration, all inhabitants are painfully aware of them, for persons made vulnerable through their network of personal relations are often obliged to support a particular division. In doing this they are forced to become the opponents of neighbours and relatives in other divisions. This is a characteristic of all small communities, but it is particularly true of a village such as Farrug, in which the inhabitants are closely related through kinship and affinity. Ninety per cent of the inhabitants were born in the village; the remainder have married into it.

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The Maltese call conflicting groups within a village partiti (singular, partit). A partit is a group that supports a person or policy in competition with a rival group supporting a different person or policy. A partit can thus be either a faction or a party in Lasswell’s sense. Partiti are said to have pika between them. Pika denotes relations of competition, ill feeling, or hostility. Villagers consider partiti to be a bad thing, for they disrupt the harmony of the village and make it more difficult to project the ideal image of village unity to the outside world. The oldest division in Farrug is that between the followers, or partit, of St. Martin, the patron saint of the village, and the partit that supports St. Roque. The latter is a secondary saint as regards his official position in the parish, but one who has come to assume an importance almost equal to that of the patron saint in the social life of the community. A more recent cleavage is that between the supporters of the Malta Labour Party and those who support the archbishop in his fight against it. Within these two major divisions, and within the village’s formal associations, cleavages sometimes occur over temporary issues and disputes. Less frequently disputes unrelated to these major divisions cut across the village. We can now examine these divisions in some detail. In terms of structure, origin, social composition and disputes, all festa partiti in the country resemble each other very much.2 Each of the two partiti in Farrug has its own brass band club, the officers of which are the leaders of the partit. Each band club has its elaborate premises complete with bar and social meeting rooms, and arranges the organizational aspects of the external feast of its patron saint. The band clubs are the nuclei of the partiti. The religious confraternities are also aligned with the partiti: the older confraternities of the Blessed Sacrament and the Holy Rosary support St. Martin, while that of St. Roque celebrates the feast of its namesake. Several of the partiti leaders are also officers of their respective confraternities. In addition to the formal members of its band club and confraternities, each festa partit has a rank and file of men, women and children who are not formal members of either club, but who still support the partit against its rival. The festa partiti compete with each other over almost every aspect of their festi, from the decoration of the streets and the adornment of the statue to the number of invited bands and the quantity and quality of fireworks. Even the exact number of communicants, the number and size of candles on the altars and the amount of light bulbs illuminating the facade of the church enter into the competition. During the year I spent in the village, for example, St. Martin’s supporters spent over $3,700 (U.S.) on the centenary celebration of their patron, while their rivals spent almost $1,700 (U.S.) on the annual festa of St. Roque.3 Most of the money was spent on illuminating the streets and the church, on guest bands and on the raw materials for the fireworks which were made in the village by the partisans.

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The president of the St. Roque band club told me about the origin of these partiti. I have checked the story and believe it to be substantially correct; it is in many respects similar to the accounts that I collected about the origins of the festa partiti in other villages. This is the story as he told it to me: A new parish priest who had a strong personal devotion to St. Roque came to the village in 1877. Because he wanted to inject some more life into this rural parish he asked for and received permission from the archbishop to establish a confraternity dedicated to St. Roque. The first feast in honour of St. Roque marked the establishment of the confraternity and was celebrated in October 1878. The feast was simple, but during the next few years it grew in scale. In 1886 some persons began to grumble about having to pay for another feast. There was a feeling of ‘You collect for your feast and we’ll collect for ours’. In 1888 the parish priest quarrelled with some villagers about his alleged misuse of parish funds to buy street decorations for the feast of St. Roque. These accusations made him furious. From that day onward he threw his support behind the feast of St. Roque. Full-scale partiti came into being around 1890, and each partit opened a social club soon after.

St. Martin partisans maintain that their club was founded around 1880 and that the founders of the St. Roque club broke away from theirs around 1900. Thus they claim their club has considerable seniority and therefore the right to precedence in ceremonies. St. Roque supporters do not admit this. Since there are no written records to support either claim, the clubs are usually deadlocked over the precedence issue and refuse to allow their bands to play on the rare occasions when they are supposed to take part in a ceremony together. The members of the partiti no longer change sides, although this occurred in the generation following their establishment. Today one is either born into a partit, or marries into it: children support the feast of their parents, and an outsider marrying into the village generally supports that of his spouse. Marriages between members of rival partit are regarded as undesirable, although they occasionally do take place. Thus of the 234 married couples in the village in 1961, 105 marriages were between native Farrugin and, of these, 75 were between members of the same partit (see also Boissevain 1965: 83; 1969: 38). Children of mixed marriages support the feast of their favourite parent: boys normally follow their fathers and girls their mothers. Though each partit claims that it is larger than its opponent, the band clubs each have a membership of about eighty men, and I found that the village was fairly evenly divided between the two. Forty-eight per cent of the men and women supported St. Martin, 42 per cent St. Roque, and 10 per cent were uncommitted. Of those uncommitted, 63 per cent were outsiders who had married into the village. But if there is not a significant difference in the size of the partiti, there is in their social composition. The supporters of St. Martin, on the whole, belong to a higher occupational class than their rivals. I found that 83 per cent of the

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white-collar workers support St. Martin, while only 38 per cent of the farmers, the lowest occupational class, do so. Considering the way membership is now inherited, it would appear that the social position of the members of the founding generation influenced their choice of partit. Apart from this class division, I found no evidence in Farrug, or in any other village so divided, of other pre-existing cleavages out of which these festa partiti might have grown. Finally we may note that there is no territorial division between the partiti. There is a tendency, however, for more St. Martin supporters to live in the better residential area near the church, and for St. Roque supporters to live in the less desirable sections of the village. This is a reflection of their occupational class. Social mobility does not involve a change of partit though it is often linked to a change of residence. Disputes between the partiti concern matters that affect their precedence and ability to display devotion to their saints. The course that such disputes take is highly formalized and usually begins when the St. Roque partit petitions the parish priest for a new privilege. St. Martin leaders then try to check their rivals by threatening to cancel their feast. At this point the parish priest passes the dispute up to the archbishop’s Curia for judgment. Both sides then use all the influence they can in order to obtain a decision favourable to them. If the decision favours St. Martin, the dispute usually ends quickly, for St. Roque’s partisans dare not threaten to cancel their feast for fear that the Church might suppress it forever. This has occurred to secondary feasts in some villages. But if the decision favours St. Roque and his followers, St. Martin’s partisans refuse to hold their feast for a year or so, or until they can wring some concession from the parish priest or the archbishop. After that a new dispute arises over some other issue, and the process starts again. But let us look at some of the major skirmishes during the ten years prior to my visit. Between 1952 and 1954 there was trouble over the right of the St. Roque religious procession to pass along a street over which St. Martin claimed exclusive rights. When the parish priest backed St. Roque, St. Martin followers not only refused to celebrate their feast, but they also exploded a huge firework in the drainpipe under the unfortunate cleric’s house. Relations were restored when the archbishop transferred the severely frightened priest – at the latter’s urgent request (to a parish with only one band club) – and modified the route of the St. Roque procession. In 1956 the St. Martin band club refused to celebrate its festa because the St. Roque confraternity had been given permission to renew two of the bunches of artificial flowers that stand on his altar. The following year the St. Roque band refused to play at the installation ceremony of the new parish priest because the archbishop had denied the St. Roque confraternity permission to hang a new picture over the altar of its patron. In 1960 the parish priest infuriated St. Roque followers when he did not allow the partit to participate in the centenary festa for St. Martin. (The poor man’s hands were tied, for St. Martin supporters

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refused to have anything to do with the festa if their rivals took part in it.) And while I was in the village, there was a sharp dispute over which band was to have precedence at the installation ceremony of the new parish priest. They could not agree, so neither played. So far I have discussed only the more important clashes between the partiti. During the course of a year, numerous fundraising fairs run by the band clubs are also occasions on which the village divides along festa partit lines. While supporters of the partit running the fair flock to it, their rivals either stage their own fair or, and this is more usual, they hire several buses and leave the village for a picnic or a pilgrimage to some shrine of their saint. Rivalry runs highest, of course, during the annual celebration of each festa. Then forty or more policemen are often required to keep the jeering and abusive rivals – men, women, and children – from coming to blows.

Political Rivalry The open conflict between the followers of the anti-clerical Malta Labour Party, on the one hand, and the archbishop, on the other, has divided Malta. This division is reflected in Farrug, where we find that national political issues have cut deeply across the division between festa partiti. The parish priest is the leader of those who support the archbishop. His most enthusiastic followers are the members of MUSEUM and Catholic Action. The lay leaders of the latter society are for the most part also officers of the St. Martin club, as are the other influential persons who help the parish priest. The Labour Party supporters look to the members of the village MLP (Malta Labour Party) committee for leadership. These are also mostly prominent members of the St. Martin partit. Most are civil servants, skilled workers and technicians employed within the government or the dockyard. This committee was elected while I was in Farrug; previously the village’s MLP section had no formal officers. Now the Farrug Labour group is tightly linked to the national MLP structure. In general, the Labour Party recruits its support from skilled and unskilled labourers who work outside the village in the dockyard area and in the industrial departments of the government. They are opposed, speaking again in very general terms, by the professional and salaried classes and the farmers, who generally support the church. The Labour Party secured a good measure of support outside these rough lines during the three years it was in office prior to the suspension of parliament. It did this by helping the farmers, establishing social assistance and health schemes, building many new schools and other public works and by officially transferring the hiring of casual government labourers from the hands of patronage-conscious politicians to the government’s Labour Office.

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But the increasingly anti-clerical policy of the Labour Party and the heavy sanctions the Church began to impose on it alienated many Labour supporters. During 1961 the Church took firm steps to make people choose between it and the Labour Party. The archbishop interdicted most of the Labour Party leaders. He also instructed confessors to deny absolution to those persons who read, contribute to, print, or sell the Labour newspaper. Individual priests now also refuse absolution to those who attend MLP meetings or show sympathy for it in other ways. They portray Dom Mintoff, the Labour Party leader, as a socialist devil working to turn the islands over to communism in the manner of Cuba’s Castro. About 70 per cent of Farrug supports the Labour Party,4 though considerably less than half that number is made up of dues-paying members. Both festa partiti reflect this division. There are, however, relatively few occasions when all the supporters of either the MLP or the Church face each other as groups at the village level. The few times I saw this occur were during national rallies; May Day provided such an occasion. In the morning the Labour supporters, mostly men, went to take part in the big Labour parade in Valletta. The same afternoon their opponents from the village, mostly women and children, went to the archbishop’s rally just outside Valletta. While the groups were each gathered in the village waiting for their respective buses, there was a good bit of name-calling and singing of appropriate songs: the Catholic Action girls sang the papal hymn; and some of the Labour enthusiasts sang their own words to the same melody. During the year there were also a number of incidents in the village that were directly related to this political tension. Slogans appeared on the walls; the parish priest had to tell a young Labour supporter to leave the church for being rude; unknown persons destroyed some decorations of the MUSEUM; and someone set fire to the front door of a shop belonging to one of the Labour leaders.

Conflict within Associations In looking at the village as a whole, we have seen how two important principles of organization – loyalty to a certain saint and loyalty to a political ideology – have divided the people of Farrug. Virtually every person in the village is committed to supporting one of the festa partiti and has taken a position for or against the Labour Party. These principles, in turn, form potential lines of cleavage in the formal village associations that are not aligned with a political party or festa partit. The two band clubs are exclusive units with regard to the festa rivalry. The boy’s Catholic Action is, in effect, also an exclusive group, for after the parish priest chased out the sons of Labour supporters, only about eight young men

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remained. All of these are St. Martin supporters. Although the MUSEUM members are mixed, their important issues concern spiritual matters, and they have divorced themselves from the festa activity. The Labour committee is also mixed with regard to festa rivalry. But thus far this has not been a source of conflict within the group, possibly because the Labour leaders are also important members of the St. Martin band club. The members of the girl’s Catholic Action and the football club include some of the most vocal partisans of St. Martin and St. Roque. This results occasionally in the division of the associations along festa partit lines. For example, the football club was almost deserted during the two months preceding the St. Martin centenary, when rivalry between the festa partiti was running very high. Both societies try to avoid division by taking no formal part in the celebration of the two feasts. The situation with regard to political loyalty is somewhat different. The Labour Party committee and the church societies are exclusive groups. In practice the football club is as well, for all its active members are Labour supporters. That leaves only the band clubs with politically mixed membership. Open conflict between rival political partisans has not yet occurred in the St. Roque club, although the lines of potential cleavage are present. This is chiefly because the leaders of the club have made it a matter of principle to suppress their personal political feelings in order to preserve the unity of the club. They feel that only as long as they are tightly united can they survive as a partit in the face of the Church’s determination to put an end to festa rivalry by reducing secondary feasts and eliminating the secondary partiti. In contrast, the church does not threaten the continued existence of the St. Martin partit. Indeed the church’s policy is to build up titular festi at the expense of secondary celebrations. It thus does not have the same functional need to remain united, as does its rival. This has made it more vulnerable to internal dissensions. Moreover we have also observed that persons who are also leaders of the St. Martin club lead both the MLP supporters and their opponents. At club committee meetings these persons continue to oppose each other over many issues of club policy. This division among the club leaders causes the rank and file to take sides. If the dispute is resolved rapidly it has no effect on the unity of the group. But if the conflict remains unsettled for some time all members may be asked to align themselves. At this point the continued existence of the club as a united corporate body is seriously threatened by the possibility of one of the groups leaving the club. This physical division is usually avoided by the activity of peacemakers who place the unity of the club over partisan loyalties. For example, during the recent centenary celebration, the St. Martin band club was divided over whether to fire the traditional firecracker salute for the archbishop when he came to take part in the festa. Figure 3.1 gives an idea of the importance the club members attached to the firework component of their celebration.

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Figure 3.1 Fireworks for the 1960 centenary celebration and the men who made them.

The Labour element won, and the club voted against the salute, but there was bitter feeling over the matter. This, however, disappeared when the archbishop announced that he could not come. The opposing elements in the club then united and celebrated a rousing feast, much to the chagrin of their rivals. In 1930 however the club actually split in two over a similar crisis between the supporters of Lord Strickland, on the one hand, and the archbishop, who opposed him, on the other. The two clubs eventually reunited, but not until the political conflict at the national level began to subside following the suspension of the constitution in 1933. When I left Malta in 1961 the St. Martin club seemed to be facing such a crisis again. The young Labour members had just successfully boycotted the festa of their patron saint in retaliation for the attacks of the Church on their political party. Older members of both political parties, who remembered the bitterness of the 1930 split, were trying to bring the opponents together to avoid an open breach in club unity.

Other Issues Occasionally the village is divided by incidents totally unrelated to either festa partiti or national politics. These incidents are rare, for there are relatively few matters unrelated to politics or festi in which the community has a

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collective interest. But such an event occurred while I was there. It concerned one of the few pieces of common property that a village possesses, namely the parish church. The inhabitants of Farrug are very possessive about their parish church, as are all parishioners in Malta and Gozo. The parish church for them is more than just a central place of worship: it is the repository of the village’s collective wealth. Generations of inhabitants have spent huge sums to decorate it, and they show it with pride to all visitors. It is, in a very real sense, physical proof of their piety. For this reason any alteration to it is a matter of concern to all the members of the village, irrespective of whether they support St. Martin or St. Roque, or the Labour leader or the archbishop. Several years ago the parish priest proposed to redecorate part of interior of the church. The villagers welcomed his initiative and contributed generously. But when the scaffolding was removed they discovered, to their horror, that besides regilding the ceiling, he had placed his personal coat of arms high over the chancel. He was the first priest to have done such a thing, and he had done so without consulting the village! There was much grumbling, but in time the priest was promoted to a larger parish, and the matter appeared to be forgotten. Then one morning, two months after he had left, the village was startled by the news that persons unknown had sneaked into the church in the dead of night and hacked off the offending coat of arms and in its place gleamed the freshly painted emblem of the village. To add insult to injury, the nocturnal painters telephoned the priest to announce that he would find something interesting the next time he visited Farrug. Though the offended priest called in the police, they did not find the culprits. The village has a good idea who the guilty ones are, but no one speaks, for most are quite pleased that the arms have been removed. However, he incident did divide the village, and the St. Martin partit in particular, for about a month. Most of the members of the St. Roque partit were extremely pleased with this humiliation of a person who they had regarded as their enemy and most of the members of the St. Martin partit, though they had looked on the priest as their friend, were also secretly pleased that the coat of arms had been removed. But a few members of the St. Roque partit, and three of the leaders of the St. Martin club objected to the insulting way in which a priest had been humiliated. The three leaders of the St. Martin club, all of whom had continued to maintain important personal relations with the ex-parish priest, proposed that their club apologize to him and hang his picture in the sacristy of the church. Though they worked hard to mobilize support for this apology, they met with very little success. Their proposal was defeated when it came to a formal vote in the club, and though the three officers resigned in protest, the issue died with the defeat of their motion.

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Conclusion I have tried to isolate several sets of conflicting groups and present them so that their essential structural features could be observed. At the level at which the village is seen as a group we distinguished the festa partiti, the political divisions, and the loose groups which came into existence over the coat of arms. At a lower level we observed that many of the village’s constituent groups and associations were divided from time to time by specific issues that affected their members. In terms of structure and organization, these groups differ considerably. Each festa partit has a wide base of members, some of whom are members of the partit club, whose elected officers are leaders of the partit. Each partit meets as a group fairly often and each owns property. The partiti have existed for seventy years and the people regard them as permanent groups. Membership to a partit is inherited. The two rival political groups in the village are also each composed of many supporters, some of whom are members of formal associations whose elected and appointed officers are looked to as leaders of the whole group. Each party meets occasionally, but the members own no property in common. Though this political division has existed for about eleven years, the people do not look upon it as permanent. Membership is voluntary and not inherited. The divisions that arose over the coat-ofarms issue did not have associations at their centre, and at the village level they did not have formal leaders, though in the St. Martin partit they did have informal leaders or spokesmen. The temporary rival groups that formed within the village associations over such issues as the firecracker salute were structurally similar to the opposing coat-of-arms groups in the St. Martin partit, though they recruited support along political lines. For which of these groups, if any, is the term faction appropriate? I suggest that the only groups that are clearly factions, in the sense that Lasswell and Firth used the term, are those of the order of the firecracker and coat-ofarms groups within the St. Martin partit. These were temporary groups that arose over specific issues and, except for leaders, they had none of the corporate characteristics of the kind that Maine and Radcliffe-Brown pointed to (Maine 1890; Radcliffe-Brown 1950: 41). We can thus speak of the Labour or the anti-Labour factions in the band clubs, or of the festa factions in the football club or Catholic Action. These were groups that recruited support along lines of cleavage that originated outside the groups in which they arose. In this they differed somewhat from the opposing groups that arose within the St. Martin partit over the removal of the coat of arms. Here recruitment was not based upon pre-existing external cleavages: in the case of its leaders, membership of the dissident group within the partit was based upon friendship with the offended priest, or to be more precise, upon clientship with an influential patron, and in the case of those who they rallied to their cause, it

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was generally based upon kinship. But these various sets of opposing groups, regardless of their basis of recruitment, were factions, for they were temporary groups recruited over particular disputes. In contrast, the festa partiti are units of a higher structural order. Though they began as factions, they now exhibit a full range of corporate characteristics (permanence, common property, frequent meetings, elected leaders, and so on). They are clearly not factions, but parties in the sense that Lasswell used the term. The political divisions, on the other hand, are not clearly one or the other. Two years ago I think the term faction would have been appropriate. Then the members did not meet regularly in opposition to each other and, in the case of the Labour group, did not have formal leaders at the village level. But in the last year they have become corporate groups, though not all their members regard them as permanent and membership is voluntary and not inherited. Thus they are no longer true factions. But what of the division that arose at the village level over the removal of coat of arms? I would suggest that it is not appropriate to regard as factions those holding opposing views on a particular issue, unless they can be seen to have some sort of unity and leadership. As it so happened, these persons were not forced to state their position openly and align themselves against each other. If they had been asked to express their opinion by concrete action – such as contributions for the picture to be hung in the sacristy – it is likely that the division would have cut deeply enough to force those holding similar opinions to enter into contact with each other to defend their point of view. At this stage it would have been possible to speak of opposing factions at the village level. But the dispute was resolved before this deeper division occurred, and thus factions did not arise. It would appear then that the factors that are critical in determining whether competing groups of a larger unit are factions are their corporate structural characteristics and the way the members themselves regard their permanence. Where a group exhibits a full range of corporate characteristics and its members regard it as permanent, the term faction is inappropriate. Nor is it appropriate for the division between persons who hold opposing opinions on a particular issue if they have not been forced to align themselves openly to defend their point of view against their rivals. A faction is thus a group located between divided public opinion, on the one hand, and competing corporate units, on the other. In closing I must point to one other attribute of factions. It will be evident from the foregoing arguments that in examining factions I have been looking at political groups of the lowest order. That is, they are groups that compete to influence the outcome of disputes and policy in accordance with their own interests (Mair 1962: 10; Smith 1960: 17). As such they provide the movement, the dynamic aspect of any structure. Often characterized as disruptive, they are in effect the means by which community decisions are achieved

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and changes effected within a social system. I would suggest that factions are found in every society, and that it is therefore of great importance to pay attention to their composition, recruitment and operation in the analysis of political processes.

Acknowledgements The fieldwork on which this chapter is based was carried out between July 1960 and September 1961 in Malta with a grant from the Colonial Social Sciences Research Council, for which I am most grateful. I should also like to thank those who commented upon earlier versions of this paper read at the London School of Economics’ Seminar on Comparative Social Institutions in 1962, and at the 1962 meeting of the American Anthropological Association in Chicago.

Notes 1. Farrug is a pseudonym for the village of Hal Kirkop. In 1962 I gave the town, its patron saints and its inhabitants, pseudonyms to protect their anonymity, as was then the custom among anthropologists. This is no longer relevant, as all who were interested have long since uncovered the town’s real name. In this, the original account, I have retained the name Farrug. (See also Boissevain 2006b.) Please remember that the action, attitudes and events I recount in this chapter all took place in the early 1960s. 2. Twelve of Malta’s twenty-nine rural villages and towns are divided by this type of rivalry. Two others have rival bands not related to the cult of saints. For more about festa partiti and bands see Boissevain (1993). 3. This disparity in expenses is because in 1935 the Catholic Church in Malta severely restricted the celebrations of secondary saints in an attempt to control the rivalry between festa partiti and to keep the secondary celebrations from surpassing the feasts for the patron (or titular) saint of the parish Thus St. Roque supporters were not allowed to decorate streets away from the church, and were only permitted to hold two brass band programmes, though their rivals held nine (see Boissevain 1993: 75–6). 4. Exact figures are not available as I was not able to gather systematic data on this subject owing to the pitch of political and religious fervour prevailing at the time.

CHAPTER 4

POVERTY AND POLITICS IN A SICILIAN AGRO-TOWN*

Introduction Leone1 today is a town of some 21,000 inhabitants located about a mile and a half from the coast, halfway up a steep hill that dominates a fertile plain that runs down to the sea. Because of its lack of adequate water and sewage facilities, its lack of paved roads, its general rundown appearance and the dire poverty of the majority of its inhabitants, Leone in 1963 had the dubious reputation of being perhaps the poorest and most underdeveloped town in Sicily. But it differed only in degree from numerous other towns and villages in the Italian Mezzogiorno (the southern parts of Italy). After the unification of Italy in the mid nineteenth century, the new State abolished the hated Church tithes, but imposed further taxes and introduced conscription. The Church’s lands in Leone – never more than 10 per cent of the total – were expropriated by the State and sold to a few powerful local families, further strengthening their power, while leaving the position of the peasants cultivating the land unchanged. Moreover, as Sicilian patriots are quick to note, the money realized from the sale of Church property in Sicily was spent on the ‘continent’ to cover expenses incurred by the new national government. Thus Sicily derived little or no direct benefit from the expropriation and sale of ecclesiastical property on the island. Local taxes continued to increase, new roads killed off the small-scale commerce that had centred on the little port of Marina di Leone, and new techniques of mining in the United States stifled the modest local sulphur mining industry that had developed during the nineteenth century. The growing misery of the masses during the last century gave rise to open rebelThis chapter is a slightly abridged version of ‘Politics and Development in a Scilian Agro-Town: A Preliminary Report’, originally published in the International Archives of Ethnography 50 (1966): 198–236. Reprinted by permission of Brill Publishing, Leiden.

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lion against the constituted authorities and armed insurrections took place in Leone in 1820, 1837, 1848, 1860, 1862, 1892, and 1894. These local rebellions, which were often related to similar manifestations in neighbouring towns, followed much the same pattern: a general uprising of the people and a march on the town hall. There the municipal offices were sacked to destroy all records relating to taxes, and later, to conscription. This was followed by several days of general looting and disorder during which the small detachment of local militia remained out of the way of their plundering fellow townsmen. After several days order would be restored by troops and police dispatched to Leone from the provincial capital, and the leaders of the insurrection punished if they could be identified and witnesses located who were willing to testify. The last armed insurrection took place in 1944, and followed this general pattern. An angry peace reigned after Rome ruthlessly crushed the 1893–94 upheaval of the Sicilian Fasci. A generation later, in 1920, the Leone Socialist Party regained sufficient strength to elect a mayor. But two years later the Fascist Party ousted the town’s Socialist administration. The latter continued to run the town until U.S. occupation forces in 1943 reinstalled the Socialist mayor deposed twenty years before. This, sketched in very rough lines, is the history of Leone up to the end of the Second World War. Let us now turn for a closer look at the town itself.

Neighbourhood and Family Neighbourhood The municipality of Leone has a land area of twenty-eight square miles (7,600 hectares). Save for about thirty persons in Marina di Leone on the coast and in the few farmhouses scattered across the plain below the town, all of Leone’s 21,000 inhabitants live close together in the town proper. Large hilltop villages and towns such as Leone are characteristic of Sicily. Until very recently people were required to live in such communities for protection against the malaria, corsairs and brigands that for centuries have infested the countryside. The town itself is an agglomeration of tightly clustered, unpainted grey stone houses arranged along straight streets laid out on a grid system. The oldest section centres on the mother church and the decaying ducal palace that now houses the offices of the family’s business agent, the rural police association and the local prison. Since the war, and especially during the last past two years, thanks to the influx of money earned in the north of Europe, the town has grown enormously: eastward along the main highway, and northward up the hill. It is now a mile long and nearly a half a mile wide.

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Though the town has no civil administrative subdivisions it is composed of a dozen or so residential areas that mostly do not coincide with the limits of the town’s five parishes. Nonetheless, the residents of each, especially the women, have a keen sense of attachment to their quarter, and there is a tendency for marriages to be contracted between residents of the same quarter. In general, the poorer people live in the quarters farthest removed from the centre of the town, and the wealthiest in those nearest it (see Figure 4.1). Each quarter has a few little shops that provide the local residents with some of the basic necessities such as bread. But the town’s social, economic and political life centres on the piazza, the main square. The piazza is the heart of Leone. On it and near it are located all the administrative offices of the government, the town hall, the post office, the town’s four banks and the foremost shops, the main churches, the cinema, four of the town’s six cafes, the recreational clubs and the offices of the various political parties and trade unions. Formerly the barracks of the carabinieri, the state police, were also located just off the piazza, but recently they moved to a larger building on the main highway at the eastern edge of the town.2 As the piazza is also the main stop for all buses, it is thus the point at which most persons enter and leave the town. This area and its adjacent streets are only deserted for a few hours a day: between two and four in the morning. It is the open-air office of the ubiquitous brokers – mediatori – many of whom are willing and able to negotiate anything from the sale of a truckload of wheat to the return of stolen sheep. And it is in the piazza, especially in the late afternoon and evening, and on Sundays, that the men of the town gather about in knots or stroll up and down on their passeggiata, the daily constitutional that forms such a vital part of the social life of most Sicilian men. It is also here that the town’s landlords hire and pay off their labour, where land is bought and sold, political protection sought and granted and the news of the town embroidered and circulated. For the emigrant, the piazza is the symbol of his town, the quintessence of all that he misses of community life while he is abroad. The people of Leone have a strong attachment, and, at times, a fierce pride in and loyalty to their town, and within the town, to their particular quarter. But this attachment (campanilismo) is not synonymous with a strong sense of civic responsibility, or sacrifice for the common welfare of others, at least as this is understood in northern Europe and the Anglo-Saxon countries. This is a matter to which we shall return. At this stage it must merely be noted that civic responsibility does not necessarily follow logically from village patriotism and attachment to one’s place of birth. Sicilian towns and villages are not simple structures. They are deeply divided along class lines and this division creates separate communities of interest that cut across the unity of the village. Strong sectional and class interests and loyalties vitiate the potentially constructive force of town patriotism or campanilismo.

Poverty and Politics in a Sicilian Agro-town

Figure 4.1 Returning home: a street in the central part of the town (1963).

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Family Though campanilismo and class loyalties are strong, attachment to one’s own family is the overriding loyalty to which all others are subordinate. Attachment to family is a basic value that is often advanced to justify actions that run counter to the interests of community, faction and class. It is therefore necessary to indicate at least the rudiments of its structure and the wider network of kin relationships that lead out from it. Kin relationships are traced equally through men and women. Thus each person is at the centre of a vast network of kin recruited through both parents. In the case of married persons, the network is extended to include the close kin of the spouse. In theory this network extends indefinitely, and where kin relationship is recognized, preferential treatment is expected to follow. But in practice this vast universe of kin is restricted and the relationships are ordered in concentric circles. The circle of kin with whom an individual is on close terms generally consists of grandparents, uncles and aunts and their children, brothers and sisters, their spouses and children, the corresponding set of relations of his or her spouse, and the spouses and children of his or her own children. But because selective criteria such as personal likes and dislikes, class membership and geographical proximity are also relevant, certain members of this group may be excluded from the circle of intimate kin. At the same time other, more distant, relatives may be included. But generally speaking, the strongest friendships are formed between members of this group, for they are persons one can trust. Leone itself is one vast web of kinship. Kinship provides a mechanism of horizontal integration within each of the social classes, for most marriages are contracted between members of the same class. But occasional inter-class marriages, as well as upward and downward mobility of individuals, ensure that kinship also links the classes to each other vertically. An examination of the electoral office records showed that 95 per cent of the total number of adults officially resident in Leone were also born there. The remainder are for the most part nuns, government officials and the police and their dependents (2 per cent) and people, especially among the town’s elite, who have married Leonesi and moved there (3 per cent). The extremely high percentage of native-born residents serves to knit the community closely together, for virtually the entire town thus shares a similar sociocultural background and a common set of values As we have already noted, this network of relatives by blood and marriage is divided into smaller units whose members are on intimate terms with each other. It is only in contact with these close kinsmen that Leonesi lower the armour of suspicion and reserve with which they face the hostile world around them. A man dedicates his life to the wellbeing and advancement of this group. In return, its members support and protect him in times of trial and need. Thus it was to his family, and not to the police or

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to his party, that the young Communist ex-mayor of Leone told me that he turned to seek the comfort, support and protection that gave him the courage to carry on in the face of constant mafia threats to murder him.

Honour and Violence A man’s responsibility for his family is thus the central value around which his life is oriented. All other actions and values are of secondary importance. If they interfere with his ability to carry out this obligation he combats them, with violence if necessary. In doing so he is supported by public opinion. The quality of character most highly regarded by Leonesi is that of minding one’s own business. The supreme accolade of a man’s character is Chistu fa i fatti suoi! (He minds his own business!), that is, he sees to the moral and economic wellbeing of his family, and does not interfere with the affairs of others. Earlier I mentioned that kin relationship is traced through men as well as through women. This does not mean that the social importance of both is equal. Authority in both family and public affairs is vested in the men, yet a family’s honour is enshrined in the purity of its women. As the sense of family honour is highly developed, the women of Leone are jealously guarded from contact with, and even from the glances of, outside men. They are confined to their homes and are treated with extreme respect. In Sicily, almost alone among Italian regions, one rarely sees a woman working in the fields, or even carrying heavy burdens through the streets. Ideally she stays at home and the man contacts the world outside. In practice, however, only the upper classes can afford this luxury, for they have servants and husbands who work in the town, and who can thus tend to the shopping. However, even in many middle-class families, without servants, the men do much of the family’s shopping, especially for the meat. Given this attitude towards women and honour, it is not surprising that the most heinous insult one can hurl at a Sicilian man is to call him a cornutu, a cuckold. That is, a poor being whose wife has been had by another man, and hence his family dishonoured. Traditionally there is only one way a man can restore his lost honour and remove the taint from his family’s blood. That is by letting blood, preferably that of the man, but also that of his wife. ‘Blood washes blood’, Sangu lavu sangu, teaches the Sicilian proverb. In contrast, public opinion is quite tolerant of men who sleep around.3 Such affairs, whether real or imaginary, provide the subject of much of the conversation between men. It will be obvious that while the logical opposite of female purity may indeed be male impurity, these two values, because of their importance, are in frequent and violent conflict. In general, if a man pursues his virility with a woman not his wife, he offends the honour of her family. This violation in turn, ideally, must be cleansed with blood. But if the

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family of the woman redeems its honour by killing the violator of its woman, the family of the murdered man will be obliged to seek revenge, for the duty to avenge a murder is an equally important obligation of honour. Only blood washes blood. I have belaboured this point in some detail, as it is essential to an understanding of the basic values that underlie much of the violence and bloodshed that is still so current in Sicily. It is important to keep in mind this moral concept of violence and the positive value of bloodshed for the discussion that follows later of the social role of those who are specialists in it, the mafiosi.

Work and Class In Leone wheat is king, and has been for centuries. Though on the slopes above the town and on neighbouring hills there are a number of almond and olive groves and a few vineyards, it is wheat, wheat in rotation with broad beans that provides the vital substance upon which the economic life of the towns depends. Wheat is a crop that does not demand a great deal of attention. It is planted in late autumn, hoed once or twice in January and February to control the weeds, and harvested in mid summer. In all, it requires perhaps a month or six weeks of work during the course of the year. It is thus a crop that is admirably suited to the Sicilian custom of living together in tightly packed hilltop villages and towns; often at considerable distance from the land the inhabitants work – men and boys who sometimes must travel up to three hours on mule along tortuous, rocky trails to reach their place of work to cultivate the fields. The techniques of production have changed but little over the centuries. As most of the terrain is all but inaccessible to machines, the fields are ploughed by mule and hoed by hand. Some fields adjacent to the highway are now ploughed by tractor, and virtually all the wheat is threshed by machine. The productivity of the wheat lands of Sicily is perhaps the lowest in Italy. Renée Rochefort (1961: 22–23) noted that though the yield per hectare of wheat in Sicily around 1870 was almost twice that of Lombardy, Sicilian productivity has remained unchanged. In contrast, developing technology has increased productivity in the north to the point that the yield there is now three times greater than in Sicily: a large extension of land and an abundant supply of cheap manual labour are still necessary to be able to cultivate this crop in Sicily. The quantity of land of Leone has remained unchanged, but the population, and hence the supply of labour, has increased enormously. Land that a century ago gave a bare living to 10,000 now has to support 21,000. The possession of land is still the fundamental criterion of local wealth and power.4

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The Di Falco family still retains nominal ownership over a large portion of Leone’s lands. However, for many years, even before the post-war landreform laws, it had been family policy to let the land out in fairly small parcels for a nominal annual rental under emphyteutic leases. These leases give the holders effective control over the land. Thus in Leone there is now no one who exercises control over large blocs of land, as there are in the inland latifondo territories of Palermo and Caltanisetta where absentee landlords (latifondisti) have retained control over vast extensions of land, and rent their estates to locals (gabellotti) who run them as if they were their own. Nonetheless, there are a few families in Leone who still own more than the maximum limit of 200 hectares established under the 1950 land-reform law. These are for the most part descendants of those who had managed to acquire the expropriated Church lands after 1860. They divided their estates in blocs of 200 hectares or less amongst their close kin before the law came into effect and thus avoided the danger of expropriation or forced sale, yet retained the property in the family. In consequence, in Leone most of the land is either owned outright or leased in relatively small parcels under emphyteutic contracts by persons who have, or whose ancestors had, the necessary financial and social resources to gain control of it. These persons are for the most part the town’s professionals, shopkeepers and artisans. They do not work the land themselves. They in turn either employ labourers to cultivate it for them or give it out under sharecropping contracts to tenant farmers. Land in Leone is thus controlled not so much by a few individuals but by the upper strata of Leone society which has thus also been able to exercise control over the economic and political life of the town. But to understand the relation between land and power we must examine a bit more fully the town’s socioeconomic structure, and especially the gulf that separates those who own land from those who work the land. In general high social status is attached to the possession of land and to education. Traditionally at least, there tended to be a strong correlation between wealth in land and education, though expanding public education is modifying this neat alignment. Low social status is accorded to those who work the land, for physical labour, especially agricultural labour, is depreciated. Those who have the highest social status in the village are the members of the professional class and others who possess land and generally have a good secondary education. They are the signori or galantuomini, the gentry. At the opposite extreme are the uneducated landless labourers, the braccianti (from braccio, arm) who possess little save the strength of their arms. In Leone the former represent 3 per cent of the total male labour force of 6,000, while the latter about 50 per cent. Between these two poles there is a series of social gradations based on wealth, occupation and education. Directly below the signori in the local socioeconomic hierarchy are the borghesi: these represent about 13 per cent of the labour force and, as a class, are composed of

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Table 4.1 Occupation and Class in Leone Percentage of the Male Labour Force Galantuomini Borghesi commercianti artigiani Contadini Piccoli proprietari Mezzadri, pastori Manovali Braccianti Total

3 3 10 13 6 15 50 100

the office workers, small landowners, merchants and artisans. Below these are the small farmers, the piccoli proprietari or coltivatori diretti, who also account for about 13 per cent.5 These, unlike others who lease or own land, actually work the land they control. Following these are the sharecroppers and shepherds, the mezzadri and pastori, who together represent 6 per cent of the total, and the casual, non-agricultural labourers, or manovali, who account for 15 per cent. It should be noted, however, that many, if not the majority of the small farmers are also share croppers, and that the non-agricultural labourers are for the most part landless agricultural labourers who have found a temporary new occupation thanks to the sudden increase in building the past two years. This work is better remunerated and has a higher prestige than working on the land. In spite of these many gradations, the fundamental division is between those who work the land, and those who own land but do not work it. That is, between the contadini on the one hand, and the galantuomini and borghesi on the other. The relative strength of these various social gradations is set out in Table 4.1, which is based on various documents made available to me at the Leone town hall. Table 4.2 contrasts the situation in Leone to the traditional post-feudal pattern of social stratification, and to that found in the southern Italian hill village of Cortina d’Aglio (Moss and Cappannari 1962: figures 1 and 2). The striking fact is that approximately one half of the 6,000 men of working age in Leone are landless agricultural labourers, braccianti. Until two to three years ago about 85 per cent of the braccianti, that is about 2,500 Leonesi, could find work for only about 100 days a year. For the remainder of the year they were unemployed. Their wage, up to about a year ago (1961) was around 1,000 lire a day, or 100,000 a year, though this figure was more than doubled by odd jobs and various government unemployment benefits. But even so, considering it costs a minimum of about 250,000 lire a year

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Table 4.2 Occupation and Class in Two Southern Italian Communities

Galantuomini Borghesi Piccoli proprietari Braccianti, mezzadri, pastori

Leone (% of male workforce)

Cortina d’Aglio (% of male workforce)

Traditional Post-feudal Stratification (% of male workforce)

3 13 13 71

2 10 82 6

2 10 35 53

to feed a family of five at a subsistence level, the income of an agricultural labourer was generally insufficient to keep his family, and he would normally have to go into debt. The situation was not quite so grim for families who had several sons able to contribute to the household income. The position of the small landowning farmers and sharecroppers was not much better until just two or three years ago. Thus over half the people of Leone were living close to the brink of starvation, or a bare subsistence at best. There were simply too many available arms for the needs of the economy. It is here that we have the root cause of the alarming poverty of Leone. Since about 1960 the situation described above has been modified somewhat by temporary emigration to northern Europe. At the moment close to 2,000 men and youths, that is, a third of the labour force, are abroad in Germany and Switzerland. There, without their families and in strange and often hostile lands, they often lead uncomfortable and lonely lives. Most live in cramped barracks and work in some of the most disagreeable occupations in Germany. Their sole object is to send home as much money as they can so that they can return and arrange for better housing and buy a piece of land, thus achieving economic independence. The majority are able to send home about 50,000 lire a month for about ten months of the year. This ready cash flowing into Leone from the emigrants is having a marked effect upon the economy of the town. Most of the money in the first few years has gone to pay off debts, to improve houses and, above all, to build new ones. Some has been used to purchase consumer goods such as radios, cookers and new furniture. This has naturally provided a tremendous stimulus to the local economy, and in particular to the shopkeepers and builders. The municipal treasury, however, derives little or no benefit from the new relative prosperity of the town’s inhabitants. The precarious income of the township is based largely on fixed property taxes. The municipal family income tax could reflect this new source of income, but as we shall see, it is a tax that is often avoided. In fact many emigrants continue to receive government unemployment benefits though working abroad; for the state bureaucracy and the proliferation of departments and corporations that administer the multitude of social benefits are far too ponderous to permit systematic crosschecking.

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The exodus of some of the town’s best manpower has created a serious shortage of labour and landowners are finding it increasingly difficult to hire the labour necessary to work their fields. This has driven up the daily wage for agricultural labour from 800 lire to 1,500 lire over the past two years. At the same time landowners are forced to pay increasingly larger contributions to the government to cover the costs of the expanding social services. These factors have combined to make the management of land under the old system uneconomical, forcing more than a few of the larger landowners to introduce more mechanization. Many of the smaller ones are finding it more profitable to sell off their land; for land prices have been driven up by the ready cash of the land hungry braccianti, a number of whom are at last able to realize an ideal and acquire a piece of their own land so that they can end their German exile. For the first time hope is finding its way into the crowded popular quarters of Leone, where dreams of a better life have always existed, but without the expectation that they could be fulfilled, at least by legal means. Not only can most men provide the basic necessities of life for their families, there may also even be place for a few luxuries if the artificial prosperity brought on by the expanding German economy continues. Unfortunately, little is being done to alter the structure of the economy that has forced this exodus to the north. For as the economic health of Leone depends on German industry being able to employ 2,000 Leonesi a year, so the economic wellbeing of the Italian Mezzogiorno largely depends on the ability of northern Europe to provide work for its hundreds of thousands of surplus peasants. The future is uncertain at best. The gains of the past few years could be wiped out virtually overnight by the misery and unrest that would follow from the return of the temporary emigrants should the German economic expansion falter.

The Constituted Authorities The State The town of Leone is a comune, a municipal corporation having a clearly defined territory and a legal personality. The mayor (sindaco), the magistrate (pretore) and the state gendarmerie (carabinieri) represent civil authority in Leone. The mayor is one of the thirty-two councillors who make up the Leone town council. The councillors are elected every four years by universal suffrage and they in turn choose from among themselves the mayor and the six aldermen or assessori (including two supernumeraries) who assist him with his administrative duties and, with him, form the town’s administrative giunta (junta, or cabinet). The mayor is the spokesman of the comune and its official head. He is responsible to the State for conscription, electoral affairs

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and vital statistics, as well as local sanitation, veterinary services, the town’s finances and public health. Public education is outside the jurisdiction of the mayor: it is the responsibility of the State and is administered and financed by the national Ministry of Education through its regional, provincial and local representatives. But the municipality does contribute to the upkeep of the school buildings and the acquisition of new equipment. The municipal junta makes all decisions regarding local affairs. The full town council meets only a few times a year to discuss matters of major policy, such as the annual budget or the formation of a new junta. Because a proportional system is used to elect the town council, it represents all political colours. It sometimes happens that a political coalition formed to support a particular junta changes its composition. This usually means that the junta, including the mayor, is forced to resign, and is replaced by another. All the men who work in the town hall are Leonesi. The comune, with sixty-three employees, is the largest local employer. The town thus has an apparently democratic form of local government. Apart from the control exercised by provincial authorities, it is governed by Leonesi for Leonesi. But as will be evident below, the provincial control is considerable. The magistrate, who conducts the preliminary investigation of all crimes and tries petty criminal and civil cases, is appointed and paid by the national Ministry of Justice, and is usually an outsider. But a Leonese assistant magistrate has filled the office for the past few years, as there has been some difficulty in finding a career magistrate willing to come to the town. The detachment of carabinieri stationed in the town is under the command of a maresciallo, or warrant officer. All are by custom outsiders, and most are from the mainland. Their duty is to enforce the laws of the State, and in particular the criminal code. But their task is difficult, for they are regarded as traditional enemies by the people and receive little cooperation. They may be contrasted to the municipal police, the vigili urbani, who are appointed and paid by the municipality. These are all local men who attempt to enforce local regulations and ordinances relating to traffic, public sanitation, business hours for shops and so on, most of which are cheerfully ignored by all. There is also a detachment of the Guardia di Finanza, the State fiscal police, stationed at Marina di Leone to watch for smugglers. Finally, there is a corps of Guardia Campestri, armed private police employed by Leone landowners to guard their fields against poachers and thieves. Above the level of the comune there are provincial, regional and national authorities. Provincial authorities exercise a considerable control over the affairs of the comune. The prefect represents the State in the province. He is a ranking officer of the Ministry of the Interior and, as a matter of policy, is normally a non-Sicilian who is posted to the province for a tour of duty that, in recent years, has rarely exceeded eighteen months. The prefect presides over the Giunta Provinciale di Controllo, a supervisory body composed of

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the senior officers of the prefettura (prefecture, the administrative centre of the province) and two to six representatives of the provincial administrative council, the exact number depending upon the nature of business discussed by the junta. The provincial council is an advisory body with few powers, elected by an electoral college composed of all the municipal councillors in the province. The activities of each comune in the province are closely supervised by the Commissione Provinciale di Controllo whose members are nominated in part by the regional Minister for Local Affairs, and in part by the prefect, who usually sees that all political colours are represented on it. This body exercises considerable authority, for it reviews all the proceedings and proposals of each comune in the province. A municipality is powerless to take any action unless it receives permission from the Commissione Provinciale di Controllo to do so. From the appointment of a street sweeper to the sale of a piece of municipal property, all decisions of a comune must pass through its hands. In brief this body holds the power of veto over all but the most trivial decisions of a municipality’s junta and town council. It even can recommend to the prefect that a town’s junta or entire town council be suspended for malfeasance or incapacity, and that its administration be given to a commissioner. At the regional level there is yet another series of authorities who play an important role in the affairs of the comune. The Region of Sicily has a considerable degree of autonomy, and the Regional Assembly in Palermo controls most of the funds for public works projects at the local level, as well as huge sums of money for large-scale agricultural, infrastructural and industrial developments. It also controls the employment in the countless regional enti, the profusion of semi-autonomous government corporations that have been set up to administer these funds. All this gives the ninety Regional Assembly deputies considerably more power in the form of patronage than is available to the fifty-nine deputies and twenty-nine senators who represent Sicily in Rome.

The Church Nearly all Leonesi are Roman Catholic, and the religious authorities play an important part in the social life of the town. Leone is divided into five parishes; the tiny hamlet of Marina di Leone forms a sixth. There are also four orders of nuns who run schools and orphanages. Each parish is autonomous and is run by a Leone-born parish priest, who is technically subordinate only to the Bishop of Agrigento. But the priest in charge of the parish of Leone’s mother church has the title of Archpriest. He is a primus inter pares and in Leone is the spokesman of the Church and the bishop, and speaks for the town at the archbishop’s Curia in Agrigento. Besides the six parish priests,

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another six priests act as assistants in some of the parishes. All but two of these are Leonesi; the outsiders assist the archpriest, who feels that it is better not to have local priests too close to him. All, however, have the same rural background and were trained in the bishop’s seminary in Agrigento. In theory each parish has a junta composed of the heads of its four Catholic Action groups (for men and women, boys and girls) plus a president who need not necessarily be an officer in one of these associations. The parish junta is supposed to serve as a lay body of advisors to the parish priest. But with the exception of one or two of the youth groups, the parish associations are inactive, and their offices are merely honours bestowed upon influential citizens. The parish juntas are correspondingly inactive so there is little institutionalized contact between the clergy and the laity. On the other hand, all the priests live in their own houses and apartments, generally with relatives, and there is thus frequent informal contact between them and their neighbours and relatives. In general those who belong to the higher social strata seem to take a greater interest in the affairs of the Church. This includes mass attendance. The priests spend very little time in the crowded popular quarters of their parishes, and when they do venture into these muddy byways they are often met by hostile silence, occasionally even by coarse comments. This reserved, hostile attitude to the clergy may be explained in part by the fact that many in the popular quarters belong to the Communist Party, and have consequently been ostracized by the Church. But Sicily also has a long tradition of anticlericalism and the clergy by and large has traditionally identified itself solidly with the upper classes against the working classes in general, and in particular against the political parties and labour associations of the Left. Many priests have also preached the divine order of a society divided into classes and explained to the poor that God will provide for them. Moreover, their education and office automatically place them in the professional class, even if they are from contadini families, and they are treated with the reserve normally accorded to the professional class. Even more important in explaining the hostile attitude to the clergy is the fact that it is widely believed that many priests actively pursue the wealth and power that is associated with the upper class. This disparity between the Christian ethics of charity and humility that a priest preaches and his personal actions is responsible for much of the ingrained anticlericalism that I found at all social levels in Leone. While the Church and the religion that it preaches are worshipped, and the office of priest is respected, priests as individuals, with but few exceptions, are regarded as venal persons ready to exploit their office and authority for personal gain. This attitude is in part but a reflection of the general Sicilian attitude towards all constituted authority. But it is also based on facts that Leonesi have been able to verify personally. Why this should be so is in part the result of the inadequate financial support

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that a priest receives. This obliges him to exercise his wits, to become furbo (cunning, sly) in order to earn his daily bread. The Church is subsidized by the State, and each parish priest receives a stipend of 1,170 lire a day. This, even taking into consideration the stole fees he receives, is not an adequate income for a person of the professional class, who often has relatives or a housekeeper to maintain. Moreover, priests who are not parish priests receive nothing from the government; and for obvious reasons they get very little from the parish priests whom they assist. In consequence, if they are not independently wealthy, priests are often forced to turn their hands to non-clerical pursuits to meet their financial obligations and this occasionally becomes an end in itself. Three of the Leone priests teach at a school on a part-time basis; one of these is also secretary of a Catholic labour syndicate (ACLI) several are electoral canvassers for particular Christian Democratic national, regional and municipal candidates. Cash and political patronage remunerate these political activities. This last should not be underestimated, for it is most desirable for a priest to have such protection in order to find work for favourite parishioners, scholarships for students and government funds to repair his always needy parish church. (I was once cajoled by a parish priest into writing a letter to President Kennedy asking for a donation to repair his church’s leaking roof! He received no answer.) But even Christian Democrats who faithfully practice their religion rebel, at least in private, against the overt political activity of their priests. In point of fact, it is rather startling to see black-cassocked priests racing between polling places on election day in the company of the leading political organizers of the town. Besides those who profess the Roman Catholic faith, there is a small, but apparently growing, group of Pentecostalists in Leone. Most are Communists from a poor section of the town who were recruited by one of the Communist Party leaders from among his neighbours and relatives. He acts as the group’s leader, or coordinator. This role reinforces his role as political leader and adds to the strength and unity of his followers as a group. They have no church in Leone, but study the Bible together in each other’s homes and occasionally travel to the Agrigento to attend services in the Pentecostal church there. Why should they have left the Catholic Church? The important role which religion plays in the lives of most Sicilians, especially among the poorer classes, where church rituals are often their only organized events, makes them particularly sensitive to the religious isolation the Church has forced upon them for their political convictions. By going over to another faith they satisfy their need for some sort of organized religious activity. At the same time they demonstrate to the Catholic authorities who banished them from their traditional church, that they are not affected by their sanctions. They are Protestants in the most literal sense of the word. But despite apostasy and rampant anticlericalism, the Roman Catholic religion remains deeply rooted in the life and customs of the people. As the

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bells of the Angelus mark the principal divisions of the day, so the important religious feasts mark out the seasons of the year. The celebration on Ascension Day of Leone’s own miraculous Madonna del Castello, the popular feasts of St. Joseph in late July and the Madonna del Rosario, the town’s patron, in early September, All Souls Day, and the celebrations and devotions for Christmas and Epiphany are popular events that often draw huge crowds. But perhaps the most dramatic public celebrations are the Easter cycle of pageants and processions, and particularly the ritual on Easter morning as the Madonna and Christ search for each other through the streets of the village (see Figure 4.2). They are occasions on which collective values are restated and group solidarity is intensified. Class lines are somewhat relaxed; women leave their houses to parade the streets and enjoy the sights. Even Communists, Protestants and other anticlericals mingle with the crowds and enjoy themselves. The importance of these feasts in the social and ritual life of Leone reinforces the position of the Catholic Church and its clergy, who are the chief organizers of the celebrations.

Political Parties, Unions and Clubs Besides the constituted authority of State and Church, there are branches in Leone of all major political parties and national labour unions and associations. These organizations play an important role in the political and social life of the town, for most are pressure groups that represent the interests of their members to higher authorities. Their officers exercise a certain degree of authority over their members, and are local links in the network of patronage that extends far beyond the community.

Political Parties The history of the political parties in Leone is rather complicated and I do not propose to develop it here. It is sufficient to recall that the town was one of the centres of Socialist unrest during the period of the Sicilian Fasci in 1893, and that the last municipal junta before the Fascist regime was Socialist. In 1943 the U.S. occupation forces reappointed the pre-Fascist, Socialist mayor. He was later elected to the National Constituent Assembly in 1946 and confirmed as a deputy in the National Assembly in 1948, and again in 1953. His popularity accounts for the strength of the Socialist Party in Leone: 30 per cent of the votes polled in 1958, as opposed to 10 per cent for Sicily and 14 per cent for the country. But after his defeat in 1958 and the ensuing struggle between the Left and the Right for the Leone section of the Party, many votes passed to the Communists and the Saragat Socialists.

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Figure 4.2 Jesus and Maria reunited on Easter morning (1963).

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Table 4.3 Leone Election Results (in percentages)

1963 1963 1960 1959 1958 1956 1953

regional national municipal regional national municipal* national

DC

PCI

PSI

Other

41 39 30.5 32 36 49.7 38

36 35 30 31 25 50.3 11

14 11 20.0 20 30 – 38

9 15 19 17 9 – 13

* Only two lists were presented: one included the Socialists and Communists, the other the DC and the minor parties.

In Leone the political parties are aligned with certain broad socioeconomic divisions. On the extreme Left is the Communist Party (PCI), a militant working-class party. The bulk of its members are braccianti; it is the only party in town that has no professional class members and the only one that is clearly class based. The Christian Democratic Party (DC) is the party the Church supports. A large number of galantuomini support it, as do most borghesi and the small landowning farmers. A number of the sharecroppers, shepherds and braccianti also vote DC. They are often tied to the DC leaders by clientship and to the Church by obedience. The Socialist Party (PSI) is the party of the schoolteachers, and of all others who, though they profess sympathy with the Left, are frightened by the militancy of the Communist Party and by the fact that most of its members belong to the lowest social stratum. For many Leonesi the only difference between the two parties is class. While the local Socialist Party leader was a National Assembly deputy the Socialists had a large following of braccianti, most of whom now support the Communist Party (PCI). The relative strength of the major political parties in Leone is set out in Table 4.3, which shows the results of the last two sets of local, regional and national elections, with the national election of 1953 as a base. Each political party is centred around the secretary, who has a committee to advise and assist him. Each also has its own premises that, with the exception of those of the Communists and Socialists, are deserted save at election time. The local party heads are members of the town council, where each is the spokesman of the group of councillors supporting his party. They are also the links between their local followers and the party machinery at the provincial, regional and national levels.

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Unions In Leone there are branches of ten of the nationally organized trade unions and workers’ associations. They are important pressure groups. Although none are linked constitutionally to particular political parties, all are in fact identified very closely with them. These labour associations organize periodic strikes, demonstrations and petitions for higher wages, better working conditions and increased social benefits. They also serve their members by helping them to decipher and fill out the incredible quantity of government forms so that they can receive the pensions, medical benefits and unemployment compensation to which they are entitled under various, and often overlapping, government schemes. Each has its own premises that provide a meeting place for members and others with similar interests. The most important unions are associated with the two major parties. The oldest, and for many years the only one of its kind in Leone, is the branch of the Confederazione Generale Italiana di Lavoro (CGIL), the Camera del Lavoro. During the first three years of its existence in Leone it incorporated Christian Democrat, Communist and Socialist sympathizers, but in 1948, reflecting developments at the national level, the Christian Democrat faction broke away and founded the rival Confederazione Italiana dei Sindacati Liberi (CISL). In theory the Communists and Socialists share the leadership of the Camera del Lavoro, but in reality the Communists run it; the Socialist secretary rarely sets foot inside the door. The officers of the Camera del Lavoro are all important members of the local Communist Party. In fact, the post of secretary of the Camera del Lavoro is the most important position in the local Communist Party hierarchy. It is thus often a stepping stone to more responsible positions in the union and Party hierarchy. In 1960 the secretary of the Leone Camera del Lavoro resigned to become the town’s first and only Communist mayor. After the collapse of his junta he became the provincial secretary of the Communist-run Alleanza dei Coltivatori Diretti, a union for the small landowning farmers. In the last election he stood, though unsuccessfully, as one of his party’s candidates for the Regional Assembly. A number of national and regional deputies have a similar background. Often the demonstrations and strikes organized by the CGIL. and CISL are coordinated on a provincial scale. But on at least two notable occasions the Leone Camera del Lavoro acted independently. In 1956 many people were desperate after a year of poor harvests and a winter so cold that it snowed. These mobilized others, and in the end 4,000 men, women and children, braccianti as well as sharecroppers and small landowning farmers, marched under the leadership of the Camera del Lavoro to Agrigento. Specifically they were protesting against the scarcity of food, the agricultural labour contracts and the lack of adequate housing. Though ten miles outside the town they found their way blocked by police in armoured cars, their ‘hunger march’

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attained part of its object. The prefect released 4,000,000 lire for the poor of Leone through the municipal welfare office. In 1958 the Leone Camera del Lavoro invited delegates from neighbouring villages and towns to a conference to discuss their common social and economic development problems. They subsequently made their common problems known to the Party and CGIL headquarters in the provincial capital and Palermo. This initiative eventually resulted in a well-publicized study of the deplorable public health conditions of the town and, in 1960, in an international conference to examine the problems of development in this depressed zone of Sicily (Convegno Sulle Condizioni di Vita e di Salute in Zone Arretrate della Sicilia Occidentale). Sponsored by the Danilo Dolci’s Centro Studi e Iniziative per la Piena Occupazione in Partinico, it brought to Leone a considerable number of experts, writers and social workers from all parts of Italy and Europe including Primo Levi, Leonardo Sciascia and a Dutch Franciscan priest, Salvinus Duynstee, who stayed on to found an advisory centre for community development. As a result of the publicity generated by the conference and the newly established community development centre, Leone became widely known as the open sore of Sicily, a showcase of poverty in Europe. Much to the embarrassment of politicians in Palermo and in Rome, it also became a Mecca for crusading journalists and social workers from other countries, and was even visited by a delegation from the European Parliament. In response to the pressure of local politicians of all parties and in a desire to improve Sicily’s image abroad, the Regional Assembly passed a special bill, which became law just before the 1963 elections, to make available a total of two billion lire for the industrial and social development of Leone and a neighbouring town. The Camera del Lavoro and its rival, the CISL, which also has a strong membership in Leone, technically cater only to the braccianti and sharecroppers, or mezzadri. But many of the latter, because they often also own a small patch of land, are members of one of the town’s associations for landowning peasants, the DC-oriented Confederazione dei Coltivatori Diretti, or the smaller Communist-run Alleanza dei Coltivatori Diretti. The local heads of these organizations are also leaders in their respective political parties. Besides the organizations already mentioned, the Fascists and the Saragat Socialists have small, combined unions for the various categories of cultivators. But these are of little importance in the economic and political life of the town.

Clubs Though most of the working men’s unions and organizations serve as social centres for their members, many persons also belong to one or more of the

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Figure 4.3 Members waiting in front of the Circolo Civile for the Easter morning procession, watched from the shadows by a non-member (1963).

town’s social clubs. In all there are eleven clubs and associations in Leone whose prime object is to provide recreation and fellowship for their members, rather than increased social benefits. They cater for the professional class with Circolo Civile the club for white-collar workers (mostly employees of the town hall), to a club for middle-class landowners. There is also a club for small businessmen and the many types of broker. Some of these associations have divided and formed rival clubs. Finally, there are clubs for hunters and war veterans and the wounded. Many are equipped with televisions and have private rooms where members can play cards and gamble. The more affluent ones have a caretaker who can be dispatched for coffee or vermouth from one of the town’s seven cafes that also act as social centres where youths and men congregate in the evening to play cards or watch television. The Circolo Civile, a counterpart of which is to be found in most towns and villages in the south of Italy, is perhaps the most influential club in the town. In theory it is a cultural club open to those with a titolo di studio, that is, a degree or diploma above the elementary school level. In practice, membership is restricted by a rigid admission procedure to the sons of galantuomini and those particularly well connected. The 70 members of the Circolo constitute part of the upper 2 per cent of the town’s socioeconomic pyramid. This elite group is tightly bound together by constant intermarriage, god-parenthood and their common educational and economic background. The Circolo is thus a place where men with similar backgrounds pass several

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hours in each other’s company playing cards, watching television, reading the club’s many newspapers and magazines, or just talking (see Figure 4.3). They discuss everything from the rising cost of agricultural labour to women, from the constantly changing political situation in Rome to the problems of the local junta. With the exception of the Communists, most of the important political leaders are members. The presidents and secretaries of the local branches of the Christian Democrats, the Socialists, the Liberals and the Fascists, who hurl invective at each other in public during the numerous electoral campaigns, are thus also members of a group of friends who meet each other almost daily in the Circolo. Many of the most important decisions affecting the lives of the people of Leone are made within its walls or on the evening strolls that members take from there. The thirty-odd branches of the parties, unions and associations together form a loose structure of interest groups related to each other through overlapping membership and common problems that complements the formal structure of constituted authority described in the preceding section. But there is a third set of relations that, though less clearly defined, also occupies an important place in the total structure of authority, power and interest that I am trying to set out here. This is the network of relations made up of the multiple strands of kinship, patronage and clientship.

Friends of Friends: Patrons and Mafiosi Patrons Every Leonesi feels himself to be beset by problems and to a certain extent isolated in a hostile world and the more one descends the socioeconomic ladder the more noticeable this attitude becomes. Authority is regarded as remote, corrupt and dangerous. This harshness is softened somewhat by the family, for it is in his family that the individual finds the comfort and sympathy so absent in his relations with those outside its protective circle. Relatives are supposed to show each other consideration that they do not show to nonkin. Thus one way to secure protection and assistance in times of need is to appeal to kinsmen. But it will be evident that the importance of the obligation of mutual assistance and protection amongst kinsmen comes into direct conflict with the ethics of the office holder, who is supposed to be impartial and treat all with equal fairness. This makes most persons in authority vulnerable and gives a strong personal content to decisions. This is particularly marked in a society as closely interrelated as is Leone. This vulnerability is exploited by others who, though not related to the decision makers, have important reciprocal obligations with them or their close kinsmen. That is, a person in authority, besides

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being made vulnerable through the demands of a large circle of kinsmen, is invariably part of a network of reciprocal obligations shared between patrons and clients. By ‘patron’ I mean a person who uses his or her influence to assist and protect some other person who then becomes the ‘client’. It will be realized that kin as well as non-kin make up this network of reciprocal obligations. The circle of relatives, and the network of friends, patrons and clients in which most persons are involved overlap. They form the vast network of contacts and ties that bind the inhabitants of Leone into a compact community and enable most persons, by following selected strands, to trace their way to almost every other person in the village and to many outside it, including important decision makers. It is from these relations that influential patrons fashion their clientele: clientelismo is the most characteristic feature of Italian political life at all levels, especially in the south. In a Catholic society there is also a strong ideological basis for a political system based upon patronage. In fact, a patron is sometimes called a santo or saint, and people occasionally quote the proverb Senza santi nun si va ‘n paradisu, (Without the help of saints you won’t go to heaven), to illustrate the importance of patrons in achieving one’s desires. The archpriest of Leone pointed this out to me as he explained the spiritual role of saints to me. He noted that just as you would not think of approaching a cabinet minister directly, but would work through some influential friend who could introduce you to the local deputy who could then state your case to the minister, so too must you not approach God directly. You must work through your patron saint, who, being closer to God than you, is in a better position to persuade Him to heed your prayers. The role of patron thus receives constant and authoritative validation from the Church. In point of fact, it would seem that where there is a strong cult of saints, such as in Mediterranean Europe and in Latin America, there is also a political system which, if not based on, is at least strongly influenced by patron–client relations. In Sicily there is thus an important social role for the intermediary, the protector who can smooth things along and place his client in contact with an influential person higher up the scale. The greater success a person has in performing this function, the more clients he has linked to him by reciprocal obligations; for the obligation to repay is implicit in the type of service rendered. But the service is usually not repaid at once; to do so would close the open account that exists between the two. It is usually to the advantage of both to keep this relationship open. In the case of the donor, or patron, the unpaid obligation can be translated into influence or power. The obligation to repay exists always, for this reciprocity in social relations is one of the basic principles of social life in Leone, as it is in most face-to-face communities. The more unreciprocated favours a person has owing to him, the greater is his influence and thus his power. With influence he attracts more clients; the reciprocal services they owe him give him his power.

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Everyone who occupies a position of authority in Leone is a patron of this kind. They are often able to find work for their relatives and clients with the town hall. Regular, salaried work in a community as poor as Leone is highly valued; so great is the demand for it that only those with powerful protection can find a place on the municipal payroll. Clients so provided for become, in their turn, persons who exercise influence because they are now in a position to grant favours, or to act as intermediaries with more influential people. They are cultivated by the less influential, and become patrons in their own right. But they remain deeply indebted to the persons who helped them to obtain their new employment, and are consequently extremely vulnerable to the wishes of these patrons. This vulnerability of politicians and administrators helps feed the popular belief that all constituted authorities, whether priest or sacristan, town councillor or janitor, are corrupt. That is, that they use their position to help friends and relations as well as themselves. This belief is held by people at all social levels. Though partly the result of the system of patronage, it contributes to the perpetuation of the system. It is thought that since all officials are corrupt, favourable decisions can be obtained if the right contact is approached, the right price offered or the right pressure applied. This attitude, in combination with the social distance that separates the mass of people from the constituted authorities, has also created a social role for the intermediary or protector who can intercede with the authorities on behalf of his or her client. The constant pressure of these intermediaries is in itself corrupting, for a public official has little to lose by engaging in corruption, since in the minds of the people he is so already – and he usually has a great deal to gain. The belief that all officials favour their kinsmen, friends and friends of friends reinforces the belief that the family is the only safe place in the face of a corrupt authority. This strengthens the important principle that a man’s first responsibility is to his family, which, in turn, leads to favouritism, and hence corruption, forming a self-perpetuating system of belief and action. The intertwined complex of elements that make up the system of patronage is based upon important values that are deeply rooted in custom and in the structure of social relations in Sicily.6

Omertà The belief that the government and its servants are corrupt, and therefore not to be trusted, has brought with it the belief that the law can be manipulated by those who control power. In short, that recourse to law does not mean recourse to justice. A person who wishes to be respected as a ‘real man’ – an omu or cristianu – does not go to the law to settle his personal

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disputes, whether they involve the collection of a debt or the prosecution of the murderer of a kinsman. To do so would be an admission of weakness and a shameful act, ‘nfamia. Moreover, certain grave offences, such as those against the virtue of the women of the family, are difficult and embarrassing to prosecute due to the intimate nature of the facts. Besides, the legal fees involved would be beyond the means of most. The law punishes crimes only with imprisonment and fines (there is no capital punishment in Italy) but custom and public opinion dictate that only blood can remove the stain on a family’s honour. Thus the ‘real man’ does not go the police, the hated sbirri, but obtains justice by taking the law into his own hands to settle personal disputes and, above all, to protect the honour of his family. Given this attitude, it is not surprising that other values and customs protect the man settling his affairs himself from law enforcement officers. Witnesses to a crime must never talk about it to the authorities. To do so would not only be ‘nfamia, but also very dangerous – shameful, because it would involve the witness in active cooperation with the authorities against a neighbour or kinsman; shameful also because by testifying a person would transgress the important social rule that every one should tend to his own affairs; and dangerous because in testifying against a neighbour, even indirectly, a person exposes himself to the full fury of the culprit and his outraged kinsmen. They would first threaten and then begin to apply violence – such as killing some of his sheep, cutting his fruit trees or vines or burning his wheat – in order to force him to retract his testimony.7 The ultimate sanction is of course murder, which in such cases is not judged too harshly by public opinion, for only blood can wash blood. The principles that we have been examining, that is, the widespread belief in the corruption of government and its laws, the positive virtue of bloodshed and violence, the obligation of silence in regard to crimes witnessed and the importance of minding one’s own business, are illustrated in the following Sicilian proverbs: Di la testa feti lu pisci.

A fish begins to stink from its head.

Dzoccu nun ti appareni nun dir ne mali ne beni.

Of that which does not concern you speak neither evil nor good.

Nova liggi, nova malizia.

New laws, new injustice.

Lu porcu grossu nun paga dugana.

The fat pig pays no taxes.

Cu’ arrobba a lu re nun fa piccatu.

He who steals from the king (the State) commits no sin.

Cu’ havi denaro ed amicizia, si teni intra lu culu la giustizia

He who has money and friends holds justice in his arse.

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‘A furca e pri lu poviru, ‘a giustizia pri lu fissu.

The gallows are for the poor, justice is for fools.

‘A vencia di cent anni ‘un e mai vecchia.

After a hundred years, revenge is still not old.

Cu’ mori va sepoltu cu’campa si marita.

He who dies gets buried, he who lives gets married.

Cu’ t’amminazzu, t’ammazza.

He who threatens you will kill you.

A cu’ ti leva lu pani, levacci la vita.

Kill whoever takes from you your daily bread.

Quannu c’e lu mortu bisogna pinsari a lu vivu.

When there is a death, you must think of the living.

Comu t’è fattu fai ca menu piccatu hai.

Do as has been done to you, so that you have fewer sins.

Chiddu e lu bonu chi vidi e taci.

He who sees and is silent is a good person.

‘A testimonianza e buona sinu a quannu nun fa mali a lu prossimu.

Testimony is good as long as it hurts not a neighbour.

Audi, vidi e taci se voi campari ‘n paci. Hear, see and be silent if you wish to live in peace. The code of behaviour enjoined by these proverbs – disdain for government and the law, respect for strength, revenge, independence, violence, silence – is usually summed up by one word: omertà. These qualities of character are widely admired in Sicily, though naturally not every one reflects or incorporates them to the same extent. They are generally considered as being most strongly incorporated by the mafioso.

Mafiosi Mafioso and the more traditional patrons, form parts of the networks through which people seek to influence the outcome of decisions that concern them. In a land where violence is part of the currency of social relations, a mafioso is a man who is not afraid to commit the supreme act of violence, that is, to kill. He is quick to take offence against insults to his personal honour or that of his family, and resolves all his quarrels without recourse to the constituted authorities, by taking the law into his own hands. Above all, he minds his own business and is silent about matters that do not concern him.

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He incorporates the qualities of omertà to a greater degree than most others and is not afraid to stand by this code; he is looked to as a tower of strength. Others, who endorse the code but, because of their social position or their character, lack the opportunity or the hardness to carry out its violent consequences, look to the mafioso for assistance. He thus becomes a broker of violence, an intermediary who helps others resolve personal quarrels without going to the law. The services which the mafioso renders to his ‘friends’, who are often influential persons occupying positions higher than his own in the socioeconomic hierarchy, are many. They vary from avenging an insult or collecting a debt to regulating a family feud or protecting a landed estate from an agricultural cooperative seeking to take it over. A friend explained that a mafioso is not a malandrino, or delinquent. He then gave the example of two dogs, one large and one small, to illustrate the difference between them: The large dog has things his way, while the little dog yaps at little things and sometimes bites ankles or trousers if annoyed. The big dog not only dominates the little dog, he ignores many things that annoy the little dog. But when something really provokes him, he does not bite ankles, but goes straight for the throat and rips it out, causing death. Ecco la mafia. Hai capito che cosa è? (This is the mafia. Do you understand what it is?) A mafioso is a man who makes himself respected; he is honest and intelligent, though if needs be he will kill. The delinquent only breaks the law for trivial things.

The network of persons for whom he has performed services provides the mafioso with a zone of influence, a circle of ‘friends’ who owe him favours and to whom he can turn should he need to obtain an unimpeachable alibi for a client, a job for a poor relative, or a lucrative business deal for himself. These contacts enable him to become a patron in his own right, providing services and contacting his patrons and friends on behalf of clients from all social classes. His reputation as a man of honour is validated if needs be by himself or by one of his exclusive group of colleagues. This ensures that his patrons and clients will meet their obligations of amicizia, (friendship) when he requires them to do so. He does not charge for his services; they are performed for ‘friendship’. But in return he does expect protection and help, that is, reciprocal services, when he asks for them. Because he is a respected person, he is often asked to arbitrate quarrels between groups or individuals from his own or from a lower socia1 class. This further increases his influence and power. In time, a mafioso may become a powerful figure with an ever-widening network of contacts. He is then cultivated by candidates for political office who seek the votes that he can control. Thus it is that politicians enter into alliances with mafiosi, greatly increasing the sphere of influence, and thus the power, of the latter. The mafioso turns this power to economic advantage by inserting himself as a broker or intermediary between buyer and seller, supplier and consumer. In general

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he attaches himself to the principal economic activity of the locality. In the inland latifondo zones it is land and its management, in fishing ports it is the marketing of the catch, in the citrus belt around Palermo it is the control of water and in the larger towns it is the building trade and organized vice. He also offers protection against common thieves, brigands and other mafiosi. As he accumulates wealth and power, his occupation changes and he raises his relative position in the socioeconomic hierarchy of his locality. Thus the successful mafioso, who often starts his career as a contadino, may end up as a respected and powerful landowner or local entrepreneur. Perhaps the following example of mundane collusion can illustrate the degree to which the mafia forms part of Leone’s daily social landscape. One Sunday Professor Volpe discussed some problems with me as we strolled back and forth in the village square. He had been having problems with the education of his eldest son. Both the problems and the methods used to resolve them are rather Sicilian. He suspected that one of his colleagues at the secondary school in the neighbouring town where he taught, and where his son went to school, was trying to injure him by failing his son and thus blocking his entrance to the university. This would have damaged the family’s position as an important member of the professional class in Leone. He was able to have his enemy followed whenever the latter passed through Leone on his way to the provincial capital or Palermo by certain of his own acquaintances and those of his brother, an important notary in Palermo. He was proud that his brother, who lived on the other side of Sicily, but ‘who has friends everywhere’, was even able to obtain reports from one of these friends of conversations held by the suspect at the latter’s social club. Both the overheard conversation and the observed contacts of his enemy in Palermo confirmed his suspicion. Professor Volpe’s brother then moved swiftly to apply counter pressure through a nameless important person in Palermo. This person then spoke to the person who had been by a friend of a friend of Professor Volpe’s enemy regarding the boy’s admission to university. As the two brothers between them boasted a wider range of more powerful contacts than their rival, they were able to resolve the affair to their satisfaction. The son was admitted to the university. It is of course quite possible that the entire plot to dishonour the family was a figment of Professor Volpe’s imagination, for it was all based upon intuition and indirect evidence. The suggestions by his brother to his influential friend in Palermo were most certainly couched in allegory and allusion, as was his recital to me in which no names or specific accusations were mentioned. Professor Volpe believed it to be true, and acted accordingly, thereby illustrating well several of the points I have tried to make above. But the story continues. The good professor then described how, several months after his son was admitted to the university, his enemy at his school insulted him in front of most of his fellow teachers. He was so angry that he

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strode out of the common room, slamming the door and shouting that he would have his apology. During his evening stroll the same day, he met un amico, uno dei quelli (‘one of them’, an expression often used to allude to a mafioso). In telling me this, he pulled his cap down over one eye to indicate a mafioso in Sicilian sign language. He mentioned the insult he had received, and his amico said, Ci penso io, (I’ll see to it). The amico apparently went to the neighbouring town late one evening soon after and knocked on his enemy’s door. In a courteous but tough voice – which the professor demonstrated for me – he informed the enemy that it would be better to apologize or there might be unpleasantness. The professor’s colleague obviously understood the message, and two days later the professor received a short note of apology by post. When I naively asked how much he had had to pay his amico for all his help, he smiled and replied, ‘Nothing, of course’. He explained that the amico was the son of a man who his own father, who had been a prominent notary, had helped to keep out of prison forty years before. ‘He helped me for amicizia. Because of our father my brother and I have friends all over Sicily. They are not criminals. They are men who make themselves respected. They will help you when you need it, but . . . when they turn to you for help, you give it or . . .’, and he made the chopping motion that means the application of violence. ‘You help them and they help you. They give and you give.’ Professore Volpe ended by saying that his son is doing well at the university, and which thus justified his faith in his ability and intelligence. ‘But his younger brother is lazy and not very bright’, he observed. ‘He will probably flunk this year. My enemies are busy again. I must see what can be done.’ And muttering about the many responsibilities of fatherhood, he went off to lunch.

Mafia Thus far I have mentioned mafiosi, but not the Mafia. The Mafia with a capital ‘M’ does not exist as a structured, corporate body, at least in the rural Sicily of today [1962]. Moreover, it is questionable whether it ever existed in this form. What clearly does exist, however, are mafias, or more correctly, mafie. That is various cliques or gangs of mafiosi each with its exclusive, nonoverlapping collection of mafiosi colleagues and henchmen each of whom has a personal network of patrons and clients. A clique of mafiosi is sometimes referred to as a cosca (the clustered spiny leaves of an artichoke), or as a ‘family’, or even more vaguely as a group of ‘friends of friends’, or simply as ‘they’. Each village and town has its own local expression for these mafia groups. In Caltanisetta they speak of the cerchio (circle) of so and so. In Favara local mafiosi are called code piatte, (flat tails), probably, I was told, because like the devil’s tail they thrust their way into

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everything. In Leone, on the other hand, they speak of a particular cosca or clique of mafiosi as a paraccu, an umbrella. I often heard people say Si sta bene sotto u paraccu, (You are protected under the umbrella). I was once asked, semi-jokingly – for my presence in the village was a conundrum for most – ‘To whose paraccu do you belong?’ In any given locality there are usually several groups or gangs of mafiosi. These may vary in size from half a dozen mafiosi to a score. In Leone in the 1960s there were said to be five ‘umbrellas’ and at least two were centred on local clubs. But the exact number of groups and their composition fluctuates; for they often break up when key members are arrested. In each group the mafioso with the toughest reputation and the largest zone of influence is the head, or capo. But he is a primus inter pares, as is the capo mafia of the village, who is the most influential and therefore the most powerful mafioso of the locality. Several years ago the man alleged to have been the capo mafioso in Leone was sentenced to obligatory residence in a town in the north of Italy. Mafiosi (and the loose coalitions they form) generally know and respect one another for, at least ideally, they live by the same code of omertà. They are all men who are respected, and sometimes referred to as the Onorata Società, the ‘Honoured Society’. Generally they cooperate, but sometimes they are unable to resolve jurisdictional squabbles or disputes between members or even clients, and they clash. A long list of murders in Corleone over the last twenty years, and the current wave of homicides in Palermo are evidence of what takes place when that occurs. But there have also been many mafia murders in Leone. This then is the Mafia, or as much of it I was able to observe in the limited time I spent in Leone, for I proceeded very slowly gathering information about it and my research ended just as I was beginning learn more. Within the amalgam of patronage, power and violence that characterizes the political structure of Sicily, there are many separate mafie and mafiosi who know each other and cooperate when it suits them to do so. Their similar structural position and common problems create a community of interest and, at times, parallel modes of action. These often resemble a gigantic conspiracy, and lend weight to the arguments of those who claim that the Mafia exists as a structured, island-wide criminal syndicate. The murder of fourteen key labour organizers in various towns in western Sicily between 1946 and 1948, and the massacre of May Day picnickers in 1947 at Portella Della Ginestra by Salvatore Giuliano, who was a bandit, not a mafioso – are cases in point (Maxwell 1957). Though these events looked like part of a closely coordinated conspiracy, I suggest they were merely the outbreak of similar structural conflicts. That is, the violent eruption of the tension between powerful landed interests, on the one hand, and an increasingly militant and well organized working-class movement seeking to gain possession of the land, on the other. The fact that the head of the powerful Ministry of the Interior

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in Rome at the time was a wealthy Sicilian landowner can undoubtedly be advanced as one of the factors that explain the timing of these outbursts of violence, as must the concerted campaign by the Right to discredit and crush the Left. Those who sought to enforce their wishes by violence and those prepared to help them were assured of a protective political climate, and acted accordingly. Mafiosi are thus persons who wield great power. This is derived partly from their functional role as brokers of violence in a land where violence is still used for political, economic and moral ends; and in part it derives from their ability to use the strategic position this gives them to thrust their way into the centre of local economic and political power relations. Their strength lies in the fact that they deal in naked power. No study of rural Sicily can ignore their influence and manifold activities. Yet these, because of their illegal nature, are as difficult to define precisely as they are important.

Local Politics The dynamics of local politics are determined by the competition of class interests, personal ambition and manoeuvring networks of patrons, mafiosi, their protectors and clients. The town council is the logical level at which the basic economic and social development problems of Leone should be discussed and acted upon, but this is vitiated by the struggle for power between political parties and individual councillors, as well as by the constant pressure of clients and friends of friends for favours. This has brought about a rapid change in the composition of the municipal junta that, in turn, has resulted in an incredible wastage of the town’s already limited economic resources. This process is demonstrated clearly in the recent history of the local administration.

Background The postwar political history of Leone may be divided in two: the period of Socialist control that lasted until the municipal elections of 1956, and the unstable administration following that. From the end of the war until 1958 a ‘red’ junta composed of the Socialists supported by the Communists governed Leone. A bloc made up of the DC and the minor parties opposed it. Until 1960 each bloc contested the elections with a unified list of candidates. In spite of its very slender electoral majority the PSI–PCI bloc maintained a clear majority in the town council, where it held twenty-four out of the thirty-two seats. The results of the postwar elections for the town council are given in Table 4.4.

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Table 4.4 Leone Town Council Election Results (in percentages)

1960 1956 1953 1946

DC*

PCI*

PSI

MSI (Fascist)

PSDI (Saragat)

USCS (Regional)

Other

31 49.7 45.9 42.5

30 50.3 54.1 57.5

20 – – –

8 – – –

1 – – –

8.7 – – –

1.3 – – –

* Before 1960 these acronyms represent the PSI–PCI bloc and the bloc composed of the DC and the minor parties, each of which presented one list only.

The PSI–PCI bloc held this stable majority in the town council thanks to the electoral system then in effect that automatically gave 75 per cent (twenty-four out of thirty-two) of the seats in the town council to the electoral list that received the majority of the votes (half plus one). This system induced the parties of the Left and those of the Right to unite into two opposing blocs, each of which presented its own list of candidates. This ensured administrative stability until the next election, for to bring the junta down required at least nine councillors to pass to the opposition, an unlikely occurrence. The constant pressure by the opposition to get councillors to defect, and so to bring down the junta, a manoeuvre that became common following 1960, was ruled out by the large majority of the coalition forming the administration. The chief problem of the local administration until 1958 was its chronic poverty; Leone is a poor town. Ordinary recurring administrative expenses exceeded income by some 12,000,000 lire annually, the deficit being made up by loans, usually from the regional government. In Sicily all civic improvements such as the paving of the streets and the extension of the sewage and the water systems are dependent upon grants from the regional government, which in turn receives some of its development funds for this purpose from the national government and certain government corporations such as the Cassa per il Mezzogiorno. In theory, these funds are supposed to be released to all communities in proportion to their needs as reflected in the development projects they have submitted to the regional authorities. In practice, however, development grants are normally released only through the patronage network of the parties controlling the Regional Assembly in Palermo. That is, they are held until the village level administrator-politicians persuade some powerful patron at the regional level to intercede on their behalf. Those governing Leone until 1958 were in a very unfavourable strategic position to be able to make this sort of contact in Palermo: the Leone administration was ‘red’, while conservative forces controlled the Regional Assembly. Moreover, two of the province’s Christian Democrat deputies are among the most powerful politicians in the regional government.

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The decreasing popularity of the Socialist Party in Leone (see Table 4.3) is in part a reflection of this unfavourable strategic position, which became progressively more noticeable as the general prosperity of Italy increased, and more state funds moved from Rome, via Palermo, to Leone’s more conservative neighbours. In part it is also a reflection of the increasingly efficient organization and power of the Christian Democratic Party. The Socialist control over the junta came to an end in 1958 following a long and bitter lawsuit that arose out of the 1956 municipal elections. As Table 4.4 shows, this election was extremely close. In point of fact, the difference between the two blocs was a matter of only fifty-three votes (4,587 to 4,534). Trouble arose when one of the officials supervising the election – an outsider who had been sent to Leone for that purpose ‘forgot’ to countersign the returns from one of the town’s voting districts. The Socialists and Communists claim that this was done by design; the DC maintains it was by negligence, and promptly filed a suit against the Socialists to have the votes of the district concerned declared invalid. This would have given the majority in the town to the list presented by the DC and its allies. The case was finally tried in 1958. The court awarded costs against the Socialists, but declared the entire election void. The provincial prefect ordered the Socialist junta to resign, and appointed a commissioner to take over the town’s administration.

Administrative Instability Between 1958 and the municipal elections of 1960 the administrative reins of Leone passed through the hands of five different commissioners. Each time the composition of the regional junta changed, so did the commissioner in Leone, for a commissioner is generally a local man nominated by the local branch of the political party temporarily in command in Palermo. There were three Christian Democrat and two Socialist commissioners, though the first of the latter resigned after only a month in office and was replaced by a party colleague. Thus during the two years of administration by commissioner effective control over the town’s affairs was still held by the local leaders of the two principal parties, with all that implies in the way of patronage. Just before the 1960 municipal elections the regional government replaced the majority system of election by a proportional system in all towns with populations exceeding 5,000. This affected Leone. Henceforth the number of councillors elected from each party was to be in proportion to the total votes each party received. It thus became possible for even the small parties to be represented on the council. The party affiliation and socioeconomic position of the thirty-two councillors elected in 1960 are given in Table 4.5. The immediate result of the new law was to divide the two opposing blocs into their constituent parties, splitting the Communists from the Socialists

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Table 4.5 Class and Party in the 1960 Leone Town Council

Galantuomini Borghesi Contadini Total elected

DC

PCI

PSI

USCS

MSI

Total Number

Total Percentage

5 5 – 10

1 6 3 10

4 2 1 7

1 2 – 3

2 – – 2

13 15 4 32

41 47 12 100

and freeing the Fascists and other small parties from their dependence on the Christian Democrats. But because the conservative parties evenly matched the alignment of parties on the Left, the small parties and factions began to play a role out of proportion to their numerical strength. In this respect the administrative junta began to reflect the situation prevailing at the regional and national level. It now became possible for the small parties, factions of the larger ones and even individual councillors to play the Left off against the Right, and so enter the municipal junta. Thus the proportional system of voting introduced an element of instability into the local scene that, in contrast to the unstable national and regional situation, had hitherto been characterized by its stability. The administrative junta became a fragile thing whose life depended upon the support of the minor parties and, at times, upon the whims of a single councillor. In consequence there was a constant movement in and out of the town hall: from November 1960 to May 1963 five different coalitions ran the affairs of the town. The 1960 election was the first time the Communist vote surpassed the Socialists’, and the ten Communist councillors with the reluctant support of the seven Socialists formed the first coalition. The Socialists refused to participate in the junta as they considered the Communists incapable of running the town’s administration. The Communists thus formed the junta by themselves, and the town’s professional-class politicians sat back to watch the contadini make the expected mess of the administration. Various mafiosi also began to try to force the Communist mayor to resign. The Communist Party is the only political party in Sicily that has consistently and openly attacked the mafia and whose leaders have rejected its support. The new Communist administration was thus a threat to the personal interests of local mafiosi as well as those whom they normally protected. But the Communists proved to be efficient. In spite of the inexperience of some – the member of the junta in charge of public works, for example, was an unskilled day labourer who had taught himself to read while in the army – they worked hard and were honest. Even three years later some of their professional-class opponents, who normally had nothing complimentary to say about any of the town’s many juntas, grudgingly admitted that the Communists had been good administrators. One lawyer explained to me that

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‘This was due to their strong party discipline’. The Communist junta did not destroy itself by administrative inability, and the mayor remained in office in spite of vicious anonymous letters threatening his life. The Communist junta’s downfall came from quite a different direction. The coalition formed by the seventeen Communists and Socialists had a majority of only one. To bring it down and form a new one its enemies needed only to find two councillors willing to cross the floor. They thus began to apply pressure. Within three months they had located several weak members of the governing coalition. Two cousins, both members of the borghesia, one of whom was a member of the junta, left the Communist Party and joined the Christian Democrats. According to town gossip, one changed because he was given a white-collar job in the provincial capital through the intervention of a DC deputy. The other is alleged to have joined the DC because he received a sizeable scholarship for his sons from an exclusive Church-run college. When asked about this sudden change, one replied to a relative that it was his duty to think first of the wellbeing and advancement of his family. Their behaviour, if true, may be contrasted with the sacrifice of one of the Communist contadino members of the junta. Although he received no remuneration from the municipality (only the mayor receives a stipend) he nonetheless left his steady employment as a labourer in a stone quarry in order to carry out his new administrative assignment. He told me that he was personally quite relieved when the junta fell so that he could go back to work to support his family and pay off the debts he had accumulated. At about the same time two other members of the junta, including the PCI’s only professional-class member, passed to the Saragat Socialists. At the vote on the annual budget, during which these new alignments first became apparent, three Socialists also voted against the junta. According to town gossip, once again, this was in response to mafia pressure. Thus defeated twenty-two to ten, the Communist junta resigned. Four more juntas followed. The inherent instability of the municipal junta that followed the introduction of the new, ostensibly more democratic, electoral law has had important repercussions on the internal politics of Leone, as well as on the quality of its local administration. This instability is not limited to Leone. It has become a general characteristic of most Sicilian towns with populations exceeding 5,000, and in which the Christian Democrats and Communists are almost equally matched. The essence of the problem, as we have seen, is that instead of having a stable working majority, the life of each junta often depends upon a single vote. This has given great power to individual councillors, for any single councillor supporting the junta has the power to destroy it. Their vote thus becomes a weapon with which they can threaten the junta. Councillors have exercised this power to the detriment of the town.

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Maladministration The constantly changing responsibility for the town’s affairs has all but destroyed effective administrative control, and made planning impossible. Because the individual members of the junta know that they will not be in power for long, they have usually worked to draw the maximum possible advantage out of their positions for themselves, their protectors and clients. They have had little to fear from public opinion by acting in this way, because the public assumed that they were doing just this. Discovery of some questionable affair – such as the case of the member of the junta who arranged the sale of a valuable piece of town property to his brother for a pittance – merely confirms the belief already held. The result has been a monumental maladministration. The case of the family tax provides a good example of how receptiveness to a constant stream of pressure affects municipal affairs. Each family is supposed to pay a small annual tax based on its income. Five years earlier, under the stable Socialist administration, the town collected approximately 10,000,000 lire annually. But since then no junta has had the strength to enforce this law, or exercise a tight control over municipal business. The result has been that a constant stream of relatives, friends and friends of friends, working through town councillors and municipal employees, have succeeded in amending the tax assessment records to the point where now only about 3,000,000 lire are actually collected each year, although the standard of living due to the influx of funds from emigrants has increased considerably during the same period. The municipal employment picture shows a similar development. When the Socialist junta was forced to resign in 1958 there were forty-two persons employed by the municipality; now there are sixty-three. All have been able to become employees either thanks to their own political skill or, more usually, due to the intercession of some powerful patron on their behalf. Many employees, for example, are the younger or less aggressive brothers of the town’s leading politicians. But regardless of the many possible techniques they used, they all found the various juntas susceptible, and they secured a place on the municipal payroll. In some respects the town hall resembles la cour des miracles described by Victor Hugo in Notre Dame de Paris, for it is staffed to a very considerable extent by handicapped persons. A spastic acts as receptionist in one office, a man crippled in one arm is a typist and a deformed man cleans the floors. Though all these have influential patrons, there is also another reason for their presence here. This was pointed out to me by an old school teacher who, after explaining the tortuous political and bureaucratic channels a person must follow in order to gain employment in the town hall, remarked, ‘Don’t judge us too harshly. These positions represent the only regular aid that we, a poor town, can give to our unfortunate

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neighbours who could not earn a living elsewhere. It is our traditional form of social assurance, and the law also favours their appointment.’ The lack of a tight control over the town’s government and the increased vulnerability of the junta brought about a progressive wastage of the town’s already limited financial and administrative resources. The total debt of the town, which stood at 30,000,000 lire in 1958, had risen to a staggering 310,000,000 lire by 1963. Moreover, it is increasing by some 77,600,000 lire annually. The town has all but exhausted its sources of credit; the chronic deadlock over its budget has further limited its credit with the regional government. One of the results of this depressing financial situation is that the municipal employees are paid only two or three times a year, and then only after prolonged and often bitter strikes. These paralyze local affairs for as long as three months at a time; months during which refuse is removed and streets cleaned only sporadically and the municipal police take off their uniforms. But even when they are not on strike, the municipal police have ceased to enforce local ordinances effectively. All a person now has to do to have a traffic or shop-closing violation waived is to go to his protector on the town council, who, in turn, sees the member of the junta concerned. If the latter does not quash the charges, the protector threatens to withdraw his support of the junta. Faced with this alternative, the assessore tears up the charge. ‘It’s got to the point where the police don’t even bother to issue the summons anymore,’ a shopkeeper exclaimed. ‘Porca miseria! These rotten politicians are ruining the town with their dirty games and personal ambitions. What we need is a strong hand to clean them up. Tutti sono cornuti!’ (They are all cuckolds!).8 Thus we have paradox of the supposedly more democratic 1960 electoral law opening the way to self-seeking politicians and mafiosi who manipulate the system for their own benefit, bringing administrative chaos to the affairs of the comune. Moreover, the members of the junta have been too preoccupied with their own political survival to be able to apply pressure on patrons in Palermo to obtain development funds for the town. Besides, they see little point in trying to do this as in all likelihood they would no longer be in office when the funds were released, a fact which their friends in Palermo also recognize. The administrative instability has thus even stifled party initiative motivated by self-interest. As long as this situation prevails, Leone is in a patently weak position to solve its many development problems by working through its elected leaders. Though the majority of the people have a better income and a higher standard of living than ever before – thanks to increased government social benefits and the added income from emigrant labourers – the municipality is poorer and its affairs more thoroughly disorganized than eight years ago, when people were living in appalling misery. This is a paradox that just confirms the popular belief that all politicians are corrupt.

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Conclusion As we have seen, the reasons Leone is so poor and why it remains so in spite of the so-called economic boom in the ‘Italy of miracles’ are complex. To begin with, there is the pressure of the large population on the limited existing land resources, which are cultivated extensively rather than intensively. Effective control of land is for the most part held by a limited class of persons who thus exercise economic control over the rest. This control, in combination with the surplus of labour, in the past had kept the remuneration for labour down, with the consequence that the standard of living of the labouring classes was extremely low. This served to emphasize the fundamental social division in Leone between those who control, and those who are controlled. The striking disparity between these two classes resulted in a strong working class movement. Secondly, in a political system traditionally based on patronage, Leone’s ‘red’ tradition placed its leaders in a disadvantageous strategic position to obtain funds from the Christian Democrat controlled Regional Assembly. Finally, the introduction of a proportional system of electing the town council facilitated the ruthless manipulation of the town’s administration for personal and political ends. This has resulted in an unstable and inefficient local administration. The unstable leadership has perpetuated the poverty of Leone through wastage of its already limited resources and by its total inability to resolve the town’s many problems. This maladministration has reinforced the popular belief that all government is inherently corrupt and unjust and that the only way to obtain justice is either to take the law into one’s own hands or to apply pressure through strategically placed protectors, thus perpetuating the system. In many respects my presentation of the structural features of Leone society has been rather formal. Institutions and values have been portrayed as absolutes. In consequence, Leone’s social structure has come to assume a static form. Structural or social change seems to be ruled out by the very rigidity of the model. But no society is static. All are continuously undergoing changes. Institutions are altered or replaced by new ones, values change, new alignments of forces occur. This is as true in Sicily as elsewhere. On the economic level, the most important is the alteration of the occupational structure. Thanks to the booming economy in northern Europe an increasingly large percentage of Leone’s labour force is going to work in Germany and Switzerland. This removes them and their families from direct economic dependence on the local landowning class. The cash income they derive from this new wage labour is permitting the masses to acquire more modern living accommodation, thus reducing the gap in the standard of living that emphasized the separation of the classes. It also enables families to do without the economic contribution of some members for a few years, thus allowing them to benefit from the educational opportunities offered by

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the expanding government school system. This frees the contadino family from its dependence upon others who possess the education necessary to interpret the directives of a modern government. It also enables the educated members of the family to obtain employment to which a higher social standing is attached, thereby making it possible for a contadino family to rise in the socioeconomic hierarchy of the town. These changes are gradually increasing the economic independence of the contadini from the economic and political control of the signori and borghesi. They are chipping away very slowly at the traditionally rigid class system. There is also movement at the political level. The constant pressure from the bottom, that is, from the overwhelming mass of the rural proletariat, brought about considerable changes during the last century. Though just seventy years ago the anti-working-class forces in the government were strong enough to destroy the Fasci, the first island-wide working class movement, today workers’ unions are solidly established in every village and town in Sicily. The workers’ movement, operating through the apparatus of the unions and political parties, has been able to apply greater pressure to change the economic and political structure of Sicilian society. This has resulted in land reform of sorts, a slowly expanding program of agricultural and industrial development, and, especially, increased social benefits. All these were brought about by pressure from the bottom and from the Left, and have somewhat reduced the economic and political dependence of the rural masses on the propertied classes, the upper strata of rural Sicilian society. This greater independence, in combination with the democratic form of government reintroduced after the Fascist regime, permitted the agricultural proletariat to win a place in local, regional and national government. There are also changes taking place in the system of values. The expectations of the people of Leone are changing, as is the action they take to fulfil them (cf. Firth 1959: chapter 11). Several decades ago all wished but few among the masses expected to be able to give a comfortable life to their children through their own work, at least by legal means. The alternative was the hazardous pursuit of power through violence: rebellion, brigandage or mafia. The control and exploitation of local government by the economically dominant class was also accepted. It had always been so, therefore it would always be so. The Church, many of whose priests preached the divine order of a society divided into classes and the assurance that God would provide for the needy, reinforced the fatalistic acceptance of the status quo. Today a contadino expects to be able to have a better life for himself and his children. If necessary he and his sons can go to Germany or Switzerland to achieve this. He also expects to be able to better his position and that of the class of which he forms part, by working together with others through class- and occupation-based pressure groups. This cooperative action is introducing an important new principle of social organization into a society where insti-

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tutionalized cooperation between non-kin has been so rare as to be nonexistent. People are beginning to expect those governing their country and town to show more integrity in office and more responsibility toward their constituents. In Leone there is a growing disgust with many of the councillors for betraying their mandate and making a plaything out of the town’s administration. What action will they take? Many still shrug their shoulders and say, fatalistically, that they can do nothing about those who run the town, for it has always been like that. But a few others are beginning to give their votes not, as in the past, in exchange for food, employment or protection, but to candidates and parties whose record speak for their integrity, for their willingness to subordinate personal interests for the good of the community. This is a sign of political maturity. It is just possible that in the distant future public opinion may force more efficient administration on the town’s elected representatives. It will thus be evident that the community of Leone is not static: there are changes taking place. I have tried to present some of the general principles of the town’s social organization. I have also attempted to indicate the direction and nature of the changes that are occurring. Leonesi expect the future to be brighter than the past. They now have some knowledge of the means to translate hope into action in order to realize this expectation.

Acknowledgements The chapter is based on research made possible by the generous assistance I received from the Associazione Nazionale per lo Sviluppo di Comunità through the good offices of Reverend Salvinus Duynstee, from the Penrose Fund of the American Philosophical Society and from the Cooperative for American Relief to Everywhere, Inc. (CARE), to all of whom I express my grateful thanks. I especially thank Lawrence Wylie for his advice and help and Therèse Gagné for typing the manuscript. Anton Blok, J.K.Campbell, Denis Mack Smith, Lucy Mair, C.A.O. van Nieuwenhuize, Donald Pitkin, G. Sjoberg and Arturo Xibilia read and helpfully commented on the first draft of this report. As they will see, I have benefitted from their criticism and suggestions. And finally, I thank Inga and our daughters for their patience, help and encouragement during this difficult period of research throughout which they lived in Malta while I remained in Sicily. * * *

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2011 Epilogue In 2007, 2009 and 2011 my wife and I made short visits to Palma di Montechiaro to call on acquaintances and to see what changes had taken place since the 1960s. Indeed, these had been considerable. Although some 4,000 Palmesi are still working abroad, mainly in Germany, many thousands have returned and now live off their savings and various subsidies in the houses they have built or renovated. The population has grown to 24,000. Many apartment blocks and houses have been built on the northern edge of the old town and below it to the south. The streets in the old town have been paved, the trenches for the ‘black water’ have disappeared and the houses in what were formerly the poorer quarters have been visibly improved. On the eastern periphery there is a new district, Villaggio Giordano, that consists of a grim amalgam of apartment buildings, social housing and often illegally constructed and partly finished private houses built helter-skelter along a maze of narrow, often unpaved streets. All the housing, we were told, has been or can be connected with the water, electricity and sewage networks. There is a newly constructed Centro Sociale Salvinus, a social centre dedicated to the memory of the late Salvijn Duynstee, the Dutch Franciscan priest for whom I had worked as a social researcher in 1962 and 1963. He had been invited in 1960 to come to help develop Palma, but in 1963, due to the hostility of the local clergy and the Episcopal Curia in Agrigento, he was forced to close his social centre and leave, also abruptly ending my research. A new highway skirts the town to the south and so the coastal traffic no longer passes through the town centre. Just below the town and adjacent to the new highway, a new industrial zone accommodates a large establishment producing cement pipes and bricks, a number of workshops and showrooms and a vast winery. In fact, there are now many new vineyards on the southfacing hills around the town where for centuries mainly wheat and broad beans had been cultivated. The country trails and lanes have been improved and many asphalted so that the farmers, more affluent now, can reach their fields by car or motorcycle and cultivate them mechanically. Mules, the chief mode of agrarian transport in the 1960s, have gone. The town now has three restaurants, several pizzerias, many cafes and ice cream parlours and two bed and breakfast establishments. There is a modest hotel and restaurant and a pizzeria in Marina di Palma and two bed and breakfasts in Capreria overlooking the Marina, where many of the better off Palmesi have built themselves luxurious summer houses. The Ducal palace that in 1962 housed the town prison has now become a cultural centre that includes a modern library, reading rooms, exhibition and assembly halls and a theatre. In January 1993 the library was formally dedicated to the memory of the heroic judge, Giovanni Falcone, murdered in May 1992 by the Mafia, together with his wife and three bodyguards. During the dedication ceremony

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the president of the Italian Libraries Association presented a collection of 300 books on the Mafia. Since 2006 the library, with the help of the local council, has organized an annual fortnight-long cultural festival, the Voci del Sud. In 2009 the activities of the festival included a photographic exhibition, theatrical presentations, films, musical recitals, book readings, lectures and discussions with authors, officials, journalists and local experts on climate change, nuclear energy (the government was considering locating an atomic plant nearby), the immigration problem and various aspects of local corruption. The final day of the 2009 Voci del Sud festival was devoted to a discussion with students of the life of Rita Atria, the courageous teenager from Partanna who had dared to testify against the Mafia. The daughter of a murdered Mafia boss, Atria and her sister-in-law, Piera Aiello, the widow of Rita’s murdered brother, had agreed with state prosecutor Paolo Borsellino to testify. Borsellino, who Atria trusted and confided in, arranged protection, for since they had broken the Mafia code of omertà their lives were endangered. In July 1992 Paolo Borsellino was assassinated and a week later, Rita, alone and frightened, committed suicide. Piera Aiello and Sandra Rizza, the author of a book about Rita Atria (1993), were present and actively participated in the Voci del Sud discussion (see also Reski 1994). In short, in 2009, we were surprised and impressed to hear about the upsurge of cultural activity, an apparent engagement with the wider society and a willingness to discuss openly local problems such as corruption and the Mafia. Much of this cultural activity was due to the efforts of the progressive mayor, a former lyceum philosophy lecturer who four times since the 1980s had been the town’s sindaco (mayor). He did not contest the local council elections in May 2010. The mafiosi of Palma di Montechiaro have been very much in the news. During the 1980s and 1990s there was extensive and bloody Mafia activity throughout southwest Sicily. The former mayor observed that during his period in office about forty Mafia-related murders had taken place in the town. Much has been written about the Sicilian Mafia during this period.9 It is clear that contrary to what I had written above, in 1966, the Sicilian Mafia in the 1960s was a hierarchical organization, as is the present traditional Mafia, now called the Cosa Nostra. However, in the mid 1980s two criminals from Palma di Montechiaro started a new mafia-type association, the Stidda (Sicilian for ‘star’) (Bascietto 2009). The Stidda consists of loosely structured gangs of young men, stiddari, who have rejected the authority and rules of the Cosa Nostra and, increasingly and violently, are now competing for the lucrative resources the old bosses controlled. Besides robberies and holdups, stiddari deal in extortion, drugs, weapons and spectacularly vicious assassinations. Stidda gangs occasionally also fight each other and the carnage of their tit-for-tat revenge murders is enormous. In 1991 in the province

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of Agrigento alone there were seventy-six mafia-related murders (Bolzoni 1992: 7). The stiddari of Palma di Montechiaro are notorious. Journalist Pino Scaccia (2005: 227–34) writing about mafiosi who regularly travel between Germany and Sicily, speaks of ‘I pendolari della Mafia’ [Mafia commuters], and noted how following on the murder of magistrate Giovanni Falcone in May 1992, prosecutor Borsellino became particularly interested in the ‘Palma di Montechiaro–Mannheim’ connection. He persuaded a Palmese emigrant in Mannheim, the owner of a pizzeria, to become a turncoat witness and so discovered that the assassins who murdered magistrate Rosario Livitano (in September 1990) all came from Palma di Montechiaro. He concluded that ‘I mafiosi di Palma di Montechiaro, distribuiti ovunque in Germania, costituiscono il tessuto malavitoso che alleva i potenziali killer usati da Cosa nostra siciliana per spargere sangue e terrore’ [‘The mafiosi of Palma di Montechiaro, present everywhere in Germany, constitute the criminal fabric that provides the potential killers used by the Sicilian Cosa Nostra to spread blood and terror’] (Mazzacchi 1992: 18). I ended my discussion above on a rather optimistic note. But the political climate does not seem to have changed much over the years. In 2011 the former mayor said that though the town was certainly better off than in the 1960s, financial problems were still severe and structurally similar: allocation of infrastructural funds by the centre-right authorities in Agrigento and Palermo still depended on political colour and friends-of-friends networks; because he was a well-known liberal he had had great difficulty in obtaining infrastructural funds. He was particularly aggrieved that in spite of the many promises of help over the years, government funds to deepen Marina di Palma’s harbour and repair its breakwater had not been forthcoming. He was also discouraged that his attempts to stimulate cooperation and introduce cultural activities had not taken root. The various cooperatives that had been started in the area had not been particularly successful and the Voci del Sud festival he had been instrumental in introducing in 2006 had not been celebrated since he retired. He explained this lack of interest in their community and in cooperative activities by the fact that the Palmesi are so focused on their own family, house and possessions that they have no interest in working with others or spending time or money on such activities. He also noted that the local stiddari were still active. In fact, on 26 November 2011, less than three weeks after we left Palma di Montechiaro, an emigrant, who had returned to the town from Germany to complete the work on his house and celebrate Christmas with his wife and two children, was killed by persons unknown. The use of a machine gun suggested the Cosa Nostra. As usual there were no witnesses. The police assumed that it was un regolamento di conti (a settling of accounts) and feared a resumption of the vicious war between Cosa Nostra and Stidda that had raged in the area during the 1980s.10

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Their fear was confirmed exactly two months later. On 26 January 2011 the bodies of two men were discovered in a ditch alongside the highway between Palma di Montechiaro and Licata. Both had been riddled with pistol bullets. One of the victims was a leading member of the Stidda of Palma di Montechiaro whose own father had been killed in a Mafia ambush on 20 January 1985.11 Two weeks later the province of Agrigento and the comune of Palma di Montechiaro together organized an anti-Mafia demonstration in the village to protest against the recent resurgence of Mafia violence. Besides provincial and Palmesi officials, representatives from surrounding villages and hundreds of local residents, school children and students participated in the demonstration.12 Yes, as we discovered on return visits, much has visibly changed in Palma di Montechiaro since the 1960s, but not surprisingly many of the customs and attitudes have not.

Notes 1. Leone is in fact the town of Palma di Montechiaro. In 1966 I gave the town and all its inhabitants pseudonyms to protect their anonymity, as was then the custom among anthropologists. Now that almost fifty years have passed I no longer think this is relevant, as I have discovered that those who were interested have long since uncovered the town’s real name. But in this, the original account, I have retained the name Leone. Also see the 2011 Epilogue above. 2. This was in conformity with their strategic policy to relocate their barracks just outside the built-up areas of towns noted for civil unrest; rebellious attacks on Carabinieri stations in western Sicily were not uncommon in the very recent past. 3. This contrast between female purity and male libertinage was until recently even reflected in the law concerning adultery: if a wife slept once with a man not her husband she committed adultery but, by law, for a man to be regarded as an adulterer he had to live publicly with another woman. 4. This is in contrast to much of the rest of Sicily where speculation in construction and commerce is replacing possession of land as an index of wealth and power. 5. Technically speaking those in this occupational category are contadini. However, I avoid using the term in this sense and employ it as the Leonesi do to designate all those who physically work on the land. 6. For a more extended discussion of patronage see Boissevain (1966b). 7. Italian judicial procedures render witnesses particularly vulnerable to this type of pressure. Often several years elapse between the report of the magistrate investigating the crime and the actual trial. This is a period during which witnesses are very often pressured to retract their initial statements, resulting in the government’s case falling apart due to lack of proof. 8. See also Boissevain (1971) for further details of the political manoeuvring of the Leone local council and the excellent in-depth anthropological studies of Anton Blok (1969, 1974) and Jane and Peter Schneider (1976) of rural Sicilian communities also carried out during the 1960s.

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9. See the studies in English of Stille (1995), Hess (1986), Catanzaro (1998), Schneider and Schneider (2003) and Dickie (2004). For an overview of the 520 books published in Italian on the mafia since 1980 see http://www.unilibro.it/find_buy/findresult/ libreria/prodotto-libro/argomento-mafia_.htm 10. See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFi1LIy sZh0&feature=related 11. See http://www.grandangoloagrigento.it/?p=21559 12. See http://www.trctv.net/youtube/9688-palma%20di%20montechiaro,%20svolta% 20la%20marcia%20della%20legalità.%20-%20trc%20-%20tele%20radio%20 canicattì.html

CHAPTER 5

THE ITALIANS OF MONTREAL*

Background The Italian community in Montreal has grown in three stages at an everincreasing pace. The first began just before the turn of the century and lasted until the early 1920s; the second extended from the 1920s to the end of the Second World War; and the third from the end of the war to the present day [1960s]. Although an Italian in the service of Great Britain, Giovanni Caboto, otherwise known as John Cabot, discovered Newfoundland in 1497 and a number of Italians – missionaries, soldiers and traders – played a part in the country’s early history (Vangilisti 1958: 3–109), Italian colonization began in earnest only towards the end of the last century. Unsettled economic and political conditions following the unification of Italy between 1859 and 1870, the pressure of over-population, and the chronic poverty of the south were among the factors that drove Italians to emigrate; at the same time the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway between 1880 and 1885 and other large building projects created a demand for unskilled labour that Italians were able to meet. As a result, the steady trickle of immigrants from Italy soon swelled into a stream. What is the nature of the Italian community in Montreal, and the character of relations within the community between the various generations and with the French- and English-Canadian communities? These are questions that this chapter examines.

This chapter is based on J. Boissevain, The Italians of Montreal: Social Adjustment in a Plural Society. Ottawa: Information Canada for the Royal Commission for Bilingualism and Biculturalism (1970), pp. 1–36. Reproduced with the permission of the Minister of Public Works and Government Services, 2010, and courtesy of the Privy Council Office.

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Demographic Considerations In 1901 there were only 1,600 persons of Italian descent in Montreal. As a result of the impact of the massive waves of immigration immediately preceding and, to a lesser extent, following the First World War, the number of persons of Italian descent increased almost tenfold until it had reached 14,000 in 1921.The influx diminished after 1927, for the Italian Fascist party, which by then had assumed full control in Italy, discouraged emigration. Restrictions placed on immigration by the Canadian government during the economic Depression of the 1930s and the Second World War were also important factors in reducing the flow of Italian immigrants. From 1921 to 1941 the Italian population of Montreal expanded very slowly; in fact it did not quite double. During the war years, 1939 to 1945, virtually no immigrants of Italian origin entered Canada. Following the Second World War the situation changed dramatically. To escape the appalling misery then prevailing in large areas of Italy, especially in the south, many set out to join relatives and fellow townsmen in the New World. The new wave of immigration developed slowly at first. But after 1951 the floodgates opened: in 1951 alone 24,000 Italians arrived. Altogether, from the beginning of 1951 to the end of May 1961, 216,000 Italians settled in Canada; the majority went to Ontario.1 According to the 1961 census, there are around 108,500 persons of Italian descent in the province of Quebec; of these some 101,000 live in the Montreal metropolitan area. In 1965 persons of Italian descent in Montreal were increasing at the rate of approximately 6,000 per year. Of these, around 2,100 represent the natural increase, for during the last few years births have averaged 2,400 and deaths 250 per year. The remaining 3,900 are immigrants. Thus in the four years since the 1961 census the number of Italians in Montreal has increased by approximately 24,000, bringing the total to around 126,000. This brief demographic examination indicates that the Italian population of Montreal is composed of three groups. The first comprises those who came before the war, the ‘old immigrants’; the second, those who were born in Canada; and finally the large numbers that have come since the war. This last group represents approximately half the total Italian population of Montreal. The position occupied by Italians in one of these groups determines, to a very considerable extent, the outlook and behaviour that lie behind their answers to certain questions to be examined later in this study.

Settlement Patterns Though persons of Italian descent in Montreal are spread over the entire metropolitan area, they are mainly concentrated in five areas. In general the

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growth and movement of the Italian population mirror similar developments in the city from a beginning close to the river, to settlement spreading to the north, east, west and south. The first Italian settlements developed adjacent to the Bonaventure Station along the Canadian Pacific Railway tracks and below St. Catherine Street between St. Laurent Boulevard and St. Denis Street. This was an area near the railway yards and the port where cheap housing was available and which also provided employment for the unskilled immigrant labourers.2 During this period Italian settlement was clearly dominated by the Mount Carmel area and the Archbishop of Montreal established the first Italian national parish there in 1905. At the same time a number of Italians moved to Mile-End in the north and built little country houses surrounded by gardens in which they grew vegetables and grapes for wine. This small settlement gradually became a focal point and in 1910, following severe friction with their fellow parishioners in the French parish of St. Édouard, the Archbishop of Montreal granted permission for the Italians to establish their own parish (Vangilisti 1958: 172–89). The new parish was dedicated to the Madonna della Difesa, for whom those coming from the Italian province of Campobasso had developed a strong cult following the manifestation of the Virgin near the small town of Casacalenda at a locality known as La Difesa. Even today Campobassani are very numerous. The Mount Carmel area, which had dominated the Italian community in the years before the First World War, was soon replaced in importance by Mile-End. A steady stream of Italians moved into the area from the older and less well-situated settlements in the south of the city. Not everyone of Italian descent is in fact a parishioner of the Italian national parishes. The largest settlement of those who live outside the parishes is the heavy concentration in the south, in the Notre Dame de Grâce district, just north of the Lachine Canal. This is a well-integrated group of mostly new arrivals who are apparently served satisfactorily by a number of French- and English-speaking Roman Catholic parishes in the vicinity.

Social History of the Italian Community The social history of the Italian community in Montreal is divided into four distinct periods. The first, which ended in the early 1920s, was the period of first arrivals and marked the birth of the settlement. The second, which extended from the mid 1920s to the beginning of the war, was a period of stabilization and internal development. The third was the war period. This was a troubled time during which many of the leading members of the community were placed in internment camps; others studiously avoided mentioning their Italian descent. The fourth and present period began after the war and has in

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a sense seen the rebirth of the Italian community under the impetus of new waves of immigrants. The formative period of Italian settlement was one of great difficulty. New arrivals found the economic and social climate totally unprepared for them. Having no one to whom they could turn for advice or assistance, they were forced to create their own opportunities. Although a number had relatives and fellow townsmen in Montreal, few of these had attained social or professional prominence in the wider Montreal society. Thus the community had no leaders who had the social prestige to represent effectively their interests with French- and English-speaking Canadians who controlled the economic and political life of their new home. Elderly informants repeatedly stressed the struggle they had in maintaining their own customs and in earning a living in the face of discrimination by their Canadian workmates and neighbours. This period, however, came to an end when the government of Mussolini abolished the Commissariato Generale dell’Emigrazione (General Commissariat for Emigration) and replaced it with the Direzione Generale degli Italiani all’Estero (General Agency for Italians Overseas), a government agency attached to the Italian Foreign Office. Henceforth emigration was not only curtailed drastically but all Italians overseas, including immigrants, were regarded as citizens of Italy temporarily living abroad. This meant that the government of Italy expected them to remain loyal, to heed the directives of its official representatives abroad, and to serve in its armed services (Sachetti 1963: 2–3). Thus the Italian government concerned itself with Italian settlement in Montreal and the Italian Consul General began to play an increasingly active role in the community (Bayley 1939: 190–93). With the encouragement and help of the Consul General, Italian Fascist leaders in Montreal developed a series of national-political associations that were counterparts of those existing in Italy. Fasci and Dopolavoro (social and recreational) clubs were established in Montcalm, Mile-End, St. Henri, Ville Émard and Lachine. The leaders also sought to weld the Italian community together by forming the Fronte Unico Italiano di Montreal, an organization in which most of the Italian associations and clubs were asked to participate. Its object was to provide material and moral support for the Italian government and to augment the prestige of Italians in general, and Fascists in particular. Bayley noted that the Italian Consul was an honorary member of the organization’s executive council that was composed of selected representatives of selected associations. The Italian national parishes in Montreal became very closely identified with the Fronte Unico, as did a number of the mutual benefit and friendly societies such as the Sons of Italy. But not all Italian leaders and associations participated in these Fascist-inspired activities. The leaders of the Sons of Italy, for example, had a falling out over the matter, and a group hived off to form a separate, anti-Fascist association, the Order of Italo-Canadians.

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Nonetheless, a certain cooperation was achieved through the Fronte Unico, for it was able to generate a good deal of enthusiasm and popular support. During this period the only non-religious buildings of the community were constructed and these became part of the patrimony of the Italians in Montreal. The most important was the Casa d’Italia built on property given to the Italian community by the city of Montreal through the good offices of Mayor Camillien Houde and was funded partly by the Italian government and partly through many small donations from the Italian community at large. If at a political level the community was perhaps stronger than ever before, economically the picture was somewhat different. The period of Fascist dominance in the Italian community coincided more or less with the Depression. This was a period of great misery and suffering. Montreal-born Italians, and even many newcomers, were quick to point out that those who lived in Montreal before the war were the pioneers of the community – men and women who made great sacrifices for their children and future generations. Many were forced to sell newly bought houses in order to meet debts; mortgages were foreclosed on others. In retrospect, and judging from the rate at which the postwar immigrants were able to forge ahead economically as well as socially, I think one must say that the Depression effectively prevented the prewar generation of Italian immigrants from gaining a larger slice of the Montreal economic and social pie. Many of those who have arrived since the war criticize the prewar immigrants for a lack of ambition and failure to make the most of their opportunities. But they overlook the smothering effect the Depression had on those who had just begun to establish themselves in their new country. Most older Italians like to forget the years of the war. In 1940, almost overnight, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police wiped out the leadership of the Italian community by sending virtually all the leaders to the internment camp at Petawawa. Italians, who up until then had been increasingly accepted by the French- and English-speaking communities, were suddenly shunned. They played down or hid their Italianness; they had suddenly become enemy aliens. Nonetheless, many Canadian Italians were conscripted into the Canadian armed services and returned after years away from home far more Canadianized than they would have been had they remained in Montreal. If being Italian was de-emphasized during the war years, the opposite was true after the war. As few experienced leaders returned to take charge of the affairs of the Italian community, many newcomers stepped forward to fill the roles left vacant. After the devastating experience of the war it is all the more surprising that the Italian community was able to re-establish itself so rapidly. The Casa d’Italia, sequestered by the government during the war, was returned and again became a social centre. Associations such as the Sons of Italy were reactivated and regional and parish patron saints

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were again enthusiastically celebrated with triumphal processions. Much of the credit for this renewed activity after so many depressing years must be given to young leaders untarred by the Fascist brush which had smeared so many of their elders. But it was largely the impact of the many thousands of new immigrants that shook the Italian community out of the despondency of the war years. Italian Canadians, for years shunned as enemy aliens and looked down upon as second-class citizens, suddenly found that the newcomers looked up to them as experienced and knowledgeable local citizens. Most found themselves with dependents – newly arrived relatives and paesani (persons from the same Italian district) – who sought advice from them on housing, employment, the mysteries of Canadian bureaucracy and education. Many older immigrants and Canadian-born Italians seized the opportunity for leadership that the newcomers offered them. Far from the liability it had been during the war, Italianness became an asset. By activating connections with Italy and by using Italian as a business as well as a family language, Italian Canadian contractors, for example, were able to find a source of cheap labour that helped them forge ahead of local French and English rivals. Small Italian-speaking shopkeepers doubled and trebled their clientele within the space of a year. Tradesmen suddenly found a market growing so fast that assistants were needed to help meet the demands. Italian Canadian professionals, many of whom had almost succeeded in becoming part of French-speaking Canadian society, reactivated their Italian contacts and studied the culture and language of their immigrant parents in order to attract clients. The dying Italian community thus surged into vigorous new life, generating economic, political and social ties with the Canadian-born persons of Italian descent who were moving out of it. The next two sections examine the structure of this community.

The Social Framework The many ties that cut across the Italian community in Montreal bind together those of Italian descent into a unity that is not just a sociological abstraction. The more important ties derive from a commitment to family, neighbourhood and friendship groups, interaction through economic activity, and finally the common culture and experience shared by persons of Italian descent. More formal institutions, such as the Italian national church and a host of associations and clubs founded by Italian Canadians for Italian Canadians, reinforce these ties. Even the Italian Consulate plays a role. From within the community spokespersons have emerged who represent its interests in dealing with the world around it, and a system of social control operates to enforce values which are particular to it.

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Family In general, kinship occupies a much more important place in a person’s social life in Italy than it does in North America.3 The central institution of Italian society is the family. The rights and obligations that derive from membership to it provide the individual with his or her basic moral code. Moreover, a man’s social status as a person with honour is closely linked to his ability to maintain or improve the economic position of his family and to safeguard the purity of its women, in whose virtue is enshrined the family’s collective honour. A person’s responsibility for his family is thus the value upon which his life is centred. Other values and organizational principles are of secondary importance. If they interfere with his ability to carry out his primary obligations to his family, he combats them with intrigue, force and violence if necessary. In so doing, he is supported by public opinion, even though he may be acting contrary to the law. This attitude and the values upon which it is based are brought over and, to a considerable extent, perpetuated among Italian immigrants. Italian families in Montreal are close groups, and members see each other often, even though they live in widely separated sections of the city. Thus the kinship networks provides a resilient fabric that binds together the members of the Italian community and links people who are geographically separated and who may even belong to different socioeconomic classes. Most Italians are in Montreal thanks to the help they have received from kinsmen. According to Greenwood (1961: 7), whereas nine out of ten of Italian immigrants were sponsored by close relatives, only one third of the German immigrants received this kind of help, and the average from all countries was just under half. Many Italians borrowed money from relatives already in Canada in order to finance their passage; others received the necessary legal guarantees and help in finding both accommodation and employment upon arrival. Not surprisingly, relatives cluster near each other; many even share the same house. A third of the immigrants in our sample had close relatives living either in the same building or within five minutes of their own house. Even among those persons of Italian descent born in Canada, ties of kinship are still very strong; a full two-thirds also had relatives living within five minutes. Relatives provide hospitality, give discounts in business and lend a hand in caring for sick or indigent relatives. It is through this network of relatives already in Canada that the immigrant generally makes his first contact with Canadian society. This network thus provides a cushion against the shock of acculturation and the sense of isolation that every new immigrant feels. But if a person can expect help and protection from his relatives, he also has obligations to them. If he is able to, he is expected to return hospitality, provide protection, and give help in other ways. Garigue and Firth (1957: 97) note of Italians in London that ‘kinship is less an instrument of social expression as in English kinship, than a formal tie implying rights and obligations’.

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Italian Canadians and their relatives not only live near each other, they also see a great deal of each other. Half of all immigrants questioned had had contact with their close relatives during the previous week, and a third had seen them during the previous twenty-four hours. These contacts were even more pronounced among those born in Canada, among whom three-quarters had seen their relatives in the previous week or during the previous twentyfour hours. Almost invariably during the course of an evening’s interview one or more cousins or aunts, uncles or possibly a brother, son or daughter would come into the home of an informant and often stay for the whole period of the interview. More formal visiting usually takes place on Saturday afternoon or Sunday. These days are very often reserved for calls on relatives who live at some distance and for the many formal celebrations such as births, confirmations, marriages and deaths. A good deal of informal pressure is placed on relatives to attend and help make a good showing at these ceremonies. Thus each kinship ceremony is an occasion for meeting persons who are either blood relatives or related by marriage. Such occasions enable distant relatives to remain in contact and younger members to make the acquaintance of other kinsmen. As there are approximately 2,400 births and 550 marriages a year, about 3,000 celebrations involving these two kinship ceremonies alone take place annually. Confirmations, name-day parties and funerals provide other occasions for relatives to meet. These occasions enable persons of Italian descent to keep in contact with Italian culture: Italian is used to speak to older relatives who have not learned French or English; Italian dishes are served and they exchange news about more distant kinsmen who live elsewhere in North America or who have remained in Italy. There is a constant flow of correspondence and news passing between immigrants and their families in Italy. Seven out of ten receive letters from Italy at least once a fortnight and 28 per cent of those born in Canada receive letters fortnightly, although many have never been to Italy and have never met those they correspond with.

Neighbourhood and Friendship If kinship provides a complex system of personal links that help bind together persons of Italian descent, so do the ties of neighbourhood and friendship. Most of the Italian immigrants in Montreal were born in small villages and towns in southern Italy, with a strong sense of community and many immigrants would be isolated and lonely if it were not for the other Italians in their neighbourhoods. In a number of areas of the city almost half the population is composed of Italians. In some streets they make up an even larger proportion. The points of greatest concentration are centred on Italian parish churches. In the Italian neighbourhoods centring on the

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Madonna della Difesa at the corner of Dante and Henri Julien Streets and San Giovanni Bosco on Springland Street in Ville Émard there are clusters of little food shops, cafes, photographers, tailors and cobblers run by Italians and very largely for Italians. These neighbourhoods re-create in a certain sense the face-to-face communities composed of relatives, friends and neighbours that the average immigrant left behind in Italy. Because immigrants establish their first contacts with Canadian life through such a neighbourhood, they very often settle there permanently. Their children are born and grow up there. Thus an Italian neighbourhood is, to a certain extent, a self-perpetuating group of friends and relatives who own property there. The second generation continues to live in the neighbourhood chosen by their parents. In point of fact, more than half of both the immigrants and Canadian-born Italians in our general sample bought houses in neighbourhoods with which they were already familiar and in which relatives and other Italians lived.

Italian Culture Aside from Italian institutions concentrated in Italian neighbourhoods, there are also a number that cater for Italians wherever they live in the city. The four Italian weeklies published in Montreal – Il Corriere Italiano, La Tribuna, Il Cittadino Canadese, and Il Corriere del Quebec – reach a large proportion of the population. In fact, 86 per cent of those interviewed reported that they read an Italian paper several times a week. Moreover, CFMB Radio broadcasts programmes in Italian offering light music in the afternoon and more music, news and sports commentary in the evening. Mass from one of the Italian churches is generally broadcast on Sunday mornings, and at noon CFCF television often broadcasts a half-hour Italian music review. These programmes are extremely popular; every house that we visited in the evening in the course of this study had the Italian programme turned on full blast. Italian food habits also deserve a note in passing. Many of our informants told us that one of the greatest problems they had in adjusting to life in North America was the diet. To overcome this as far as possible, almost nine out of ten did much of their shopping at Italian stores, and two-thirds made their own wine with grapes imported from California.

Earning a Living Virtually without exception the immigrants left Italy because they could not find satisfactory work or because they saw no possibility there of bettering their socioeconomic position. Almost 50 per cent were small farmers or

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agricultural labourers in Italy. Once in Canada they moved into jobs as labourers and factory workers. Many of their children, however, leave manual occupations for white-collar work. Thus, while only 14 per cent of the immigrant generation work in white-collar occupations, 57 per cent of the second- and third-generation Italians do so. This is a striking commentary on the social mobility of persons of Italian descent. Almost without exception, teachers, lawyers, doctors, specialists, leading industrialists and business executives of Italian descent are the sons of Italian peasants who worked as unskilled and semi-skilled industrial and construction labourers in Montreal. Because so many families have moved up the scale from ditch digger to medical specialist, from peasant to industrialist, in a single generation, the status ranking in the Italian community is extremely complex. It is interesting to note that six out of ten immigrants speak mostly Italian at their place of work and more than two out of ten use only Italian. This, in a sense, is understandable in the case of the immigrant who arrives without any knowledge of either French or English. But almost half of those born in Canada also use Italian at their place of work. Thus the social field of labour provides an area in which Italian culture is replicated and persons of Italian descent meet each other, creating a further set of ties that link Italian Canadians to each other. If persons of Italian descent work with each other, they also work for each other. In fact, we found that three out of ten persons of Italian descent work for Italians, and 46 per cent work with them. But these figures do not show how hard Italians, especially the immigrants, actually work. They have come to Canada to make a better life for themselves and their children. To attain their objectives they work long hours to save enough money to buy a house and thus provide a focal point for their family. Nearly half of the persons we interviewed owned their own house and several actually owned a number of houses. No less than seven out of ten had managed to purchase their house within ten years of their arrival in Canada. How do immigrants who arrive penniless manage to save such large sums of money in such a short time? This is a summary of what one family told us about the general situation. It is similar to other accounts we heard: All feel that a family with more than one person able to work can purchase a house between five and eight years after their arrival. The family’s financial policy is to live on half of what its members earn. During the first few years savings are set aside to repay debts. Most families arrive with a debt to a relative who loaned them money for their trip. Very few families are able to pay for their trip out of their own money. In order to repay this loan, each family needs about two to three years, after which, if everybody is working, they can set aside money for the purchase of a house. Italian families do not try to save on food. They eat well and their children are well fed. They do, however, save by not having a car and not going out to eat. Only when the house is paid for will the family consider going out on Saturday or Sunday evenings.

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This brief digression illustrates the dynamic aspect of the Italian Canadian community. The drive to buy a house – to own property – is one of the fundamental reasons why the immigrant left his own country. It is only when he has acquired a house that he begins to put down roots in his new homeland, thus providing a focal point for future generations of his family. In order to meet this housing demand, whole sections of Montreal are being constructed by Italian builders for Italians. This economic pragmatism embodies a materialistic outlook and a rather conservative economic philosophy. Because in one generation so many have become successful businessmen and members of the professions by their own hard work and sacrifices, many have the feeling that ‘if we can do it, so can they’. The ‘they’ refers to poorer fellow Italians as well as to other ethnic groups, notably the French. The quest for money, the emphasis on savings, the long hours of work necessary to buy a house, a television set, eventually a car and other possessions, reflect their extreme materialism. The Italian community engages in very few artistic activities, such as the poetry contests, song festivals, dramatic performances and folklore recitals that enliven the Ukrainian community (Bayley 1939). Only one folklore group, the north Italian Friulani group Furgolar Furlan, is really active among the Italians. The Dante Alighieri Society, a cultural organization fostered by the Italian government, has met with little success in Montreal. The values brought to Canada by the immigrants have not included any great interest in the arts; this is part of the culture of the borghesi, the middle and upper classes that stayed behind in Italy. The Italian immigrants amuse themselves much as their forefathers did in Italy: they organize family celebrations, banquets, football matches, bicycle races and popular song competitions. These, along with the festivals celebrating parish patron saints, are the popular cultural activities of the Italian rural population today and are also those of the Italian community in Montreal. However, second- and third-generation Italian Canadians have made important contributions to the artistic life of Canada, particularly in the fields of music, painting and the theatre. Material success has generated a rather self-satisfied outlook that reinforces the importance given to the family and the responsibility that men have to maintain it and provide for future generations. As so many Italian Canadians have been able to better their economic conditions so strikingly in one generation, many have adopted very conservative attitudes towards the increasing role that government plays in welfare services, education, and public health. The middle-class sons of penniless peasant immigrants, who in the twenties and thirties depended upon the charity of church and friends if they became ill, criticize the Quebec government’s increasing involvement in medical aid. At a banquet organized by the Canadian Italian Business and Professional Men’s Association (CIBPA) one informant remarked to me, ‘If people are sick they should be able to pay for a doctor themselves’. At this

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remark, the other successful Italian Canadian businessmen surrounding us nodded their heads in full agreement. Several cited examples of ‘lazy’, ‘unambitious’ new immigrants and French Canadians who receive free hospitalization and medical care paid for with the taxes which they, the more ambitious and harder working members of the (Italian) community, were obliged to pay.

The Church Religion provides another social field in which persons of Italian descent meet each other and interact as members of a particular ethnic group. To a very large extent the structure of the Italian ethnic church provides the territorial framework of the Italian community. Virtually all members of the Italian community are Roman Catholic. By virtue of belonging to one church a person belongs to a community that is defined in territorial terms. Membership in a parish includes the right to as well as the duty of participating in the vital rites de passage – baptisms, marriages and funerals – and the obligation of financially supporting the parish. The Italian national church not only provides an organizational structure of sorts through its ready-made territorial framework of parishes; it also represents a source of Italian culture for the Canadian-born and a comforting buffer between the somewhat bewildered new immigrant and Canadian society. The church also provides a channel whereby Italian neighbourhoods may come into contact with each other. While there is no institutionalized meeting point between Italian residential areas as neighbourhoods, there is between Italian neighbourhoods as parishes. Weekly masses, important annual festivals such as Christmas and Easter, enthusiastically celebrated feasts of Sant’Antonio of Padua and parish patron saints, in addition to baptisms, confirmations, weddings and funerals, are ritual occasions when persons of Italian descent meet each other on a recurring basis. These meetings provide the ceremonial core of the community, for the Italian community is not only a network of kinsmen, friends, neighbours and workmates: it is to a very large extent also a religious congregation.

Associations4 The many associations for Italian Canadians provide another set of institutional bones which give form to the network of interpersonal relationships based on kinship, friendship, the neighbourhood and marketplace. Although only 13 per cent of the immigrants and 28 per cent of the Canadian-born Italians are members of such clubs, the club officials, who together probably

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number no more than 600, are an important group. They are the leaders of the Italian community. Via organizational offices they coordinate the activities that enable persons of Italian descent to renew and extend their personal contacts. They also represent the interests of the rank and file to other associations and to the Italian community at large, as well as to the rest of Canadian society. The associations thus provide a social milieu within which persons desiring to become prominent in the community compete with each other for position. In this sense the milieu of the associations is also a political milieu. About 19 per cent of all the persons interviewed belonged to one or more of the associations. Given the total adult male population of approximately 34,000, this means that around 6,500 Italians belong to one or more of the approximately sixty associations organized for and by Italian Canadians. Very briefly, these clubs may be divided into mutual aid, regional, church, occupational, professional, and social organizations. These categories are by no means exclusive and a number of clubs fall into several classifications: many mutual aid societies are also regional groups and social clubs. The mutual aid societies are the oldest. Formed shortly after the arrival of the first immigrants around the turn of the century, they provide a measure of collective security to replace the support that the immigrant would have received from relatives had he remained in Italy. Although their insurance function is decreasing, owing to the expanding activity of the Quebec government in this field, the mutual benefit societies are still important. The largest of these societies are the Order of the Sons of Italy and the Order of ItaloCanadians – the latter having split from the former during the Fascist period. Each has well over a thousand members. The Sons of Italy is the more important politically, for it is organized in nine semi-autonomous lodges that serve as focal points for members. Individual lodges hold seasonal banquets, card and spaghetti parties and dances, and also organize charter tourist flights to Italy. There are about fifteen regional associations, many of which are also mutual benefit societies. Many have premises fitted out very much like social clubs. For example, the Sicilian Association, composed mainly of persons born in Cattolica Eraclea, a town of some 8,000 in the province of Agrigento, has a well-equipped clubhouse in Ville St. Michel. In 1964 more than 400 guests attended its annual Christmas banquet. Other active regional associations include several from the province of Campobasso and the Friulani association already mentioned. There are also numerous Church sponsored associations. Some are citywide organizations; others are centred on particular parishes. One of the most interesting is the Roman Catholic Association of Italian Workers (Associazione Cattolica dei Lavoratori Italiani – ACLI), a group that recently established language and vocational training courses for new immigrants. Several sports clubs organize matches and bicycle races.

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Of the occupational organisations, the largest is Local 240 of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, which is the Italian branch of the union and numbers some 4,000 members. But the most influential occupational society within and outside the community is the Canadian Italian Business and Professional Men’s Association (CIBPA). Established in 1949 it was modelled on a similar organization in Toronto. Garigue (1955: 38) calls it the ‘most important single development in the Italian community since the Second World War’. The total membership is close to 400 and is composed of most of the leading Italian Canadian professionals and businessmen in Montreal. Its leaders claim to speak on behalf of the Italian community to the provincial and federal governments. For example, in 1962 the CIBA presented a petition to the Prime Minister requesting, among other things, more education for immigrants, greater recognition by Canadian authorities of technical trade certificates obtained in Italy, and the appointment of a senator and a judge of Italian descent at the federal level. It also came out against the atomic bomb; advocated a Canadian national anthem and national flag; deplored the ‘amplitude of communist infiltration prevailing in publicly owned agencies’ and urged the government to take preventive measures to ‘stem this threat which is undermining public opinion and Canadian ideals through insidious propaganda under the guise of freedom of speech and the respect of democratic rights’. Many of the more prominent figures we interviewed denied that the CIBPA speaks for the Italian community and that its proposals are platitudes formulated to enable the CIBPA to attract attention and make it appear important. Undeniably a number of its directors and staff take themselves very seriously. Nonetheless, CIBPA is well organized and issues a well-edited annual directory and monthly information bulletin. It also has an active women’s auxiliary that functions very like similar North American women’s clubs – organizing fashion shows, cultural talks, and charitable activities. Garigue’s evaluation of the organization in 1955 (ibid.: 52) still holds true today: ‘While this organization claims to speak for the whole community, effective membership and certainly leadership within it is limited to a narrow group of Italians who have wealth and important status within the community’. This elite is almost exclusively composed of second-generation Italians born in Canada, many of whom occupy important positions in other associations. When they choose to do so, many also operate as French Canadians, and a few as English Canadians. All retain their links with the Italian community for reasons of prestige, business and politics. A few years ago a group of Italian-educated professional men and business executives, almost all recent arrivals, left the CIBPA and founded a more exclusive organization, the Association of Italo-Canadian Professional Men (Associazione dei Professionisti Italo-Canadesi – APIC), so that they would not have to rub shoulders with shopkeepers and contractors whose peasant

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origins were often all too obvious to them. Doctors and lawyers of Italian descent have also founded their own associations to represent their particular professional interests. None of these associations, however, performs political functions similar to those of CIBPA. Finally, there are the social clubs, the most important of which are the Casa d’Italia and the Bella Vista Golf Club, the latter patronized by many CIBPA members. The Casa d’Italia, as already noted, was the centre of prewar Fascist activity. Until a few years ago it was run by an exclusive group, most of whom were also important members of the Sons of Italy and the CIBPA. With a restaurant and tavern in the basement and meeting rooms and offices for associations on the first floor, it appears to have been organized more as a money-making concern than anything else. But in 1963 a new committee, composed of some of the most influential members of the Italian community, appointed some of its own number to convert it into a true cultural and social centre for the Italian community. The new committee plans to renovate the building’s rather seedy exterior. As the committee must go to the community at large to collect funds, the motives of the committee and their ambitious plans have come under close scrutiny by the Italian press, notably La Tribuna. If the committee succeeds in attaining its goal, the head of the Casa d’Italia will become the likely candidate for senator – if the government ever decides to heed the continued pressure of the Italian community to appoint one of its numbers to the Senate. It is partly because of this expectation that the activities of the committee have aroused great controversy. Noticeably absent from among the many Italian voluntary associations are any designed to assist the needy or to help new immigrants adjust to their surroundings in Canada. Aside from several thousand dollars’ worth of scholarships presented by the CIBPA to deserving university students, the ‘lady bountiful’ activities of the CIBPA Ladies Auxiliary and a certain number of Christmas baskets delivered to poor families by other organizations, nothing is done to help the many hundreds of immigrants who arrive nearly destitute. As one of the priests who works closely with the poorer sector of the Canadian Italian community in the south of the city remarked of the CIBPA, ‘The gentlemen members of the association don’t want to know anything about the poor who live here. The less they hear about them, the happier they are, for these immigrants are an embarrassment to them’. In this respect the Italian community markedly differs from the Jewish community, which has an active charitable organization and takes care of its own poor in so far as it is able to. The Italian lack of activity in this field may be explained by several factors. First of all, there is the difficulty of getting the necessary cooperation from the wide range of Italian associations. Secondly, traditional values require each family to look after its own. In the third place, there is the traditional role that the Church has played in Italian society, with charity as its exclusive preserve. Finally, there is the attitude of the

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wealthy immigrants and perhaps also conservative North Americans, already mentioned, that the destitute could improve their lot if only they would work harder. Italian associations not only act as the organizers and focal points for much of the social activity within the Italian community; they are also pressure groups that inform and lobby outside agencies and authorities about current problems and ideas of their members. Between September 1964 and May 1965 they organized 144 public events. These ranged from the May dance for the elite at the Bella Vista Golf Club to the popular party organized in April by the Casacalenda Society; from Sons of Italy spaghetti nights to the mammoth benefit banquet to honour the Italian Canadian police chief of Ville d’Anjou and to raise funds for the next, and sixth, Italian parish in the east end of the city. This affair was held in an armoury to accommodate the 1,500 Italian Canadians who paid $10 apiece to dance and enjoy the superb buffet and musical review. No one person can claim to speak on behalf of all Italians in Montreal. Many deplore that no such leader exists but who would be among the first to challenge the right of any individual who did assume the role of spokesman. If we cannot speak of any one leader, we can speak of a leadership or elite group who, because of their wealth and the positions they occupy in the field of mass media, Italian societies and parish organizations, are able to interpret and represent the various shades of Italian opinion both to each other and to the world outside the Italian community.

The Italian Consulate What position does the representative of the Italian government in Montreal play in the affairs of the Italian Canadian community? Bayley has drawn a vivid picture of the instrumental role that the Italian consul general played in the Italian community in shaping the Fascist national front during the 1930s. However, the Italian representative no longer plays such a decisive role. The official duties of the consul general and his staff of eighteen of whom fifteen are immigrants who have retained their Italian nationality, are to foster the increasingly important commercial relations between Quebec and Italy, to handle passport renewals for Italian citizens and to help solve any problems they may have with Canadian authorities. He also provides certain welfare services to needy Italian nationals who, by and large, are the newly arrived immigrants. The consul general declines any formal involvement in the affairs of persons of Italian descent who are Canadian citizens. But if the official policy of the consulate is one of non-involvement in the affairs of Canadians of Italian descent, its informal involvement in the Italian Canadian community, while not as pronounced and comprehensive as in

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the 1930s, is nonetheless considerable. To begin with, the consul general, several times a year, hosts receptions to introduce visiting Italian cultural, industrial and commercial dignitaries to Montreal society. He also invites key members of the Italian Canadian community to meet these dignitaries, not only because of the position they occupy in commerce and industry in Greater Montreal, but also because they are the elite of the Italian Canadian community. An invitation from the consul general thus validates publicly a person’s claim to social importance within the community. Secondly, he is generally invited to lend dignity and importance to the numerous dances and banquets organized by Italian associations. While the consul general himself rarely attends these functions, the two vice-consuls spend a good deal of time doing so. In the third place, because he is a person with great prestige who is not Italian-Canadian but is Italian, the consul general is frequently called upon to act as a peacemaker and mediator between squabbling factions and interest groups within the Italian community. The consul general is of course under constant pressure to support one particular faction against its rival, and so to become actively involved in the many quarrels, which are so much a part of the Italian community. Immigrants who have chosen to make their homes in Montreal also look to the consul general to solemnize Italian national celebrations. Many resent his reluctance to encourage national Italian celebrations organized by Italians who have become or plan to become Canadian citizens. For example, many hurled insults at him for failing to organize a celebration to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of the end of the Second World War (La Tribuna, June 1965).

Community The Italian community in Montreal is a viable whole, composed of multiple, overlapping networks of social relations originating in the fields of kinship, friendship, neighbourhood, and the marketplace, which are given a certain territorial unity by the parish structure of the Italian national church (cf. Barnes 1954). Numerous voluntary associations group persons with like interests; they also provide a base from which leaders emerge to represent the interests of Italian Canadians vis-à-vis other associations, ethnic groups and government authorities. The associations also organize the numerous activities that bring together persons of Italian descent. Because the community is composed to a very large extent of persons whose value system differs in certain respects from neighbours with different ethnic backgrounds, it exerts a unique pressure on its members to conform to such values. For example, all members of Canadian society do not share the overriding importance attached by Italian-Canadians to kinship obligations.

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Thus the failure of an Italian-Canadian to behave to kin the way they expect him to, gives him a bad name in his community but is of little importance to his French Canadian neighbours. Although the group is large, the face-toface nature of the contacts among some of its sectors means that the sanctions of public opinion are particularly effective. One of the most important instruments of social control within the community is gossip. In this respect Italian women play a leading part. Their gossip circles examine and criticize not only the behaviour of other women but also of men who hold the official positions of authority and leadership within the community. Excluded from holding formal positions of authority within the community, women, through their gossip, are able to exert pressure on those who do. In this way they enforce the group’s norms of behaviour.5 The Italian community is thus a reality into which persons are born and baptized, are married, and obtain work and companionship; where, if they are ill, they can be cared for in one of the three Italian hospitals and where they can be buried. It has its own leaders, internal value system and system of social control. The community obviously facilitates the accommodation of an immigrant into Canadian society but restricts his absorption into it.

Internal Segmentation and Conflict The Italian community is not a united whole: numerous divisions cut across it at various levels. Many regard this lack of unity as one of their most pressing problems. The social principles which segment the Italian Canadian community in Montreal are, in general, the same as those which divide persons in Italy into many conflicting and competing groups – family, generation, region, religion and politics. Individual families regard each other with suspicion if not hostility and members of different generations grow out of touch with each other, for they often belong to different socioeconomic classes and frequently speak different languages. The differences in dialect and customs brought over from Italy act as obstacles to cooperation, as does the distance separating the Italian residential areas in Montreal. Perhaps the most serious divisions are those between the many leaders and spokesmen who compete with each other for position, power and followers according to the status and political systems peculiar to the Italian Canadian community.

Family Italian Canadians, especially immigrants, hold a set of values that incorporate the belief that their overriding moral obligation is to assist their family, even if they do so at the expense of others. As most persons feel and act this way,

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non-related families regard each other with deep suspicion: the very strength of the bond between members of a family isolates them from other similar groups. While I have argued that the many overlapping networks of tightly united kinsmen do create a strong set of links that, at a higher conceptual level, give unity and structure to the community, at a much lower level they create many conflicts. Persons who compete with each other do not readily cooperate; nor are persons who hold such values prepared to sacrifice family interests for community interests, however the community may be defined. There is, therefore, competition and a good deal of hostility, jealousy and backbiting between individual families as well as between associations. The Second World War provided an opportunity for many to wreak vengeance on their enemies, by denouncing them as Fascists and Axis sympathizers to the police. Several old-timers told me that they had been arrested on information that could only have been supplied to the police by their closest neighbours, who were also the persons with whom they would be in fiercest competition. Because kinsmen support each other they form factions, which introduces an important divisive principle in any association. When there is a difference of opinion rivals recruit support from among their own network of kinsmen and so associations that contain clusters of related persons are thus fragile and divide easily. This is one of the reasons why there are so many Italian associations in Montreal: new associations are born out of conflict in old ones; other associations disappear as peacemakers patch up quarrels between rival leaders. During the extensive interviews we had with individual families, we often had the feeling that we were moving among islands of tightly structured kinship groups, within which the members played out the major part of their own lives.6 This impression does not reflect the reality, of course, for an analysis of the various linkages of the kinship networks clearly indicated overlapping ties between various groups.

Generation There is always in every society and in every community a degree of tension between generations. In this respect the conflict between generations within the Italian community in Montreal is no exception. Indeed, it is accentuated because differences between generations are related not only to difference in age, but also to differences in place of birth, education and, more fundamentally, to differences in values and world outlook. Those born in Italy are never completely accepted by Canadian society as full members, nor are they usually willing to accept without reservations all the values and way of life of their adopted country. This sets them apart not only from the rest of Canadian society but also from their own children born and educated in Canada. Those born in Canada see their parents’ continuing commitment

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to relatives, Italian culture, and the issues which are important to the Italian Canadian community as an involvement which, to a certain extent, impedes their more complete integration into Canadian society. There is also a certain element of tension between those who arrived before the war, most of whom established themselves before 1920, and the increasing numbers who have arrived since 1946. Not a few of the old-timers regard the newcomers as brash and aggressive, lacking an appreciation of the sacrifices which they, the earlier immigrants, made and from which the newcomers are now benefiting. The newcomers often view the older immigrants as lacking in ambition and governed by a set of values that no longer exist in Italy today. At the same time, they regard the older immigrants as aloof and disinterested in their problems of adjustment to new surroundings. The Canadian-born, for their part, sometimes express concern that newcomers may give all Italian Canadians a bad name, since French and British Canadians, with whom they are trying to establish contact, often criticize the immigrants’ manners, level of education, even standards of personal cleanliness. To some extent, the tensions that exist between the three groups – old immigrants, those born in Canada, and the new postwar immigrants – arise from very different experiences in adapting themselves to life in Canada. Those who emigrated to Canada before the war were pioneers. They were peasants from the poverty-stricken areas of southern Italy, who came to Canada ‘with their worldly possessions in a sack on their back’. Those we interviewed made it very clear that they were not always welcomed by relatives and paesani already established in Canada and that they often encountered active discrimination and hostility from the English and, especially, the French Canadians with whom they competed for housing and work. Because there were fewer schools in Quebec at that time and education was more expensive, many fourteen- and fifteen-year-old immigrants were unable to attend school and obliged to work. Many immigrants were just beginning to find their feet when the Depression forced them into unemployment. Many recounted how they had to sell their houses when mortgages foreclosed on them. Then they had the traumatic experience of the war, during which they were regarded as enemies and were interned. Theirs had been a life of sacrifice. In contrast, most of those who came after the war had a very different set of experiences. Their passage was often paid for by loans from relatives already established in Montreal. These relatives provided guidance, protection and, often, shelter immediately upon arrival. Most, especially those who arrived after 1955 came with more education, for by that time universal education was widespread in Italy. Moreover, they arrived in a booming economy and had little difficulty in finding work that, though often only seasonal labour in the construction industry, permitted them to earn a substantial income for a good part of the year. Government unemployment benefits helped them over the lean months when work was slack. Many found work with

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brothers, uncles or fellow townsmen who had established themselves before the war and were thus able to offer secure employment. Moreover, they did not encounter the hostility and discrimination from the French and British Canadians that had been the lot of their predecessors before the war, for by then the Italian Canadian community had become an accepted part of the social scene of Montreal. Finally, newcomers were able to save in a way that had not been possible for those who came before the war. Though most prewar immigrants claim they have nothing but admiration for the ambition, diligence, and saving ability of the newcomers, the impression they give belies this. The newcomers do not live up to the stereotype that the older ones have formed from their own experience as newly arrived immigrants: they are not depressed, dependent and uneducated. They are more aggressive, articulate and better educated and are able to make their way ahead much more rapidly. While many newcomers recognize that the early immigrants were trailblazers who made the sacrifices that enabled them to adjust so rapidly, a large proportion, nonetheless, see these earlier immigrants as old-fashioned, unenterprising and too extravagant, since they have abandoned in part the peasant virtues of economy in order to acquire such status symbols as television sets and cars. The newcomers also resent what they regard as the patronizing attitude of those born in Canada who, they say, are reluctant to become involved in the problems of the new immigrants. During our interviews, we asked each group its opinion of the other.7 Eight out of ten of the old immigrants had favourable opinions of the new immigrants, whereas only seven out of ten of the Canadian-born did. In contrast, half the new immigrants held favourable opinions of the prewar immigrants, but only a third viewed the Canadian-born favourably. However, four in ten of the newcomers refused to express an opinion or value judgement on the Canadian-born. They considered that since the latter had become Canadian they could not judge them by the same standards as the postwar immigrants. While only 7 per cent of the new immigrants regarded the Canadian-born as lacking ambition, two-thirds considered them pretentious and jealous persons who ‘knew it all’. But four out of ten thought that the prewar immigrants lacked ambition and did not take full advantage of their opportunities, and a third thought they were pretentious and jealous. These differing attitudes cause friction in the various mixed associations that have been outlined in this section, for the members form three strata or quasi-groups that can develop into factions (Boissevain 1968b).

Regional Differences Regional differences are another important cause of segmentation within the Italian Canadian community. Italians have strong attachments to their own

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region and within that region to their town or village and home. The most noticeable cultural difference is the regional dialect. The Roman maintains, and with some justice, that he cannot understand the Sicilian dialect or that of Bergamo. If the person from central Italy has difficulty understanding those from the north and the south, how much less can the man from the north understand the southern dialect? Although most Italian immigrants now speak Italian and thus can converse with those from other parts of Italy, the majority speaks in dialect at home and with others from their region. The regional dialect becomes an in-group language, a symbolic system that unites certain segments of the Italian Canadian population against other similar segments. The antagonism between persons from different regions can become quite marked, for besides dialect, the occupational class of the two clash. While seven out of ten of immigrants come from the south, nine out of ten of these work in non-white-collar occupations. In contrast, just over one in ten of the Italian immigrants in Montreal come from the north, but fully two-thirds of these work in white-collar occupations. The northerner thus claims that the southerner is a cafone, an ignorant peasant with little imagination, who has a violent temper and is insanely jealous of his women. The southerner regards the northerner as supercilious and far too pleased with himself. Many simply shrug the northerners off by saying, ‘They don’t understand us’. The southerners certainly form no united bloc, for each region itself has cultural variations and regards its neighbours with suspicion. One afternoon, for example, I wandered about talking to shopkeepers in the area around Dante Street. In the space of about an hour two Campobassani told me that all Sicilians were a dishonest and dangerous lot and could not be trusted, and a Sicilian grocer said that all Campobassani were dishonest, two-faced persons who were perfectly capable of turning you in to the boss on some trumped-up charge so that you could be fired, thus making a vacancy for a cousin or a brother! This opposition between regions is often institutionalized. Groups of persons from the same region often tend to live near each other. There is a strong concentration of Sicilians in the southern part of Ville St. Michel, for example; and many Campobassani live in Ville Émard and Notre Dame de Grace. They settle there not because other persons from their region surround them, but because they wish to be near their relatives; the final result is the same. Another way in which regional differences become institutionalized is through the associations. Of the approximately sixty associations, fifteen are in fact regional associations. These are among the most active groups. They organize card parties and dances two or three times a year, and almost invariably a large annual banquet. Many also celebrate the patron saint of their village or region. Regional differences also provide potential points of conflict and fission within associations and other groups. Rivals often recruit their support along

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regional lines, even in disputes arising out of issues that have nothing to do with regional loyalty. The secretaries of several non-regional associations deplored the fact that regional loyalties were so often a source of conflict within their associations. These loyalties virtually disappear in the second generation, though they do tend to linger on through the regional dialects that some Canadian-born still speak. But as newcomers form such a significant proportion of the total Italian Canadian population, regional differences are an important source of conflict and segmentation in the Italian community today. Sometimes they can cut quite deeply and lead to numerous misunderstandings. Two northern priests, for example, deplored the ‘backwardness’ and ‘superstition’ of their Sicilian parishioners, claiming that they are closed, narrow-minded and suspicious persons who are so afraid for their women that the female section of the Catholic Action in one parish was all but extinct: fathers quite simply would not allow their daughters to walk to the parish hall unaccompanied. As most of the men were too tired to accompany the women at night, this meant that the girls did not get out to church activities.

Neighbourhood and Parish The sheer spatial distance between Italian neighbourhoods and parishes fragments the community into many small, isolated units that are almost as remote from each other as separate villages scattered across the countryside. This dispersal militates against unity. Each little centre has its own series of activities, clubhouses and cafes that tend to draw local residents to them. For example, the Casa d’Italia could never become a social centre for persons living in the south or north of Montreal. It takes half an hour by car to reach it from Ville St. Leonard or Montreal Nord and an hour from Ville Émard. The problem of distance also makes it difficult to organize feasts and other celebrations that draw together all members of the community. The Sons of Italy organize an Italian Day in Belmont Park that is ostensibly a picnic and popular celebration for all members of the Italian community. But only quarter of the persons we interviewed had been there during the last few years; seven out of ten did not know who organized it, and three out of ten had never even heard of it. On the other hand, individual parish feasts, notably the annual festa of Sant’Antonio of Padua, who has become the patron saint of immigrants in North America, are affairs that are celebrated with great enthusiasm and with a keen sense of rivalry between the various neighbourhoods and parishes. This parochial attachment creates much the same segmentation as it does in Italy. It militates against the ability of the Italian community in Montreal to present a united front to the outside world.

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Status and Class It is not very helpful to try to apply the concepts of class to the Italian Canadian community. As I have indicated, there are many bases of segmentation and many attributes of status. Some, such as family connection, region of birth, dialect, and generation, are ascribed; others, including occupation, amount of property and other owned symbols of wealth, are achieved. There is another important attribute that is both ascribed and achieved, namely the personal honour and worth of a family. A reputation is in part inherited, for the strengths and weaknesses that affect the important matter of family honour are believed to be passed through the blood. But a reputation can be damaged or improved through individual action. In this way one’s reputation and family honour are achieved. There is certainly a hierarchy of prestige that is reasonably well defined at the upper and lower levels, but the middle portion of the continuum is extremely fluid, as it must be with any group whose members move from the lower to the higher positions within one generation. The point is that the Italian Canadian community in Montreal has a status system that is unique. A given individual who occupies a place within the Italian community and who, because he is also a member of Canadian society living in Montreal, occupies a position in Canadian society, will have two statuses – one as an Italian Canadian and the other as a member of greater Montreal society. These statuses are not interchangeable, for the overall system of prestige of which one forms a part may be very different from that of the other. An example is the executive secretary of one of the prominent Italian Canadian associations. Within the Italian community he is regarded with a certain amount of respect, not only because of the power he commands but also because of his occupation and his wide range of contacts. He is one of the important members of the Italian Canadian leadership element. But outside the Italian Canadian community the same person is seen as a ‘pushy’ clerk (his business card bears the legend ‘Un homme d’affaires à connaître’), of little social consequence. He is certainly not unique in this respect. It is because there is this difference of status according to the social system in which one operates that many Italian Canadians prefer to operate exclusively within the Italian Canadian community: within it they can achieve greater prestige. Nonetheless at the upper end of this continuum of prestige and status there is a stratum that is beginning to develop certain characteristics that set it clearly apart. This is the wealthy elite of the community. There are a number of persons who are not only prominent in the Italian community, but are also among the leading doctors, lawyers, industrialists, contractors and businessmen of Montreal. They send their children to exclusive private schools, belong to the best golf clubs and live in Westmount, the Town of

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Mount Royal and Outremont. They move at will outside the Italian community into French- and English-speaking Canadian society. They continue, however, to play an important role in the Italian community because within this limited social field they occupy an even more important position than they do outside it. Many are also businessmen who draw an increasingly important proportion of their earnings from the growing Italian market.

Political Divisions Political divisions cut across the community at several levels. As already noted, much of the internal political life of the Italian community revolves around the associations. The leaders of these associations often use the rank and file as a political following in their competition with each other. We have already touched upon the controversy over the new plans for modernizing the Casa d’Italia. These plans were an outgrowth of a movement set afoot a few years ago to bring some semblance of unity into the many conflicting associations and groups which make up the Italian community. Both the bishop and the consul general have an interest in a unity that would produce a single spokesman who could represent the community in dealings with the Church and the government. It was thought that the Casa d’Italia would become a focal point, for it belongs, in a certain sense, to all Italian Canadians. But rival cliques and groups within the community jockeyed for position from which to attack the enterprise. As long as there is no unity, the name of one self-appointed contender for the position of leader of all Italian Canadians is as good as another. Outside the Italian Canadian community political parties at the national and provincial levels provide banners behind which groups of Italians align themselves during election time, when they compete to secure the services and favours of rival candidates. These divisions were particularly deep during the late 1950s and early 1960s when there were several Italian Canadians on the Montreal Municipal Council representing opposing parties.

French and English The Italian community is not an isolated whole. Members are in individual contact with other Canadians, both French- and English-speaking. They are firmly tied to the English-speaking sector of Montreal society through the educational system, for three out of four send their children to English schools and the proportion is increasing annually. The Italians regard English as an economic tool, a necessity that enables them and their children to establish and improve their position in North America. But this apparent orientation

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in favour of the English-speaking community is not maintained in all social fields; Italians born in Canada by and large choose their friends and later their marriage partners from among Canadians of French origin, thus establishing strong and permanent ties with the other dominant ethnic group. Contacts at work forge other links with Canadians of French and British origins. The church and voluntary associations of the Italians also place them in contact with other sectors and groups outside their own community. Finally, their growing political activity involves them in various social fields and with different ethnic groups. If the interest of Italians in the English language appears to commit the group to the English sphere of interest, at the same time, marriage, friendship, religion and political involvement tie it closely to the French community. The Italians occupy roles in several ethnic groups and, indeed, there are individuals who move socially among the English, French and Italian communities all in the course of a day. The majority, however, pass most of their time operating as Italians, for they live and work with Italians, and find most of their friends in that community. Because of the political situation in the province of Quebec, increasing pressure is being brought to bear upon the Italians to opt clearly for one or other of the two dominant ethnic groups. But although Italian Canadians look upon English-speaking Canadians as ideal types from an economic and, in a certain sense, social point of view, there is a strong undercurrent of sympathy for the French Canadian political aspiration to obtain more power for the province of Quebec. Italian Canadians at all levels are overwhelmingly opposed to the idea of the province separating from the rest of Canada. Most persons of Italian descent see themselves either as Italian Canadians or simply as Canadians without any ethnic label. They certainly do not consider themselves, nor do they aspire to be considered, as members of the French- or English-speaking community. They wish to remain free from political commitments that could place in jeopardy their ability to move ahead.

Conclusion The Italian community is composed of a complex of overlapping networks of kinsmen, friends, neighbours and workmates with its own value system and leadership. It is segmented by divisions based on ‘family-centeredness’, conflict between the generations, regionalism, neighbourhood, class, religion and politics. Yet these very divisions underline the community’s oneness. The fact that there is conflict indicates that the members of the group are in touch, share certain common values and agree about which prizes are worth competing for. Monsignor Cimichella summed this up when I asked him if the extreme factionalism within the community did not create great prob-

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lems. He said that at times it did, but he felt that it was a good thing, ‘for you could not build a whole without distinct blocs or pieces’. If we agree that the Italian community is a sociological reality that can be studied, we must at the same time note that this community is also in close contact with the two dominant ethnic groups in Montreal – the French and English – with whom there is a symbiotic relationship.8

Acknowledgements I carried out the research in two phases. The first phase from August 1994 to April 1995 consisted of detailed interviews with key persons in the Italian community, families of old and new immigrants and Canadian-born persons of Italian descent. The second phase took place between May and June 1965 and consisted of a survey of male household heads of Italian descent. This study is not wholly sociological or wholly anthropological. It is a pilot study based on a compromise between participant observation and a survey. Here I would like to record my special gratitude to Mrs. Carla Melvyn, who for many months worked as my very able research assistant and through whose eyes and ears I observed much of what is recorded in the following pages. I am also most grateful to the scores of Italian Canadians who gave so generously of their time; to The University of Montreal for office space and many services; to our many interviewers for their help and enthusiasm; to Mrs. Lily Liquornik and Miss Rosemary Slough for their help in typing the research reports and final report; and to Claude Godin and Lodewijk Brunt for general assistance. Last but not least, particular thanks go to Inga Boissevain for proofreading the final manuscript copy and for her great patience and help in so many ways during the year and a half that the 130,000 Italians of Montreal were part of our daily lives.

Notes 1. These and subsequent data were taken from the annual reports of the Department of Citizenship and Immigration in Canada. 2. On the growth of the Italian community before 1935 see Bayley 1939: 13–38. 3. This description of the place and structure of the south Italian family is based on my own fieldwork in Sicily during 1962 and 1963 (see Chapter 4). Also see Banfield (1958), Moss and Cappannari (1960) and Pitkin (1954). 4. See Bayley (1939: 113 ff.), Garigue (1955), Craig (1957) and a report for the Royal Commisssion for Bilingualism and Biculturalism on Montreal Italian associations conducted about the same time as the present study (see Boissevain 1970), which I was able to consult.

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5. Bayley (1939: 25, 101, 103) recognized this aspect of the Italian community in Montreal during the 1930s. Gans (1962: 85–86) and Garigue and Firth (1957: 80–81) made similar observations about persons of Italian descent in Boston and London. 6. Garigue and Firth noted much the same: ‘the self-contained character of the activities of the kin group is the element most noticeable among the majority of Italianates in London. This is especially marked when they form more than one household’ (1957: 87). 7. These are summarized in Boissevain (1970: 30–31, tables 3.1, 3.2; 75–6 Appendix A). 8. For a further discussion of the nature of this symbiotic relationship see Chapter 4, ‘Contact with Canadian Society’ and Chapter 5, ‘The Political Option: French or English?’ in Boissevain (1970: 37–68).

CHAPTER 6

THE PLACE OF NON-CORPORATE GROUPS*

There is a range of social phenomena that have received little attention from social anthropologists and even less from cultural anthropologists and sociologists. These are the forms of social organization that lie somewhere between interacting individuals on the one hand, and formal corporate groups on the other. Examples of such social forms are well known to all. I refer of course to the networks of relatives, friends, acquaintances and to the more intimate but often temporary coalitions which are formed out of these: the cliques, interest groups and factions of which all persons are members. These for the most part are social interaction systems centred on one person or a coalition of persons: the central ego. The egocentric social forms are not true groups. That is, their members do not necessarily know each other, or even of each other’s existence, and they often have no collective purpose or consciousness of any kind. Nor do they form a lasting coalition, but dissolve when the central ego vanishes from the social scene, or changes his mood. In spite of their apparent vagueness and instability, these social forms are of great importance to most people. All persons, whether primitive or developed, whether Western or non-Western, are members of such coalitions, and most spend a great deal of time manipulating them for their own ends, or being manipulated through them. If indeed they are so important and are present in all societies, why is it then that they have been virtually ignored, or at best swept, unanalyzed, under a small fuzzy carpet labelled ‘informal organization’ (cf. Johnson 1961: 301–4)? I shall argue that this is because social anthropologists and sociologists have so defined their subject matter that they deal only with groups and enduring social relations. Unstable collections of persons that are less clearly observable have no place in this scheme of things. They do not fit, thus they Originally published as ‘The Place of Non-Groups in the Social Sciences’, Man (N.S.) 3 (1968): 542–556. Reprinted by permission of the Director of the Royal Anthropological Institute.

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are ignored (cf. Loomis and Beegle 1950: 134–9). As if cliques and factions can ever be ignored! Moreover this preoccupation with groups has not only clouded sociological analysis in complex (if not also in simple) societies, it has distorted it and even led to the creation of groups through what has been called ‘the group fulfilling prophecy’ (Yablonsky 1959). The notion of an observable, static society composed of enduring relations and groups of different orders is part of the stock in trade of every anthropologist. It provides the underlying framework against which he studies a strange society. This view is inculcated from the first day that young innocents fresh from secondary school begin their study of anthropology, which can be seen from a quick perusal of any introductory text. Firth, for example, sees social anthropology as firstly concerned with the ‘systematic observation of the behaviour of people in group relations’ (1951: 17) and Evans-Pritchard notes that social anthropology ‘studies social behaviour, generally in institutionalized forms’ (1951: 5) – these are forms that are recurrent and permanent (Nadel 1951: 143). Gluckman describes the subject matter of social anthropology as ‘the manner in which different sorts of relations between persons and groups, and within groups, influence one another’ (1965: 31). Lucy Mair recently observed that social anthropology is a branch of sociology, ‘the study of society’ (1965: 1), society being ‘an orderly arrangement of parts . . . relationships between persons which are regulated by a common body of recognized rights and obligations’ (1965: 9). The same view is echoed by the succeeding generation. Beattie, for example, a student of Evans-Pritchard, explains that social anthropologists ‘concentrate mainly on those [social relationships] which are habitual, relatively enduring’ (1964: 13). Furthermore, social anthropologists are extremely interested in the social structure of the societies they study. Evans-Pritchard, in the Nuer describes social structure as the ‘relations between groups of persons within a system of groups’ (1940: 262). This book is more widely read and consequently has had greater influence on social anthropologists than any other single study. (One might even say that until a few years ago it had the status of a quasi-textbook.) Within these restricting limits traditionally imposed upon the study of man, there is obviously little room for the ill-defined, non-enduring forms of social life in which I am interested. The vision sociologists have of their subject matter is, on the whole, equally restrictive. One of the most widely read introductory texts on sociology is Johnson (1961). For Johnson, sociology is the study of groups. Thus, for him, ‘sociological theory consists of tested and systematic statements about social groups’ (Johnson 1961: 3). Non-corporate groups,1 the individual-centred interaction systems with which I am concerned, patently do not fit in with the view of society held by sociologists and anthropologists. Nonetheless, there is hope. Most of the views quoted above are out of textbooks: these are often out of date by the time they go to press.2

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Anthropologists in increasing numbers are, in fact, beginning to examine the social forms that interest me. The increased interest is caused by three factors. The first is the growing attention social anthropologists are giving to complex societies. These social forms are more apparent there than in the primitive societies they have traditionally studied, where multipurpose corporate groups are often extremely important and have obscured the presence of non-corporate groups.3 This growing anthropological interest in complex societies, in turn, is occurring because many once primitive societies are rapidly becoming complex; because in the face of growing anti-Western sentiments in many non-Western societies it is politically less hazardous to work in more developed Western societies; and because increasingly anthropologists are coming to realize that ‘anthropology’ means the study of all mankind, not just of primitive man. This is a sign of the increasing maturity of our young discipline. Secondly, as the existence of these non-corporate social formations in complex Western societies begins to be accepted, they are also increasingly being recognized in non-Western societies that have long been under anthropological observation, such as India (Srinivas and Béteille 1964; Mayer 1966), and even in primitive societies (Pospisil 1964). In the third place, the concept of egocentric interaction systems is becoming increasingly less alien to anthropological theory. The restrictive view of social structure as a system of groups is beginning to crumble as its basic assumptions – such as the primacy of kinship and kinship groups – are increasingly called into question (cf. Barnes 1962; Leach 1961; Peters 1967; Pouwer 1964).4 Nonetheless, where they are observed, individual-centred interaction systems are still viewed against the notion of society as a system of groups. Wolf has referred to them in a most stimulating article as ‘interstitial, supplementary, and parallel structures. They are informal structures . . . which . . . are supplementary to the system: they operate and exist by virtue of its existence, which is logically, if not temporally, prior to them’ (1966: 2, my emphasis). Is this so? Are they merely social forms located, as it were, in the chinks in the social structure? I do not think so. To see them in this way merely begs the question. I have argued that the reason these social forms have been ignored, swept under such residual headings as ‘informal organization’, or relegated to structural nooks and crannies, is that there is no place for them in the present structural-functional view of society. I contend that the only way we shall ever come to grips with them is fundamentally to revise our theoretical framework.5

The Continuum We must, I believe, begin by reversing the logical order of social priority. The accent must shift from the group towards the individual.6 Ultimately it will

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fall somewhere in between. Social behaviour must no longer be regarded as a variable purely dependent on larger groups. Certainly membership in groups influences behaviour. But the group itself may be the product of individual action and drives. I do not advocate a return to the simplistic functionalism of Malinowski (1922, 1927), which saw human behaviour and institutions as the consequence of biologically and psychologically motivated needs: shelter, sex, love, etc. Nor do I suggest that the individual is the only relevant social factor. Nonetheless, we must build the individual into our view of society in his own right and not just as a member of groups, or as a variable dependent on an institutional complex.7 To do this I propose to establish a continuum that runs between the individual and the group. The forms with which I am concerned can be ranged along the continuum, but their position is never fixed. We are not studying final or static social forms, but intermediate forms. In a certain sense, all social forms of course are intermediate, as all are changing. Nonetheless the forms with which I am concerned at present are those that are intermediate between the individual and the corporate group. They may, and probably will, go on changing, evolving more corporate structural characteristics, or else reverting to non-corporate groups, perhaps even disappearing. An individual can recruit several supporters, form a faction that evolves into a major political party, only, at a later period, to split up once more into quarrelling factions, some of which disappear, while others merge to form new parties. We are not studying a static model of structure at a given period of time, or one that remains constant through time. We are studying the process of creation. But let me be more explicit. The continuum has two poles: the interacting individual and the group. When in contact with others as a social being, a person begins to generate and/or take part in social forms. These are not necessarily groups, which must be seen as evolved social forms. Man enters into relations with others to maintain and to improve his moral, material, social and psychological wellbeing. He also refrains from withdrawing from relations into which he is born out of fear that this wellbeing will be jeopardized. Social forms do not drop ready-made from heaven. Nor are they merely taken over blindly from preceding generations, or simply borrowed from neighbouring societies. They are generated or adapted by persons and aggregates of persons acting rationally in accordance with their own interests within the limits imposed by existing social forms and values which, in turn, were generated or adapted in the same way in the past. The social behaviour of man shapes the society in which he lives. He is not merely a variable dependent on it.8 Individuals, and the loose coalitions they form are thus logically prior to groups and society.9 A view that postulates the reverse is illogical. The other pole of my analytical continuum is the group. What do I mean by group? There is in fact a remarkable range of meanings given to the term. This is not surprising, for social scientists rarely agree on anything. I have

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lumped the range of definitions I encountered into two rough categories. The one I call the ‘interactionists’, the other the ‘corporationists’. The interactionists, as their name implies, base their definition of the group on the intensity of interaction. To them a group is an aggregate of persons who interact more with each other than with others. Homans (1951: 1, 84) is perhaps the leading and most extreme interactionist, for he limits his group to persons in face-to-face relation. But there are many others who share a similar albeit less extreme view (cf. Mitchell 1959; Slotkin 1950). Homans has suggested that ‘it is possible just by counting interactions to map out a group quantitatively distinct from others’ (Homans 1951: 82–84). This is of course just what many sociometrists have done in their community studies (cf. Loomis and Beegle 1950: Chapter 5). The problem with adopting this view of the group is that people who interact may not form a unity. They may not share a common interest which sets them subjectively and objectively apart from others. The membership criteria are too vague for it to be very useful analytically. Such a collection of persons forms a quasi-group. Some (cf. Horton 1965: 150; Vanderzanden 1965: 219) add another criterion to those of ‘interaction’: ‘consciousness of kind’. But the use of the term ‘group’ is still tied to those who interact: this rules out social units such as clans, the members of which are often dispersed and unknown to each other. In brief they may not interact. However, the clan has a consciousness of kind and a symbol of this unity in its totem or name. The members share common rights and obligations, and are recruited formally according to unambiguous principles. It is clearly a social unit of a different order from the collection of interacting individuals isolated by interactionists. The corporationists add other criteria such as common interests, rights and obligations, organization and structure to the criterion of consciousness of kind already mentioned. Interaction can be present, but is not a basic criterion. This category includes almost all social anthropologists and sociologists (cf. Bottomore 1962: 92; Chinoy 1961: 82; Ginsberg 1934: 40; Johnson 1961: 4, 5).10 Lucy Mair (1965: 13) has formulated what is probably the most concise statement of the point of view of the corporationists:11 The word group . . . does not mean, as it does in everyday speech, any collection of people. It means a corporate body with a permanent existence; a collection of people recruited on recognized principles, with common interest and rules (norms) fixing the rights and duties of the members in relation to one another and to these interests. The common interests can be called property interests, if property is very broadly defined.

The continuum can be used in two ways. Firstly, various social forms can be ranged along it according to their structural characteristics. This is not pigeonholing, for their placement is in any case temporary. Secondly, we can take one social form, for example the faction, and start it on the continuum, observing its various structural transformations over time. Changes in

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structural form are assumed. The analysis is therefore different from the analysis of corporate groups, where permanence is given. Thus by beginning social analysis with the interacting individual, movement is built into the analytical model, for individuals move constantly. Their relations with others are continually rearranged. As they advance in years, move up or down their chosen career ladder, change residence, they make new contacts, and discard or are discarded by older ones. Ultimately they die, and the various egocentric interaction systems of which they were the focal point dissolve. Change as a basic structural principle is present in all egocentric forms of social grouping. But let me now descend to realities and attempt to range some of these social forms along the continuum. I shall begin with the personal network.

Networks By social or personal network I mean the chains of persons with whom a given person, ego, is in actual contact, or with whom he or she can enter into contact. The personal network of each person is distinct although it may touch and very often partly overlap that of others. That is, they have several members or linkage chains of persons in common. In some respects, all of social life can be seen as a network (cf. Barnes 1954: 43). This network is the social matrix from which groups and other social forms crystallize or are constructed. It has definite structural characteristics. The first and most important characteristic is that it is egocentric. One person, or group, is at the centre, and other persons in it define their position in relation to this central figure. Some other persons may be in touch with each other, but most are not. The second important characteristic is that the linkages between the central person (ego) and the others, and between those others who are also in touch with yet others, are structurally diverse. That is, there may be persons, or chains of persons, recruited from different institutional activity fields. Thus the personal network of an ego is made up of his various relatives. At the same time, there are other linkages with persons he knows from his place of work, from the religious congregation to which he belongs, from his neighbourhood, and so on. The third characteristic is that the relations that ego maintains with the persons in his network are qualitatively diverse. Simply said, he is in more intimate and frequent contact with some than with others. This is not simply a question of frequency of interaction. My two brothers live in the United States and I see them only every three or four years, yet my relations with them are more intimate than they are with the concierge of my institute, whom I see almost daily. At least three important ranges or zones can be distinguished within which the relations are qualitatively different. They form concentric zones that centre on ego. The first is composed of those persons, whether relatives

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or friends, with whom ego is on closest terms. These persons form what may be called ego’s ‘intimate network’. The second range may be called the ‘effective network’. It consists of persons who ego knows less well and from whom he can expect less (and who expect less or nothing from him) than from the members of his intimate network. These may include relatives, friends and acquaintances of various sorts. The third zone is made up of persons who ego does not know personally but of whom he is aware and can get to know. These are for the most part members of the intimate networks of the persons in his own intimate network. These persons constitute ego’s ‘extended network’. There is a further range of persons who exist at the edge of ego’s personal network. These are the members of the extended network of the persons in ego’s effective network. These are yet unknown to ego, although he is aware of or suspects their presence. Should he require it, he can come into personal contact with them via the links in his network. These are friends of friends. For example, I have a small intimate network and a fairly large (circa 300) effective network in Malta. Yet although Malta has a population of 314,000, I estimate that I could, within twenty-four hours and using no more than three intermediary links, arrange a personal introduction to any Maltese adult selected at random. I propose to include this fourth zone as partly within and partly without ego’s extended network. The sum total of persons within ego’s intimate, effective and extended network zones form ego’s ‘personal’ network.12 The intimate and effective networks form bounded zones. The number of persons who fall within each of these two ranges fluctuates and shifts, but their number remains finite, and their presence known. The extended network, on the other hand, is unbounded. Ego’s personal network is thus ‘open-ended’.13 There is of course considerable variation in the way in which the personal networks of different individuals are constituted. Networks vary in size, extension over social and geographical distance, the social distance between the central ego and others and also in the size of the intimate network compared to the effective network.14 The degree to which members of ego’s network interact with each other independently of ego – the network’s ‘connectedness’ (Bott 1957: 59) – is another way networks vary. This may have important consequences for the way in which ego is structured into the network, and the uses to which he can put it, as well as the way it affects his behaviour. The relative importance of various links recruited from different activity fields also varies enormously. Some persons have networks constituted almost exclusively of kinsmen; with others the links derived from their religious activity field are more numerous than kin links, and so on. These structural characteristics are influenced by a number of factors. One is the relative importance of certain activity fields. This may in turn affect the degree to which the links in ego’s network are in touch with each other (connectedness), and also the ratio of ego’s intimate links to effective links.

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Where kinship links are more numerous, as compared to economic links, for example, there is likely to be greater connectedness. The degree of connectedness and the ratio of intimate to effective links can also vary within different segments of a network. Most networks have a lumpy or tangled pattern: some areas are highly connected, others not at all. Ego’s social environment has an important influence on the composition of his network. Where for example he has lived for a long time in a stable neighbourhood of a town, or in a village, he will have more intimate links and his network will be more connected than if he resides in an area of high residential mobility. The structure of the network is also influenced by the ideology prevailing in a person’s social environment. I would suspect, for example, that the more open, optimistic and vivacious (and fertile) Catholics in the south of Holland (Gadourek 1963: 312; Goudsblom 1967: 59  sqq.) would have larger and more connected networks, and a higher ratio of intimate links to effective links than their more sombre, sober and reserved Protestant neighbours to the north. Moreover Catholics are used to conceptualising social relations in terms of influential intermediaries – the saints. This affects the structure and use to which they put their effective and extended networks (cf. Boissevain 1966b: 30; Kenny 1960: 17). Climate also affects the structure of the network. Where it is warm, and people spend a large part of their lives in public – on street comers or doorsteps, in squares or shopping – there are obviously many more opportunities to establish and service contacts. Thus we may find larger intimate networks among warm Catholics in southern Europe than among cooler Catholics in the Netherlands. So far I have only discussed influences on network structure that derive from ego’s social, cultural and physical environment. Obviously personal characteristics also play an important part in structuring a person’s network. Some people are naturally more reserved than others, and find it difficult to deal with people. In addition to this psychological factor, education, occupation, class, power and so on are factors that influence network structure and affect the uses to which it can be put. A person makes use of his network for many purposes. He can, for example, obtain certain help – money, a job, information, babysitters, etc. – from his links directly. He can also use his contacts as channels in a communication network. He can employ them as intermediaries to obtain information from their own networks, for example, about the moral reputation of his son’s fiancée, or an economic or political rival. He can also send damaging messages about these same rivals. The network can be used to recruit an action set (Mayer 1966) – a set of persons who can help ego solve a particular problem – to collect votes for an election, to build a house, to find a fishing crew and so on. Ego also obtains an important measure of psychological support from his network, for it provides him with a surrounding field of friends and relatives

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who help give his life meaning, establish and maintain norms by which he regulates his behaviour, and protect him from the impersonal world beyond (Bott 1957: sqq.).15 Ego’s network can also influence his behaviour. He may receive unexpected requests for support, help and information. It also may provide him advance warning and protection, but it can provide links through which enemies or business rivals can attack him. Certainly it brings him the unsolicited – favourable and unfavourable – opinion of others regarding his behaviour (cf. Epstein 1961). These subsequently influence not only his view of self, but also the way he plays his various roles, and his future behaviour. Bott has shown that in personal networks it even affects the way in which conjugal roles are played: where husband and wife each have highly connected networks, there the husband is less likely to help his wife with the dishes or to change the baby’s nappies (Bott 1957: 52–96). Let me give you an example of how my Sicilian friend Salvatore used his network to solve an actual problem. It demonstrates how a person can travel considerably beyond his effective network by using a variety of links. Salvatore lived in Syracuse and wished to obtain a personal introduction to a particular professor at the University of Palermo in order to resolve an irregularity in connexion with his doctoral thesis. From his effective network he selected Avvocato Leonardo, who he knew had contacts in Palermo and who owed him a favour. Leonardo agreed to help, though he suggested it might be simpler all round if Salvatore were simply to copy the excellent thesis he himself had presented a number of years before in the same faculty. Salvatore graciously refused Leonardo’s kind offer! Leonardo then gave him an introduction to his first cousin in Palermo. The cousin introduced Salvatore to his own brother, who in turn passed him along to the professor’s assistant. Two days and four links after he started along his network, Salvatore met the professor. In return for Salvatore’s promise to use his own network to recruit votes, the politically ambitious professor agreed to overlook the irregularities connected with the thesis. Salvatore returned to Syracuse to work on his thesis. He did not solicit votes, for he lived very far from the district in which the professor was standing for election, a fact that needless to say he had not mentioned to the professor. The candidature of the latter, incidentally, was not successful, though Salvatore’s thesis was (Boissevain 1966a: 25–26).

Social Catalysts: Brokers and Other Manipulators As villages, towns and even cities develop at the points where communication channels, such as roads, rivers and seas meet, so social forms often develop at the points where networks intersect. These points of intersection are of course persons. Very often they are specialists in network relations who

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make use of their special manipulative talents. They bring together people: buyers and sellers, people with problems and those with the power, knowledge, or the specialist networks that can help them resolve them. They even bridge the distance, sometimes narrow, sometimes immense, between differing value systems. Network specialists provide important links in networks viewed as a series of communication channels. They transmit, direct, filter, receive, code, decode, and interpret messages. They are thus strategically placed. If they are astute they can convert the talent they have into power, which in turn helps them to expand their network. They can also use their network to recruit coalitions of persons who serve their interests directly. Who are these persons? I have, of course, been describing political, economic, religious and academic leaders, brokers, both dishonest and honest, criminals and spies. Salvatore’s friend Leonardo is an example. He is an astute and ruthless lawyer who in the course of ten years built up a large and effective network in his village and outside it. From this he derived the power that enabled him to capture the secretariat of the local section of the Christian Democratic Party. This gave him the additional power and leverage to expand his network further and eventually to become the town’s mayor (see Chapter 4). Such manipulators bring about greater interaction among members of the coalitions they recruit from their network. They also add other structural characteristics. But primarily they create more intense and specialized patterns of interaction between themselves and those persons whom they have recruited for special purposes. Leonardo, for example, formed an entourage or clique of persons within the local Christian Democratic section. They met frequency and had certain funds at their disposal. Their common aim was to help Leonardo become mayor so that they could benefit from his increased power and access to friends and influential persons. Individuals manipulating their networks for their own interest play an important part in generating social forms that are one step further along the continuum. These are the quasi-groups.

Quasi-Groups A quasi-group is a coalition of persons, recruited according to structurally diverse principles by one or more existing members, between some of whom there is a degree of patterned interaction and organization.16 It is not a permanent social entity nor can it become one unless it undergoes further structural transformation. By patterned interaction I mean regular and purposive contact between at least some of the members. This usually takes place between the members and a central ego. In a clique, which may be leaderless, there is a fairly high rate of interaction between all the individual members.

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This collection of persons also has a degree of organization. By this I mean it has a structural form that is given by the regular and often purposive interaction that takes place. Most quasi-groups appear to have a core of persons who form the central organizational focus and between whom there is a higher degree of interaction and more role relations than with other members (cf. Davis et al. 1965: 141  sqq.; Yablonsky 1967: 128  sqq.). Usually, but not always, this core is focussed upon one person (cf. Whyte 1955: 3–51). Quasigroups thus have the same concentric pattern that characterizes personal networks, with several concentric zones based on degrees of interaction and intimacy. At the edge there is a fringe of persons whose ‘membership’ is situational and thus irregular. Quasi-groups may overlap and occur at different structural levels. Examples of quasi-groups are cliques of friends, gangs, factions, action sets, clienteles, and a spymaster’s ‘network’ of key informants. I also regard the most intimate core of an individual’s network as a quasi-group, though not all members of the quasi-groups of which a person is the focal point are members of his intimate network. For example, the rank and file of a faction are not members of its leader’s personal network, though the members of the clique sometimes present at its centre very often are. There is an enormous range in the structural combinations of quasi-groups. They vary in size from a clique of a few persons to a faction of several hundred. The recruitment may be according to ascribed or achieved principles, within one field or from many. The presence or absence of a central focus is also important, for it influences the degree to which the quasi-group can direct its activities. The quality of the linkage and degree of interaction can also vary from the purely transactional single-stranded relation between a political leader and a follower, to the many-stranded links between a leader and the members of his circle of intimates. As already noted the texture and structure of the linkage and the frequency of interaction can vary markedly within a given quasi-group, both between the individual members and between them and the leader. The persistence of the quasi-group in time is obviously also an important variable. The longer it endures, the more corporate attributes it acquires. These structural variables are influenced by the same environmental and personal factors that were seen to affect the structure of networks. Lack of space does not permit their elaboration here. But before concluding I should like to examine one important quasi-group: the faction. A faction is an example of a quasi-group the structural characteristics of which vary enormously (see Chapter 3). By ‘faction’ I mean an exclusive coalition of persons (followers) recruited personally according to structurally diverse principles by or on behalf of a person in conflict with another person or persons within the same social unit over honour and/or control over resources.17 Factions are present everywhere. They have been described in primitive societies (cf. Nicholas 1965; Maybury-Lewis 1967) and in complex

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societies. Those in India have been particularly well described (cf. Nicholas 1965; Bailey 1957; Epstein 1962; Lewis 1958). I should like, very briefly, to describe some of the structural transformation of factions I observed in Malta. Hal Farrug, one of the Maltese villages in which I carried out research, is divided into two rival blocs that compete over the celebration of the annual festa (feast) of the parish’s patron, St. Martin, and that of his local arch rival, St. Roque. This conflict originated almost a hundred years ago. It arose out of the attempt by a new, very strong-minded young parish priest to wrest control over parish affairs from the hands of the clique that formed the local establishment. The priest, Dun Rokku, began to recruit support soon after his arrival. First he established a religious confraternity dedicated to his namesake, St. Roque. He also built up the feast of St. Roque to a scale that rivalled and eventually surpassed the celebration of St. Martin, organized by the village establishment. Soon there were two factions, each celebrating its own saint. By the turn of the century, a little over twenty years after the arrival of the new priest, each faction had established its own social club. Each had thus acquired a corporate core. Today each faction is led by a collectivity of persons who hold the chief offices of the social club. Each has frequent meetings, a common ideology, a very definite sense of unity and purpose and owns important property: its clubhouse, the costly street decorations for its annual festa, musical instruments and the apparatus for manufacturing fireworks. In short, in the ninety years of their existence, the factions have been transformed: the quasi-groups have become corporate groups. The analysis has brought us to the other pole of the continuum, and the task that I embarked upon has almost been completed.

Conclusion These then are some of the new sociological vistas that open up if we can escape from the shadow cast by the functionalist edifice. Social anthropology and sociology are more than groupology. By reversing the conceptual order of precedence and making it possible for the individual as well as the group to become the central point of sociological analysis, it is possible to construct a conceptual framework that incorporates all forms of social activity. I have done this by using a sociological continuum of which the interacting individual is one pole. Beyond him are interactional networks and other intermediate social forms such as quasi-groups. There may be others. Beyond these are ranges of groups, institutional complexes and, at the other pole, society itself. Any theory of society is incomplete unless it takes into account this continuum. The social forms that range between the individual and groups, those we have examined, are as significant as the groups and institutions that have hitherto monopolized the attention of anthropologists and sociologists. They

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must not be viewed as social forms of secondary importance and relegated to the interstices and empty corners of the social structure. These intermediate forms are in fact the atoms of the social order. Composed of individuals, as atoms are of neutrons and protons, they are as basic a component of social life as atoms are of matter.18

Acknowledgements A substantially similar version of this article formed the substance of my inaugural lecture, delivered at the University of Amsterdam on 13 May 1968 (Boissevain 1968a). I am grateful to Rudo Niemeyer for research assistance and to Freddy Bailey, John Barnes, A.C. van der Leeden, Adrian Mayer and Albert Trouwborst for valuable comments.

Notes 1. I originally used the term ‘non-group’. That barbarism itself was a product of the group-centric tradition against which I was reacting (and of which I am a product). I have since then followed the suggestion of Schneider, Schneider and Hansen (1972) and use the term ‘non-corporate group’. 2. Johnson’s non-treatment of networks provides an excellent example (1961). Elizabeth Bott published her first paper on networks in 1955. Two years later her detailed and highly original analysis appeared (1957). Nevertheless, Johnson’s encyclopaedic Sociology: A Systematic Introduction, published four years later, neither treats networks nor mentions Bott in its 900-item bibliography, the most extensive of any introductory text. Poor scholarship? I think not. There is simply no place for the concept of network in his structural-functional view of sociology. 3. It is significant that networks were ‘discovered’ in Norway by a perceptive observer whose previous experience had been limited to Africa (Barnes 1954), the traditional preserve of British social anthropologists in search of primitive peoples. 4. I do not suggest that the primacy of kinship leads to or results from the primacy of group analysis. Rather that the central position that kinship has traditionally been given has effectively prevented a more systematic examination of non-kin relations. Though scholars such as Firth (1956) and Bott (1957) used egocentric analytical models to study kinship, they largely ignored their applicability to non-kinship fields. 5. An excellent example of the difficulty that older social anthropologists who have been raised in (and helped to develop) the structural-functional tradition face when trying to understand a transactional, individual-centred approach was recently provided by Gluckman’s (1968) reply to Paine’s (1967) article on gossip. Here we see Gluckman assume the role of a slightly annoyed, and at times incredulous, functionalist vigorously defending the place of group-centred analysis – at times with the majestic (or functionalist?) first-person plural of established tradition which brooks no disagreement – against a younger anthropologist seeking to place the manipulating individual at the centre of his analysis. The analytical points of departure of the

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two are diametrically opposed, as, on this issue, are broadly speaking the two generations of social anthropologists to which they belong. Throughout the rest of the article when I use the term ‘individual’ I mean ‘individuals interacting purposively with others’. I suppose the simplest form of this interaction would be the dyad, but I have avoided this term as artificially restricting. Single dyads are as irrelevant to my analysis as the individual in touch with only himself, for they do not exist in reality (among sane people). I have also rejected the term ‘person’ proposed by Nadel (1951: 92sqq.) for he uses it in much the same sense, as a role that derives from membership in a group. The individual I refer to is the central point of a shifting network of relations, recruited from many fields that he manipulates for his own ends. For a similar view, albeit pursued very differently, see Pouwer (1962). My considerable theoretical debt to Barth is obvious to those who have read his stimulating Models of Social Organization (1966). I also owe much to Firth, whose concept of ‘social organization’ involving individual choice as a complement to ‘social structure’ – ‘group relations’ and ‘ideal patterns’ (Firth 1951: 35 sqq.; 1964: chapters 2 and 3) – is perhaps the first major attempt to break away from the view of society as a system of groups. In this respect it is interesting to note that Moreno (1960: 71) observes significantly that networks, for example, ‘pre-exist the official groups of which the individual is a part’. Of his own theoretical and social focus on egocentric patterns of interaction, he remarks elsewhere, that it ‘increases understanding of an obscure phenomenon, the beginnings of social organization’ (Moreno and Jennings 1938). Bohannan appears to form a notable exception in this respect, for he presents a painfully formulated definition of primary groups only: ‘a concatenation of roles, relationships and primary syndromes (two or more linked roles)’ (1963: 29). Some sociologists (McGrath and Altman 1966; Vernon 1965; Wilson 1966) and a number of cultural anthropologists (Hoebel 1958; Keesing 1958) make no attempt to give precision to this key concept. Nadel (1951: 145–90), on the other hand, has provided what is probably the most detailed discussion of groups in anthropological literature. His conclusions are similar to Mair’s formulation. Goody (1961: 5–8), while accepting this point of view, advocates restricting the term ‘corporate group’ to groups the members of which hold rights in common in material property. My terminology is closest to that of Firth (1956) and Bott (1957: 119  sq.), who distinguish three zones in a person’s network: the intimate kin, the effective kin, and the non-effective and unfamiliar kin. Epstein (1961: 55) also uses the term ‘extended network’ but this includes distant acquaintances (my ‘effective network’) and acquaintances of acquaintances who are not known personally. I consider it important to make a distinction between persons known personally and those who can be approached only via an intermediary. Mayer (1966: 101–2) following Barnes (1954) distinguishes between unbounded and bounded collectivities, calling the former ‘networks’, and the latter ‘sets’. I do not, however, consider that any advantage can be gained by following Mayer’s suggestion and referring to ego’s intimate network (a bounded collectivity) as a set, presumably then ‘ego’s set’. In the first place it could lead to confusion with other sets of which ego is a member: role set, action set, social set and so on. Secondly, by applying the term ‘set’ to ego’s intimate or effective network, the observer creates the illusion of a structural homogeneity within this

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collection of individuals and a finite degree or closure that in fact do not exist. The position of individuals within the network zones is not fixed by objective criteria, as with sets, but by purely subjective ones. The placement of individuals in the zones is continually shifting, though their numbers remain finite. Thus the zones at any given moment are bounded, but they remain fuzzy at the fringe. The term ‘set’ is thus not appropriate. When more empirical data on networks become available – there are virtually none at present (never has so much been written about so little!) – it is likely that these zones will be subdivided. A preliminary analysis of data I collected with and from students in Amsterdam and research assistants in Malta during July and August 1968 (this last made possible through the generosity of the Netherlands organization for the advancement of pure science [ZWO]) indicates that within the intimate network there is a most intimate cell of between three and six persons. At the edge of the effective network there appears to be a residual zone of persons whom ego knows but towards whom he is completely neutral. Moreover, in the extended network there is a range of persons whom ego recognizes, but who do not know him (and vice versa). As more data are gathered I think it also likely that we shall observe that ego has network management problems which place limits upon the number of persons in these zones, especially in the intimate zone. This was suggested by data I collected in Malta during July and August 1968. Moreno, especially, focussed upon this aspect of networks (1953). Mayer (1966) discusses quasi-groups at length, but does not define them. He sees them as formed from successive overlapping action sets (1966: 115–16), involving substantially the same egocentric collections of individuals though with variation at the edges. As noted, I use ‘quasi-group’ as a generic term for coalitions recruited out of networks. Hence I see action sets as subsumed under quasi-groups. Pospisil (1964: 34–37, 101) defines quasi-groups as ‘aggregates of people whose members have a special relationship to a common ego and who form temporary unions on his behalf’. This egocentric criterion rules out the clique, which I also consider a quasi-group, for it may be leaderless. Nevertheless, their (and my) views of the characteristics of quasi-groups differ significantly from those of Ginsberg (1934: 40) and those who have followed him in this respect (Bottomore 1962: 92; Dahrendorf 1959: 236; Nadel 1951: 188 sq.). These have used the term in the sense of ‘social category’. My thinking on factions has been stimulated by the discussions of Bailey (1969) and Nicholas (1965) in addition to the works listed in a previous discussion (see Chapter 3). I am grateful to my students, and particularly to Carla Jonker and Jojada Verrips, for their critical discussion of this working definition. Moreno, as I discovered belatedly, developed a similar metaphor, the ‘social atom’, to indicate the ‘smallest functional unit within the social group’ (Moreno et al. 1960: 53; see also Moreno 1947). This egocentric constellation, except for its group boundaries, corresponds roughly to my intimate and effective networks.

CHAPTER 7

TOWARDS A SOCIOLOGY OF SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY*

In their evaluation of the proceedings of the 1963 conference on ‘New Approaches in Social Anthropology’ Max Gluckman and Fred Eggan noted that the papers presented showed no new general orientation. Instead, they argued, they displayed a ‘determination to get on with the job with established orientations’ (1966: xxxi). The chief line of approach, they observed, had been ‘the drive for the refinement of concepts which in the past have been illuminatingly employed in order to secure more penetrating analysis’ (xxxiii). They evaluated the period roughly between the founding of the Association of Social Anthropologists of the Commonwealth in 1946 and the conference in 1963. It can be argued, however, that their base line was in fact the mid 1930s, the date after which the influence of A.R. RadcliffeBrown began to dominate British social anthropology. The proceedings of the 1963 ASA conference, appropriately, were also dedicated to him. The conclusion of Gluckman and Eggan was not wholly warranted. There were new approaches in 1963, but at the time it was difficult to see them. With the wisdom of hindsight we can see why the contributions of Mayer (1966) and Wolf (1966) have become classics. They clearly mark the crossroads to a new orientation that focuses on people, instead of on institutions and groups; on how individuals try to construct a social reality, instead of on how they are moulded by society; on dynamic configurations, instead of on static forms; on the essential unity of individual and society, instead of on their polarity. That is not to say that all have shifted their focus. Many are still the scientific disciples of Radcliffe-Brown. They still believe that ‘there are social systems whose structure can be examined’ (Gluckman and Eggan

This chapter is a slightly abridged version of the original published as ‘Towards a Sociology of Social Anthropology’, Theory and Society (1974): 211–230. Permission to reprint granted by Springer Science and Business Media.

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1966: xxx). Why did the Radcliffe-Brownian orientation persist for so long and why is there now beginning to be a change in orientation? Anthropologists, in contrast to sociologists, were slower to show an interest in examining their profession and its theoretical assumptions as objects of research. Whereas by the late 1930s American sociologists had established the sociology of science (including their own) as a separate academic discipline (Barnes 1972: 9–10), the interest of anthropologists in their own discipline as an object of study began only in the late 1960s with Murphy (1971), Asad (1973) and Kuper (1973). There may also be unpublished exceptions such as Katherine Arnold’s (1972) detailed study of some recent developments in British social anthropology. Examples of sociologists who have shown interest in their own discipline include Barnes (1972) and Curtis and Petras (1970). The late start in this field by both American and British social anthropologists is without doubt related to the traditional definition of their subject matter as ‘other societies’, preferably far removed from Europe. It was believed that anthropologists study ‘someone else, but not us’ and that a sustained session of navel gazing can only be the product of ‘armchair anthropology’, an occupation that for long has been unjustly ridiculed. The strong bias towards empirical fieldwork is also relevant. This lack of interest in ourselves can also be partly explained by the persistent fascination with social structure. Those who still believe in a social structure regard it as having some kind of moral force, authority or legitimacy. Durkheimian or Radcliffe-Brownian structuralism does not encourage critical introspection. However, a certain amount of navel gazing can be good fun; moreover, in a period when research funds are scarce, and anthropologists less welcome in their traditional preserves, we provide an inexpensive, readily accessible, and almost unexplored subject for research. This analysis must be seen as a case study of persistence and change of some of the theories and practices of social anthropologists. Therefore, besides providing some insights into the goings-on of our own scientific community, it may also be relevant for an understanding of some of the key problems in the study of social change: continuity, innovation, selection, and development.

Continuity and Change of Scientific Ideas My starting point in seeking an answer to the question ‘Why do scientific theories persist and change?’ was Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1970). Although Kuhn is doubtful whether the social sciences are mature enough to qualify as a science, and thus fit into his theory (1970: 15, 164), his analysis provides many insights applicable to anthropology. He argues that every science has a paradigm consisting of the entire constellation of beliefs, values, techniques and so on shared by the members of a

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given scientific community (1970: 175). The normal activity of the members of a scientific community is then to use this paradigm for long periods to solve the scientific puzzles suggested by it. Kuhn calls this ‘normal science’. He notes the conservative nature of normal science. Normal science is: [A] strenuous and devoted attempt to force nature into conceptual boxes supplied by professional education . . . [It] often suppresses fundamental novelties because they are necessarily subversive of its basic commitment. (1970: 5) No part of the aim of normal science is to call forth new sorts of phenomena; indeed those that will not fit into the box are often not seen at all. Nor do scientists normally aim to invent new theories, and they are often intolerant of those invented by others. (ibid.: 24)

But at a certain stage in the pursuit of normal science there is a growing awareness of anomaly, i.e., ‘with the recognition that nature has somehow violated the paradigm-induced expectations that govern normal science’ (1970: 52–3). Thus the persistent failure to be able to resolve the puzzles of normal science indicates anomalies. Scientists then make ad hoc modifications to the paradigm in an attempt to resolve the anomalies. But the anomalies are usually not resolved, and rival paradigms are suggested. There ensues then a period of debate as each side seeks to recruit support by various (unspecified) means. Scientific revolutions take place when, ‘confronted with anomaly or with crisis, scientists take a different attitude toward existing paradigms, and the nature of their research changes accordingly. The proliferation of competing articulations, the willingness to try anything, the expression of explicit discontent, the recourse to philosophy and to debate over fundamentals, all these are symptoms of a transition from normal to extraordinary research’ (Kuhn 1970: 91). The validity of a scientific theory is decided by the scientific community. Its acceptance is the outcome of a debate in which resources of various kinds are mobilized. In short, the contest is decided not only by the intrinsic truth or validity of the paradigm, but also by the political strength of its supporters. The supporters of one paradigm eventually win the debate: the scientific community then accepts their paradigm and a new period of normal science follows. Kuhn’s notion of a consensual acceptance of a single paradigm, explicit in his view of normal science and the sharp discontinuities suggested by his concept of revolution, has been severely criticized (cf. Lakatos and Musgrove 1970; Toulmin 1972: 96, 129, 268). Though there is rarely complete consensus in any scientific community, there are, nonetheless, ‘dominant paradigms’. These are not replaced suddenly, as Kuhn at times seems to suggest, but gradually. With these modifications suggested by his critics, his theory can be applied to social anthropology. One important aspect to which he pays scant attention, however, are the forces operating within and outside

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the scientific community that hamper further acceptance of new ideas. He implies that acceptance of new ideas is purely a cognitive process; although in places he indicates the possible importance of other factors (Kuhn 1970: 151, 152–53, 176). It is probable that since in the social sciences the criteria of validity are not as precisely defined as in the pure sciences, the relative power of defenders of rival paradigms is therefore more important. This is something to which we will pay particular attention later.

British Social Anthropology The dominant paradigm of British social anthropology up through the 1960s consists of the following components: anthropologists have essentially been concerned with the questions of what makes social order possible and how it is maintained; there is an assumption that an equilibrium situation is normal; the forces of change come from outside the system; the direction of change then is towards the achievement of a new equilibrium; a distinction is made between detail change, and radical change, between rebellions and revolutions, between games and fights; the primary object of study then is the social structure seen as a system of enduring groups composed of statuses and roles supported by values and related sanctions that maintain the system in equilibrium; the societies studied, although changing, are examined ‘as if’ this equilibrium exists. The traditional focus of social anthropology, and what distinguishes it from sociology, has been its preoccupation with nonWestern, primitive or peasant societies. Its primary method of research is participant observation. These, very briefly, are some of the prominent beliefs and practices that constitute the dominant social anthropological paradigm. The basic theoretical assumptions of this paradigm are referred to as ‘structural functionalism’. Normal science has consisted of using this paradigm. During the past thirty years an impressive series of monographs has been published. These set out in admirable detail what the social structure is, how it is maintained, and how various institutions are interrelated to form a system of relationships. They demonstrate how the value system supports this structure. These studies have been carried out to solve problems generated by the paradigm and have used the techniques and conceptual instruments noted above. Since the questions asked largely determined the type of data gathered, and the theoretical premises underlying the paradigm-induced puzzles influenced the questions, the data gathered generally permitted the puzzles to be resolved. These various factors have combined to unite British social anthropologists into a fairly tightly knit school. This school has had many of the characteristics that Kuhn associates with paradigmatic schools: a dominant theory, a rigorous discipline, a conservative theoretical orientation, a special

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methodology and a high productivity. The large number of superb monographs is a testimony to the paradigm. As Murphy remarks: ‘It has carved out a small domain and has excelled in it’ (1971: 15). Nonetheless, anomalies did appear: Firth (1954) pointed to the problem of translating the acts of individuals into the regularities of social process; Leach (1954) criticized the equilibrium assumptions basic to the paradigm; David Easton (1959) pointed to social anthropology’s failure to deal adequately with politics. The paradigm’s failure to come to grips with conflict became apparent, and Gluckman (1965) sought to build it into the paradigm. EvansPritchard (1950, 1961) pointed several times to the paradigm’s patently ahistorical bias; Dorothy Emmet (1958) criticized its teleological premises; and Boissevain (1968b) criticized its failure to provide instruments to examine social configurations such as factions and cliques. Others have pointed to its bias in defining anything that did not fit in the framework of the paradigm as an exception (see for example Van Velsen 1964: xxiv). But more than anything else it has been criticized for its inability to deal satisfactorily with development and change (Hart 1941; Leach 1954; Pocock 1961; Reader 1964; Barth 1966, 1967; Worseley 1966). These are a few of the more conspicuous anomalies. The defenders of the paradigm have generally reacted by seeking ad hoc modifications. A few, however, have suggested that the paradigm itself is in need of basic review and have begun to look elsewhere. Exchange theory, transactionalism, Marxism, symbolic interactionalism, new evolutionism, cultural materialism, ethnoscience, and French structuralism are some of the rival approaches. It is striking that anomalies signalled over thirty years ago have only come to a head, as it were, during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Why has it taken so long? What keeps paradigms in general dominant? Are there particular features of the structural-functional paradigm that can account for its lengthy survival?

The Persistence of Paradigms There are factors within and outside the scientific community that influence the survival and change of scientific paradigms. Though these factors are here described as internal and external, this dichotomy falsely polarizes processes that are interdependent (see Toulmin 1972: 300–7; Elias 1970, 1971 and 1972a). This analysis, however, deals primarily with both internal and external social processes of persistence and change. Toulmin, one of the few philosophers to deal systematically with these, calls them ‘sociohistorical (i.e., causal) processes’ (1972: 123). I do not deal with epistemological, or as Toulmin calls them ‘intellectual or disciplinary’ (i.e., rational) procedures. For an epistemological or disciplinary discussion of various aspects of

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structural functionalism the reader is referred to Harris (1968), Elias (1970), Gouldner (1970), Murphy (1971) and Arnold (1972), among others. As Toulmin notes, both sociological and epistemological processes and procedures ultimately ‘play a part in the historical sequences by which intellectual variants in a science are first proposed, and then selectively perpetuated’ (1972a: 123; cf. Elias 1971). Although I consider epistemological factors of great importance, here I focus chiefly on some of the social factors that help explain the persistence of a paradigm once it becomes dominant. Why do paradigms persist? To begin with, a paradigm viewed as the entire constellation of beliefs, values and techniques shared by the members of a given scientific community, is obviously bedded in society. The members of a scientific community are also active in other fields. Their dress, customs  and conversation reflect these other fields. They are products of their time. Similarly, scientific activities also reflect processes taking place in the wider society of which scientists form part. A given paradigm is thus a child of its time. If it is compatible with the interests of important political  and economic powers they will support it against its rivals. For example, the powerful Catholic Church protected the Ptolemaic, earthcentred, theory of the universe against its heliocentric Copernican rival. The persistence of a scientific paradigm can thus partly be explained by its ‘fit’ or ‘goodness-of-fit’ or compatibility with interests dominant in the wider society in which the scientific community is embedded. A second factor that contributes to the persistence of a paradigm is its logical momentum. Kuhn in discussing normal science pointed to its conservative tendency. This is something that Edward de Bono also noted. Edward de Bono is concerned with how people think. He has focused particularly on the problems of stimulating people to think ‘laterally’. That is, to innovate, to come up with new ideas. But he notes that ‘to understand why one person invents, it may make more  sense to see why other people do not’. He thus also examines why people think ‘vertically’. He compares working within a paradigm to digging a hole: Logic is the tool that is used to dig holes deeper and bigger, to make them altogether better holes. But if the hole is in the wrong place, then no amount of improvement is going to put it in the right place . . . Yet great new ideas and great scientific advances have often come about through people ignoring the hole that is in progress and starting a new one . . . This hole hopping is rare, because the process of education is usually effective and education is designed to make people appreciate the holes that have been dug for them by their betters . . . Enlarging the hole that is being dug offers real progress and an assurance of future achievement. Finally, there is a comfortable, earned familiarity with a well-worked hole . . . An expert may even have contributed towards the shape of the hole. For such reasons experts are not usually the first to leap out of the hole that accords them their expert status, to start digging elsewhere. It would be even more unthinkable for an expert to climb out of the hole only to sit around and consider

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where to start another hole. So experts are usually to be found happily at the bottom of the deepest holes, often so deep that it hardly seems worth getting out of them to look around. (de Bono 1967: 26–29)

Kuhn and de Bono both touch on the vested interests that scientists have in particular theories that accord them their expert status. This points to the third factor that contributes to the persistence of a dominant paradigm. This is the hierarchical structure of the universities in which most scientific communities are located. Now the interpersonal relations of the academic profession, in spite of the lip service paid to merit, integrity and universalistic values, display many of the particularistic characteristics of a feudal society. There are lords (deans, department chairman and tenured professors), vassals (assistant professors and lecturers), body servants (teaching assistants) and serfs (students). Power, in the form of control over tenure, research funds, recommendations for jobs, research leave and so on, tends to cluster at the top. Those at the top are, if not the architects, then the hardworking builders of the dominant paradigm. An open challenge on strictly scientific (rational or disciplinary) grounds to the theory on which the life work of one’s teacher/chairman/patron is based is viewed not only as unscientific. It is also seen as disloyal, reckless, and probably dangerous to career prospects. Hence the challenge is not made, or if made, is quashed before it becomes public. Most persons who monopolize these resources do not always use them consciously to protect their vested theoretical interests. Nonetheless, the fear that they might do so, or in other ways take offence, inhibits criticism. Moreover, if criticism of the pet theory of an established authority is made, it tends to unleash a counter torrent of vigorous rhetoric that can be rather unsettling for the self-assurance if not the reputation of the target. Consider for a moment the implications of the following excerpt from a letter I once received from a clever, self-assured lecturer (who permitted me to publish it): Enclosed is a recent paper I have just completed with a colleague. The paper is out of the more usual style but is intended as an oblique attack on Radcliffe-Brownian structural-functionalism using a symbolic interactionist line. We gave it as a paper to the University X seminar. Went down like a lead balloon. XXX [his department chairman, a charismatic and persuasive defender of his own ideas – J.B.] was upset that we didn’t feed ourselves into the University of X genealogy. Possibly it is a bit out of key and slightly risky but it was sure good fun trying.

If a self-confident man so obviously felt the disapproving hand of his patron and considered it ‘out of key and slightly risky’ to put forward ideas outside the particular genealogy sired by his department chairman, the ideas of a more timid person might well remain private thoughts. Furthermore, those at

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the top also have the greatest voice in planning the teaching programs. These are designed to prepare students for the examination questions that they set and which, not surprisingly, reflect their views. The formation of theoretical schools is most pronounced where relative power differentials are greatest and, related to that, where communication outside the school is discouraged. Thus the social climate, the logical momentum of a scientific theory and the considerable power differentials inherent in all scientific communities are general factors that contribute to the persistence of all paradigms once they become dominant. But there are also specific factors that have contributed to the persistence of the structuralfunctional paradigm.

The Appeal of Structural-functionalism The structural-functional paradigm remained dominant for so long in spite of its demonstrated shortcomings, because it was congruent with dominant economic and political interests. It is also a simple paradigm for researchers to work with. Finally, it can be used by those in positions of influence within the scientific community to protect their position. But first is its historical convenience. In the nineteenth century there was a gradual expansion of the political power of the two industrial classes – the bourgeois industrialists and the workers. (Much of what follows on the relation between the rise to dominance of functional theory and historically specific social processes merely paraphrases Elias [1969: xxiii–xli] and Gouldner [1970]. Elias in particular I found most valuable.) At the same time there was a development and expansion of the notion and power of the state. Western European states expanded outwards into Africa and Asia to bring civilization – their way of life, economic systems, political institutions and religion – to those in the far regions of the world who were deprived of them. The expansion of the nation state and of the cultures of those who generated it was carried out with a moral fervour. People sincerely believed in the myth of ‘the white man’s burden’. Parallel with this tremendous social, ideological, political and economic expansion, social theories developed which sought to explain and legitimate this expansion. The evolutionary social theory of Tylor and the dynamic theory of Marx were also products of this period. In the first twenty-five years of the twentieth century the new geographical, political, and economic expansion reached its limits. The First World War and the Russian Revolution sounded alarm. Thereafter consolidation of the status quo by the new elite became of paramount importance and the new order of laissez-faire capitalism and political liberalism was challenged from all sides. Gouldner neatly sums up the situation: ‘The sanguine expectation of

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progress gave way to the grim problem of order’ (1970: 127). The stock market crashed. There was unrest in the colonies. Labour militancy increased: general strikes and communism became worldwide activities. In many cases the political reaction to this was the development of the corporate state: fascist dictatorships seized power in Germany, Poland, Spain, Greece, Portugal, and Italy. In the scientific community people increasingly abandoned evolutionary theories. The theories of Emile Durkheim and Radcliffe-Brown became popular. They taught that the social system had a moral force and is characterized by solidarity, cohesion, consensus, cooperation, reciprocity and stability. The functionalist notion of self-regulating mechanisms which operate to keep the social system moving towards equilibrium (such as cross-cutting ties, fission and fusion, balanced opposition) was congruent with the laissez-faire economic and political interests that dominated Great Britain and the United States. The structural-functionalism of American sociology and British social anthropology provided a scientific theory that dominant groups could use to defend the status quo against those who argued that the present economic and political system was immoral. Politically/scientifically safe/useful projects probably received the necessary funds and publicity. Those of their rivals, whose politics and scientific motives were not as favourably received by the funding authorities, did not. The funds such agencies allocate are received from government and industrial concerns. Hence they often represent dominant political and economic interests. Thus the relative compatibility of structural-functionalism with the interests of politically and economically powerful groups helps explain why it became and remained dominant within our scientific community. Those who have supported consensus theory were not and are not all politically conservative. But it is interesting that the corporate state was adopted at the same time as functional social theory. I have merely pointed to the strong correlation between the problems faced by historically specific political elites and convenient theories that were propagated at the same time. I am certainly suggesting a causal nexus, but I have not demonstrated one. To make this nexus explicit requires further historical research. This fascinating subject lies outside the scope of this paper. Recent research by Richard Brown (1973) on the history of the Rhodes Livingstone Institute has made an important beginning. He demonstrated that while the prewar Rhodesian government tolerated traditional research into primitive tribes, permission to carry out research in the urban Copperbelt settlements was very difficult to obtain. When war broke out such permission as existed was withdrawn by the mining authorities who feared that anthropological research methods would cause discontent and undermine African respect for European mine workers. Shortly afterwards the appointment of the Livingstone Institute’s first director, the liberal anthropologist Godfrey Wilson, was terminated on the grounds that he was a conscientious objector.

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A second reason the structural-functional paradigm has continued to be used for so long is that it is economical to work with. It provides a tried and simple recipe that the inexperienced researcher can use with relative safety. He locates key informants who can set out the rules of the social structure. These can then be illustrated by means of apt cases and tables; exceptions tend to be left out. In short, it is an appealing technique, a simple model that is quite safe to use since most of the great names in social anthropology have used it. Since the research design was constructed to elicit the sort of data that would fit into this analytical framework, there is also little danger of other data disturbing the picture: the data collected reflect the questions asked and thus the theory that articulates them. Even if the researcher begins to doubt the validity of his structural model during his writing-up period, there is little he can do. He lacks the data to back up his doubts, having failed to collect them while in the field. Moreover, because of the theory’s ahistorical bias, he is also protected against having to delve seriously into archives, an immensely time-consuming task. Finally, structural-functionalism is particularly appealing to those who have obtained eminence in the academic community. It expresses a belief in the system as it is. This belief can be used knowingly or subconsciously to buttress one’s own belief that one is right: A is a functionalist. A has reached the top of his or her profession. Structural-functionalism teaches that the system has a moral force: A is an integral part of the system. A must be right, because he is at the top, and the system continues. Therefore Y, who is junior and who challenges A’s theory, must be wrong, because A must be right, and so on. Their scientific belief supports their establishment role. This is circular, of course, for being part of the establishment generates a conservative ideology. (This argument is expanded in Boissevain 1974a: Chapter 8.) Those who contest their view will tend to belong to the ideological opposition of the local establishment to which the structural-functionalists belong. They will also, usually, belong to a younger generation in political as well as in educational/scientific terms. It would indeed be interesting to learn how many anthropologists who teach, and therefore must believe, that society has a moral force, have resisted the often legitimate requests for change from within their own local scientific community, the university in which they work. I suggest that structural-functionalists generally oppose change. Their whole theoretical orientation is behind their conviction that the system is morally right, and that, therefore, change must be resisted.

Internal Forces of Change Just as internal and external forces help to keep a theory or paradigm dominant once it becomes established, so forces operating within the scientific

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community and outside it eventually bring about its replacement. Although we shall examine them separately, it is important to be constantly aware that these two dimensions are interrelated. Together they help to explain why the anomalies of structural-functionalism have reached critical proportions within the past ten years. Within the scientific community there are at least three forces operating towards change: epistemological considerations, sociological factors and biological processes. They are interrelated. I can be brief about the rational or disciplinary factors, for although extremely important, this paper does not focus on them. Increasing numbers of researchers, like Barth (1966), are examining the way in which social forms are generated. Their focus is not social forms, but social processes. They are asking not of what does the social order consist and how it is maintained; but why and how the forms have come to be as they are. This shift in focus can, I think, be explained by at least three factors. First, there is the increasing pace of the social processes operating in all the societies studied by anthropologists. Second, anthropologists are increasingly active in Europe and the United States. Here a different concept of history exists than in pre-literate societies, and their informants force anthropologists into the archives. Finally, there is the increasing use that state planners are making of anthropologists at home and abroad to solve the problems created by a century of laissez-faire capitalism. This is forcing many to rethink the equilibrium assumptions of the structural-functional paradigm (cf. Gouldner 1970: Chapter 9). These three disciplinary processes are, of course, related to processes taking place in the wider society. There are also processes operating within all scientific communities that generate innovation and, ultimately, work for changes in paradigms. Within the scientific community there are asymmetrical power relations. Those in superior positions often consciously use their access to resources to protect their theory against rival theories. These rival theories do not spring up at random. They come from a particular group within the scientific community: the very young and those new to the scientific community (Kuhn 1970: 191). They constitute the ‘young Turks’, as Toulmin (1972: passim) calls them. They advance new theories not only because they have not been fully socialized into the rules of the dominant paradigm, and are hence particularly likely to see that those rules no longer define a playable game, as Kuhn argues (1970: 90). He suggests, however, that the generalization that the young contribute disproportionately to fundamental inventions of a new paradigm badly needs systematic investigation (1970: 90, n.l5). Nor do they do so only because they automatically piece together ‘the established and variant concepts and procedures of [their] discipline into a pattern of [their] own’, as Toulmin suggests (1972: 285). In addition to these there is another factor which helps explain why the young and the newcomers to a scientific community contribute proportion-

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ately more new ideas. Many are also prompted to examine critically, to innovate and to piece together variant concepts because they seek recognition. They are trying to gain status in a competitive community, to advance higher from their position at the bottom of the scientific totem pole. In terms of the culture prevailing in all scientific communities, one way of doing this is to demonstrate the inadequacy of an existing theory and, if possible, to advance a new, more adequate one. For an example of this we have only to look at the way Malinowski, a newcomer to the field (and a ‘foreigner’ at that), hammered away in polemical fashion at the theories of the scientific establishment of the 1920s regarding law, economics, psychology and, of course, anthropology. The shafts aimed at the dominant paradigms of today’s scientific establishment are perhaps less blunt than those of the aggressive Malinowski, but they come from the same social category: the young, the juniors and the outsiders. Persons who have, relatively speaking, the least power attack those with the most power. I am not arguing that they attack with pragmatically assembled theories in which they do not believe. They firmly believe in the ideas they advocate. My point is that in addition to a scientific concern with validity, the push to examine theory and practice critically and to look for alternatives also comes from a desire for recognition. This is a consequence of the inherent asymmetry in social relations in most scientific communities. In order to free themselves to some extent from their inferior status they can do only two things: innovate or, to follow de Bono’s metaphor, dig the established holes deeper. Innovation is a gamble. Failure can mean ridicule and ignominy. Most follow the line of least resistance: they follow their academic patrons. Why some innovate while others follow is, of course, not simply a matter of choice. Nowhere are people completely free to act as they choose. Constraints of many types are always present. The foremost is the dulling of critical facilities by over socialization within the dominant paradigm. Yet why some are able, and choose, to innovate and to engage in the often bitter fights with the scientific establishment that this entails, while others cannot or do not is a fascinating but virtually unexplored question. It can only be resolved by detailed historical-biographical studies of both innovators and followers. It is interesting to note, for example, that Mulkay (1972) remarks that young researchers, in contrast to high- and middle-rank scientists, potentially stand to gain the most and lose the least through nonconformity. Middle-rank scientists are the most conservative; they have the most to gain from conformity. Those with high scientific reputation, while they ‘will tend to innovate extensively within the confines of their particular research tradition, they are less likely to introduce radical changes of perspective . . . [which might] . . . put in jeopardy their previous contributions and threaten the very standards on which their eminence depends’ (Mulkay 1972: 49, 50). To this must also be added the conservative influence on

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established scientific patrons of their mature middle-rank clients hard at work within the research traditions that they themselves have sponsored. In short, new ideas are partly a product of the structural asymmetry so characteristic of the scientific community. The outsiders attack with one of the few power resources not monopolized by their rivals: ideas. Hence the seeds of change are always present in the structural asymmetry between those with more power and those with less power. Those with more power try to maintain the asymmetry, and hence their superordinate position, sometimes even innovating to accomplish this end. They defend the status quo. Those with less power try to reduce the gap by pointing out anomalies. There is a final, biological, pressure to change. The old guard eventually retires from the various positions from which it exercises power. Deanships, departmental chairmanships, places on appointment boards, editorships of professional journals and funding committees eventually fall vacant as their incumbents retire. They are replaced, often by replications, but sometimes by people with new ideas. The ferment of ideas among British social anthropologists during the past ten years is probably not unrelated to the retirement during the same period of no less than five of the seven or eight British professors of social anthropology. Again, changes within the scientific community cannot be seen in isolation from the processes taking place outside it. Thus scientific shifts are not haphazard mutations. They are in part the product of disciplinary issues, the structural asymmetry in power relations and the biologically programmed replacement process and developments taking place outside the scientific community.

External Forces of Change The society of which anthropologists form part has changed remarkably during the forty years under review. The political establishment is no longer uniformly conservative. Most Western European countries have a modified form of welfarism designed to uplift the underprivileged categories that were threatening the establishment two generations ago. In many places the conflict has become more acute. Colonies are mostly independent, some after long, bloody battles. The white man however has not completely succeeded in passing on his ‘burden’. Peasant and labour movements are increasingly powerful. Black and brown power movements divide cities, and students rebel on campuses. Emancipation is in the air. The drive to reduce relative power differentials is intensified in almost every domain. People, and social scientists in particular, want theories that explain the rapidly changing world around them. Political and economic elites, whether socialist or capitalist, need social theories that can help them cope with (in the sense of understanding and thus controlling) these large and small emancipatory

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movements. They also need theories that will help effect desirable changes. Structural-functionalism, with its conservative accent on harmony, rebellion (in place of revolution), balanced opposition and the functional interdependence of all institutions, is patently unable to explain and cope with the rush of events. Rapid change is characteristic in all geographical areas now [1970s] being examined by social anthropologists. Anti-establishment criticism is the order of the day. New theories are demanded by those affected by these processes. New evolutionism, symbolic interactionalism, phenomenological sociology, Marxism, transactionalism, are all approaches that are grappling with the problem of change. Some new approaches, though, such as French structuralism and ethnomethodology, seem to be retreating from the ferment of the world around us, and are burrowing ever further into the inner recesses and protected catacombs of our disciplinary edifice. Why there should be a return to the ivory tower by some at this time is a question I can raise but not answer. As the power of the structural-functional paradigm begins to crumble, old theories and a few new combinations come out into the open. Moreover, shifts in power relations within the scientific community related to the general drive for emancipation are also making it possible to discuss ideas more openly. I refer to the increasing democratization of universities. The gradual shift in the balance of power in most universities away from the traditional establishment of deans, chairmen and tenured professors toward younger staff members and students is helping to dislodge obsolete theories. Old power domains are weakened by changes in the rules governing control and allocation of university resources. Thus increasing student power may very well bring about not, as those who fear it warn, the end of the university as a community of scientists, but a more rapid development of scientific theory.

Conclusion The framework that I have used, I suggest, provides insights into how the paradigms in our discipline, or any discipline for that matter, are generated, become dominant and, ultimately, are replaced. Since the formulation of scientific theory is in part a social process, we may also have gained insights into the way this process is speeded up or slowed down. Let me summarize the essential steps in the argument. The point of departure is the assumption that people undertake or refrain from action in order to do that which they find most satisfying. In short, they try to free themselves from constraints over their capacity to pursue their goals. All social relations are asymmetrical. Those with relatively more power can more easily attain their goals. Access to resources needed to accomplish

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this is often blocked by those with relatively more power. Therefore those with relatively less power seek new ways to acquire the necessary power. They do this by thinking up new procedures or by adopting ones available in the environment. These are forms of innovation. There is consequently an impetus to change in the asymmetry inherent in all social relations. Acceptance of an innovation depends on what it is as well as on the climate of opinion and the power configuration of its opponents and advocates. Thus innovation and its acceptance are dependent upon processes going on both within and outside the academic community in the wider society. Successful innovations are cumulative. In the long run most seem to be contributing to the emancipation from the constraints of our social and physical environment. Those whose interests are threatened by new developments will oppose them. They may succeed in blocking them for relatively long periods of time because of a particular configuration of power. There may thus be temporary involution or apparent stability. In social theory, as in technology and culture, the pace of change is increasingly rapid. This is first of all because there is a cumulative effect of theories as well as political processes. Secondly, increasing emancipation is reducing the power of the gatekeepers, thus allowing new ideas to penetrate into the scientific forum more rapidly. This is bringing about growing specialization and an increase in the number of scientific communities. The growing number of scientific communities causes an expansion of personnel, and thus the enlargement in absolute numbers of potential innovators.

Acknowledgements I am grateful to seminar participants at the universities of Amsterdam, Kent, Sussex and Utrecht, who constructively criticized earlier versions of this paper; to Jolanthe van Opzeeland who critically discussed many of the ideas and kindly helped me to find relevant literature; and to Talal Asad, Michael Attalides, Anton Blok, Joop Goudsblom, Donny Meertens, Derek Philips, Bernard Schaffer and Hans Vermeulen, who further helped me to tighten the argument. It was finally presented to the session on ‘Transactional Approaches’ at the conference on ‘New Directions in Social Anthropology’ organized by the Association of Social Anthropologists of Great Britain and the Commonwealth, Oxford, 4–11 July 1973. It was one of the few papers not discussed at the conference as there was ‘no time’ available for it.

CHAPTER 8

BEYOND THE COMMUNITY: SOCIAL PROCESS IN EUROPE*

Introduction Political, religious and economic relationships, say, in an Italian village, clearly do not exist in isolation at a local level. Relationships and processes that lie beyond the community at regional, national and even supranational levels influence them. Terms such as ‘group’, ‘village’, ‘community’, ‘culture’ and ‘society’ have been used to indicate socially significant entities. Concepts like brokerage, encapsulation, penetration, folk–urban, great tradition and little tradition, absorption, and acculturation have been brought forward to deal with aspects of relations between these entities. These terms and concepts, which are used by most anthropologists as scientific instruments, were largely developed to describe and analyse relations of smallscale, fairly isolated communities. To polarize part and whole, micro and macro, community and nation in the study of complex European societies by reifying them as separate categories does violence to the nature of the dynamic relationships between them, and the meaning they have to the people involved. Yet here lies the rub. Anthropologists have done little to systematize their thinking on the nature of these relationships to avoid this static polarization and reification. This is the central problem that this chapter attempts to address. The case studies discussed here deal with the effects of such familiar processes as increasing industrialization, geographical mobility and urbanization. They also analyse less obvious processes. These include the growing centralization of power at higher integration levels, the progressive decline of Originally published as ‘Introduction: Towards a Social Anthropology of Europe’, in J. Boissevain and J. Friedl (eds), Beyond the Community: Social Process in Europe. The Hague: Department of Educational Science of the Netherlands for the European-Mediterranean Study Group, University of Amsterdam (1975), pp. 9–17. Reprinted by permission of the Ministerie van Onderwijs, Cultuur en Wetenschap.

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small-scale, autonomous units and the increasingly extensive cooperative arrangements. Most of the studies also indicate a trend towards a more equal distribution of socially valued objects, including a reduction in power differentials between classes, groups and persons. This is partly reflected in the steadily expanding public welfare activities of the state. Interestingly enough, several of the studies also indicate a gradual decline of the autonomous power of the state’s central bureaucracy. These processes are interrelated and thus present serious analytical problems. For example, increasing centralization and the decline of the power of the central bureaucracy at first sight even appear contradictory. This paradox presents an absorbing puzzle. But there is considerable evidence that progressively more powerful configurations at the international, as well as at the grassroots level, are crosscutting state bureaucratic units, thus eroding the power of many nation states. The interrelation between these processes is examined in more detail below. Although all the cases discussed are based on field research, they do not focus on local communities as objects of research in themselves. Most are ‘village outward’ studies. The authors have used the small community or regional locus as a scientific niche from which to examine problems of wider relevance. Six studies deal with southern Europe. From his experience in Tuscany, Thomas Crump examines critically the traditional anthropological ‘small community’ approach. This, he argues, has forced the Italian nation through ‘a sort of sieve to leave only a residue of relatively isolated, partly illiterate, technically retarded, rural communities’ (1975: 20). From a grassroots base, also in Tuscany, Robert Wade examines critically certain generalizations of political scientists who hold that Italy is a centrifugal democracy in which the political culture is fragmented and characterized by an exclusive commitment to single parties (1975). John Davis provides a glimpse of the inner workings of a state bureaucracy by documenting the extent to which civil servants in southern Italy, to further their governmental masters’ interests, manipulated local politics in a town in Basilicata during the previous century (1975). Phillip Katz explores the way the response of the German-speaking minority in South Tyrol to Italian law serves to maintain ethnic identity (1975). Donny Meertens is also critical of the traditional anthropological focus on local communities (1975) and by examining the factors influencing the growing labour unrest in Andalusia, she demonstrates the value of the regional focus. Soon Young examines the processes by which Provençal wine cooperatives, introduced by the government to counter rural unrest, perpetuate the class structure to the disadvantage of the small farmer (1975). Four studies deal with central Western Europe. Daniela Weinberg shows how the Swiss federalist structure provides small communities with the means to resist the encroachment of the national government (1975). The

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two studies set in the Netherlands highlight the unforeseen consequences of national and international processes. Jojada Verrips examines the interrelation between local and national processes (1975) and Verrips discusses how measures designed to alleviate the plight of the small farmer merely weaken his position. He also deals specifically with the theoretical problem of the relationship between local communities and society at large. Lodewijk Brunt describes the impact that city dwellers, forced into rural communities by urban congestion, have upon local power relations (1975). Mart Bax analyses how the increasing activity of the welfare state makes more resources available to local power brokers (1975). Two studies of Norway conclude the volume. Waling Gorter shows that increasing integration into the nation state does not necessarily disrupt small communities composed of various ethnic groups (1975). Helle and Tom Snell, on the other hand, describe how the processes of national integration in Norwegian society, while initially reducing the conditions under which cultural differences can persist, have provided the Samish minority with new tactical resources, which they use to protect and maintain their ethnic identity (1975).

The Social Anthropology of Europe The fact that increasing numbers of anthropologists are turning to study Europe is itself a fairly recent development. This attention is partly explained by the sharp rise in the number of graduate students of anthropology on both sides of the Atlantic. Because anthropologists traditionally focused on primitive societies, Europe was virtually unexplored terrain, anthropologically speaking. The increased interest of anthropologists in Europe also reflects the loss of their protected status in the newly independent ex-colonies. They are no longer welcome in many of the areas they studied in the past (cf. Asad 1973). The trend to study Europe has perhaps also been stimulated by the recent shortage of research funds, for it generally costs less to study a neighbour than to mount an expedition to the New Guinea highlands. This shortage, in turn, has been caused by the increase in applicants, the reduction of U.S. defence spending on research, the reflexive tightening of government purse strings to counter student unrest, and recent financial crises that have reduced the ability of private foundations to sponsor research. But more important than all these is the growing awareness that anthropology is the study of all mankind, not just of primitive, tropical or non-Western man. This in itself is a reflection of one of the most important long-term processes: the growing interdependence of nation states, international organizations and continents. Trained on literature dealing with comparatively slowly changing, isolated, undifferentiated non-Western societies, anthropologists are generally

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ill-equipped for the complexity of Europe. This complexity, and, increasingly, that of the rest of the world, cannot be handled adequately with traditional anthropological concepts such as equilibrium, corporation, balanced opposition, reciprocity, and consensus, for example. Nor is the traditional anthropological research technique of participant observation alone any longer sufficient. New concepts and research methods are called for, yet these are only partly being provided. The high degree of centralization, the interrelation between various levels of integration, the impact of multiple longterm processes and the changes that can be documented across centuries still overwhelm many anthropologists. Consequently many have sought refuge in villages, which they proceed to treat as isolated entities. They have tribalized Europe. The multitude of narrow studies of European villages prompted one anthropologist recently to exclaim: ‘Five kilometres between two European villages have been, from the point of view of social anthropological comparison, longer than five kilometres in most other parts of the world’ (Freeman 1973: 745). Yet Europe’s complexity is precisely what makes it such a fascinating and important area of research. There are many other reasons for focusing on Europe. Because of historical circumstance, certain processes, such as state formation, national integration, industrialization, urbanization, bureaucratization, class conflict, and commercialization have generally had a longer development in Europe than elsewhere. As the studies in this volume demonstrate, Europe can thus provide a singularly important comparative perspective for those interested in the development of institutions. There is a further reason for anthropologists to study Europe: studies of European societies are relevant for the study of imperialism and the expanding power of transnational corporations. In the analysis of the rich nation–poor nation configuration, attention usually focuses on the poor countries; Western Europe is taken as given, as not requiring further analysis. But the interaction between rich and poor must also become an object of research if greater understanding of the interrelation is to be gained. This same perspective also requires that greater attention be devoted to Europe as an essential element in the rich nation–poor nation configuration. Power relations within and between European nations largely determine the nature of the interaction of Europe with the rest of the world. Thus to understand how European political and business interests, using national bureaucratic governments as instruments, exploit poorer countries, studies of the operation of these institutions at home and abroad are essential. Studies of the effects of this exploitation on developing nations are thus only half of the picture. It is also necessary to learn more about how these exploiting structures manage to maintain themselves in Europe. All the studies show that the capitalist societies of Europe are far from homogeneous. The continuum between rich and poor, between exploiter and exploited, between metropolis and dependent satellite is not just something

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that runs between Europe and the poorer nations: it is also present within Europe. It is present in the inequality between industrialists and workers in the Spanish corporate state discussed by Meertens. Gorter shows that it is present in the asymmetry between the middle-class bureaucracy in Oslo and Finnish, Norwegian and Samish agriculturalists in the northern Norwegian province of Finnmark. Verrips and the Snells demonstrate the way the expanding activities of the state eliminate the traditional way of life of small farmers and reindeer breeders. Europe, too, has its neglected, oppressed and exploited minority groups – its ‘primitives’. Studies of the way these smaller, marginal groups are caught up in wider social processes can thus provide a valuable perspective on internal developments in the very societies that are draining the poorer countries. In this way the interest groups and processes that give rise to decisions that affect these poorer nations can be better understood. Greater understanding of the structure of European societies and of processes taking place within and between them may thus help reduce the growing asymmetry between the rich and poor nations of the world. Such studies might help, for example, by indicating likely European coalition partners for poorer nations or oppressed segments within them. The support that certain political parties, trade unions, student organizations and minority groups in Europe provide for national liberation movements, unions, parties and minorities in Africa, Asia and Latin America are cases in point. There is yet another reason for studying Europe. The aim of social science is to gain insights into social relations and processes in order to explain the past, understand the present and predict the future. In this way it can contribute to an understanding that helps make possible a better, more equitable way of life for more people. Anthropologists working in Europe are dealing with societies very different from societies in other parts of the world. It seems likely that many of these societies will follow part of the road already travelled by Europe. They, too, are heading for greater industrialization, centralization, bureaucratization, urbanization, differentiation and so on. The analysis of processes taking place in Europe, and the problems of its small communities, can indicate the often unintended long-term consequences of decisions made today in developing societies.

Developments in Europe Most of the studies document the increasing centralization of decision-making powers at higher levels of integration. Concomitant with that, they show the gradual erosion of the autonomy of smaller units. Davis demonstrates that these processes were already evident shortly after the birth of the Italian state; they are particularly well documented by Verrips. He shows how, partly in response to local pressures and partly in the interest of the central

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bureaucracy, government bodies increasingly take over functions that were being performed by local communities. To meet the complaints of marginal farmers who are facing financial difficulties, government consolidates land holdings to help increase agricultural productivity. The costs involved force small farmers to sell out to large farmers and marginal farmers inevitably become the losers. To cope with increasing pollution generated by expanding industrialization and to further tourism, provincial authorities take over water control from local associations run by farmers. This further deprives farmers of status and influence. To control the competition between communities for scarce state resources, and to regulate more adequately the process of industrialization and urbanization, government amalgamates smaller municipalities. Verrips shows that the loss of autonomy does not take place without a struggle, though, at least in Holland, the smaller units inevitably lose. The gradual shift of decision-making powers to higher integration levels is certainly not confined to government bureaucracies. Possibly to be able to resist and to influence the expanding bureaucratic power, political parties and other interest groups are growing more centralized. Wade’s study, for example, clearly shows the progressive influence of regional party officials on local apolitical cadres and issues. These examples can be repeated for most of the societies the authors examine. Everywhere small units and enterprises have been slowly giving way to larger units. Whether they be municipalities, dairy or wine farmers, reindeer breeders, business, house or national defence organizations, the shift of more decision-making powers to more inclusive units appears similar. The expansion of spheres of competence of increasingly larger units is linked to the reduction of power differences. Katz and Verrips describe how the asymmetry of power between landed and landless agriculturists in South Tyrol and Holland is reduced as industrialization provides new opportunities for the poor, and rising expectations and costs of mechanization place the rich under mounting economic pressure. Brunt shows that industrial workers, driven from the cities by poor housing, are able to move to villages and commute to work, thanks to their cars made possible by the general rise in the standard of living. In the villages they enter into coalition with local socialists, further eroding the power of the traditional elite of farmers and shopkeepers. This reduction in power differentials, partly brought about by changing economic relations, is further stimulated by activities of national governments. With the exception of some areas in the Italian south, governments everywhere have been able successfully to monopolize the use of physical violence. This has deprived local power holders of an important resource for maintaining and expanding their domain. Reflecting the gradual extension of the franchise to all levels of society, the state has continually expanded its activities to further the common weal and to assist disadvantaged social

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categories. Education, cheap housing, medical and welfare payment, technical assistance and financial subsidies to agricultural and industrial enterprises have made resources available to more people and new forms of association have emerged to exploit these new resources. Many small communities are using these new resources to fight for the very local rights the state is seeking to usurp. Gorter, for example, shows how a local community in Finnmark successfully defended its rights against the central government through the organizations and local branches of national associations founded by teachers who had in fact been sent to the north to promote national (southern) Norwegian culture. Similarly, Meertens describes how Andalusian building labourers seized upon a slight relaxation in the labour law, introduced because of EEC pressure, to strengthen their own organization and to strike for more rights and the Snells outline the process whereby education, modest economic prosperity, increasing tolerance in the wider society and political stability – as aspects of the welfare state – enabled Samish leaders to convert ethnicity into an organizational quality with which to fight for rights the state had usurped. Other contributors document the same process. Song Yoon demonstrates how state-assisted cooperatives of small wine producers entered into coalition with large independent vineyard owners to fight government economic policies. Daniela Weinberg also provides an example of local communities cooperating successfully to counter government interference with local rights. Bax, too, sees a change in the balance of power in favour of the small community as a result of the expanding activities of the welfare state. These studies demonstrate that the growing concentration of power at higher integration levels can only be countered successfully by larger defensive coalitions. Several of the studies demonstrate that the increasing geographical mobility generated by industrialization and improved communication has affected local power balances, creating categories of insiders and outsiders who vie for power. Just as increased centralization of power stimulates local communities to claim dormant rights and demarcate fields of competence, so also the penetration of outsiders leads to the crystallization of boundaries. Sames, Basques, Scots Welshmen, Protestants and Catholics in Ireland, and Frenchand Flemish-speaking Belgians are vociferously and sometimes violently guarding their boundaries. The same applies to Dutch urban slum dwellers, Cornishmen, entire Italian regions, diverse minority groups and small communities throughout Europe. Although it will take careful historical research to verify, it appears that these minorities are becoming increasingly restive. This activity would seem related to the expanding encroachment and growing impenetrability of the State bureaucracy; to the progressive penetration of outsiders; to the increasing availability of welfare state resources; and to improved communication, which has made minorities internationally

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aware of their common interests. This unrest could well be the prelude to a more general legitimacy crisis for the nation state. There is a structural and ideological similarity between workers striking against ‘their’ factory, and ethnic and other minorities who take similar action against ‘their’ country. Both feel that the demands of the owners or rulers have lost their legitimacy (cf. Galtung 1969). This is clearly illustrated by the way the militant National Union of Mineworkers in 1974 brought the British government to its knees by striking for higher wages. In the ensuing general election the Conservative government was defeated and Scottish and Welsh nationalists gained in strength. These studies thus appear to offer evidence that the power of European nation states, which had been steadily expanding since the beginning of the nineteenth century, is gradually being checked. In the words of the Snells: ‘Nation building is largely finished in Western Europe.’ This development has proceeded roughly as follows. State formation transferred power from local elites to the state’s central apparatus, thus reducing local autonomy. In more or less democratically ordered societies, centralization has reduced local differences in relative power. Progressive centralization brought with it the expansion of state bureaucracy. This expansion involved, in its turn, a steady splitting up of decision-making powers among multiplying agencies. The progressive diffusion of power at higher integration levels has made the decision-making process increasingly difficult to oversee. The spreading of decision-making powers over larger numbers of persons and agencies has also made it more difficult for single persons and small collectives to influence decisions. Increasingly, individuals and groups are forming specialized coalitions to check the progressive reduction of local autonomy, to oversee the decision-making process, and to influence the outcome of decisions affecting members. These coalitions, with ever greater success, are resisting and often blocking from below the usurpation of power from above. Their relative success is due in no small measure to the growing stream of tactical resources the state is making available, and to their success in recruiting support at home and abroad. Resources and support are expanding in proportion to the growing power of such coalitions. At the same time that pressure from within is increasing, the nation state is being obliged to sacrifice more of its autonomy to supranational organizations like the United Nations, the EEC, NATO, the Council of Europe, the OECD and so on. Moreover, international pressure groups such as Amnesty International, the Nordic Samish Council, the World Council of Churches, and international professional and political associations are growing more powerful. They cooperate with national coalitions to influence and check the expansion of the power of national bureaucracies and political and economic elites. The power of the nation state is thus increasingly being eroded by national and international organizations, and by cooperation between

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the two. The erosion of the concept as well as the power of European nation states is also accelerated by the expanding power of transnational corporations. These are able to evade national controls such as minimum-wage legislation by operating abroad. There they can pay wages that are indecent, even by local standards, because the jobs they create are desperately needed. They also can subvert the authority of the nation state by the use of their immense wealth. Recent activities in this field of United States multi-national corporations in Latin America as well as at home, and of British companies in South Africa, are so well known they require no further comment.

Theoretical Implications The range of problems treated in this volume reflects the shift in theoretical orientation of the present [1970s] generation of anthropologists. Up to the 1960s the dominant questions asked by most sociologists and social anthropologists were: what makes social order possible? What social institutions exist and how are they functionally related? The emphasis was on the description of institutions and customs, and the way they were interconnected to form a system. These questions produced many important insights. But anthropologists now are no longer concerned with merely describing what exists and explaining its existence by demonstrating how it forms part of a total system. They are asking new questions. As these contributions clearly show, anthropologists now seek to explain the events of change; to chart the forces influencing the people they study. This shift in the questions asked, and thus in the explanations advanced, lies at the heart of much of the theoretical ferment taking place in the scientific community of social anthropologists. They are searching for non-teleological explanations for what they observe, as they seek to free themselves from the structural-functional concern with order. Hence they are increasingly turning to theoretical paradigms in which economic, political and historical elements are given greater prominence, such as those of Marx and Elias (cf. respectively Asad 1972 and 1973; Blok 1974). Why the dominant question has changed is a problem that requires considerable further research and any attempt to answer it will have to deal with both epistemological and sociohistorical processes (cf. Toulmin 1972: 123). To some extent these have been examined by Harris (1968), Elias (1970), Gouldner (1970) and Boissevain (see Chapter 6) among others. The question of what makes order possible and how it is maintained has been explored in great detail for half a century. Social scientists now want theories that explain the rapidly changing world around them. Structural-functionalism, with its emphasis on social order, has been unable either to predict or to explain the rush of events. Rapid change is occurring in all areas being examined by social

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anthropologists. New theories are demanded by those concerned with these processes.

Scientific Trespassers? It is evident that all the contributors are deeply involved in cognate fields. All, to some extent, have had to become historians. A few also have examined problems usually treated by political scientists. Yet only a decade ago Devons and Gluckman (1964a, 1964b) argued that it was not desirable for anthropologists to move into other scientific areas. They wrote: ‘It is highly dangerous to trespass beyond the limits of one’s competence . . . to exercise this competence one must abstain from becoming involved in the problems of others’ (1964a: 18). They argued for ‘specialization and keeping to one’s last in the social sciences in order to develop theoretical understanding’ (ibid.: 19). The contributors to this volume obviously do not share this point of view, but then a different theoretical perspective generated it. Gluckman, for example, has been concerned with social order and has made important contributions in that field, devoting himself to law, ritual and custom. The advice of Devons and Gluckman must be seen in this light, as they themselves were well aware. They noted that if the questions change, so must the activities of researchers: We shall see that whenever we try to understand the form of certain phenomena in terms of ‘why’ they are as they are rather than ‘how’ they are interconnected with one another we are less able to take as given surrounding phenomena and interpretations of the relations between these phenomena. Entry into the nature of surrounding phenomena is always relative to the problem we set ourselves: and we have particularly to be open-minded . . . when we engage in comparative and historical studies. (1964b: 181)

Thus it may not be possible to stick to your last if the questions asked change. And clearly they have changed. The consequence of this change is that anthropologists must rethink the assumptions, boundaries and techniques of their discipline. The idea that past and present sociological problems should be, or can be, pursued in separate compartments by different scientific disciplines is misleading. There is a need for a more unified and integrated theoretical framework for the various social sciences. Their present boundaries and their status struggles have hindered and are still impeding our understanding of human society (cf. Elias 1972b). The implications are clear. Some anthropologists are already committed to problems and techniques of other disciplines. This means that attention must be paid to these in the universities where the apprentices in the scientific community are trained. Anthropologists can no longer rely exclusively

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on the traditional method of participant observation, carried out against the background of what other anthropologists have written. Crump neatly sums up the implications: [I]n the end there is no easy answer for the anthropologist interested in Italy. He must have not only a considerable command over the methods and techniques of his own discipline, but also be an expert in the history, literature, human geography and economy of Italy – and this means searching through a wealth of material, largely in Italian, and often only accessible in Italy itself. (1975: 24)

The Future These authors demonstrate that anthropologists can make an important contribution to the study of Europe. They also show that communities of interdependent persons sharing a feeling of belonging together provide an excellent niche for the social anthropologist. From this vantage point we can study the social relations between individuals and groups, and between these and the societal processes of which they form part. These studies also reveal certain shortcomings inherent in the discipline in its present state of development. Overwhelmingly they still show a rural bias and an interest in economically and politically marginal groups. Anthropologists would still appear to be searching for, and finding primitives in modern Europe. The studies also deal exclusively with the capitalist societies of Western Europe. Future studies must correct this bias. The world is becoming increasingly urbanized and centralized. Studies of urban-centred problems, of the interrelation between economically and politically dominant groups, including state bureaucracies and multi-national corporations, and of socialist societies are badly needed. Hopefully more studies will also focus on the role ideology and constitutional parameters, such as electoral laws, play in influencing social relations and processes. Such studies might show how, for example, in the Netherlands rival religious and political ideologies, electoral laws, the absence of regional representation, the surprising power of the central bureaucracy and the multiplying number of action groups are interrelated. This introduction has been able to do no more than touch on some of the many theoretical issues these studies raise, and to indicate some of the general conclusions. It has scarcely done justice to the richness of the data and the elegance of their presentation by the authors.

Acknowledgements The first version of this chapter introduced Beyond the Community: Social Processs in Europe (Boissevain and Friedl 1975), the book that emerged

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from the symposium on ‘The meaning of small communities in the context of (supra-) national processes in Europe’, organized by The EuropeanMediterranean Study Group of the University of Amsterdam together with John Cole and some of his students from the University of Massachusetts (Amherst) on 25 June 1973. A generous grant from the Netherlands Ministry of Education and Science helped meet the costs of the symposium. Donny Meertens made organizational arrangements helped by Hannie Hoekstra, and Jojada Verrips provided essential last-minute editorial coordination. Mart Bax, Lodewijk Brunt, Thomas Crump, John Davis, Waling Gorter, Donny Meertens, Helle and Tom Snell, Jojada Verrips, Sandra Wallman and Edward Zammit all provided detailed, at times sharp, but always highly constructive criticism on the first draft of this introduction, as did Beryl Muscat, who helped with the typing. Anton Blok suggested many of the themes we touched on. I am indebted to them all for their advice, much of which I have followed. Errors of interpretation, of course, are mine alone.

CHAPTER 9

OF MEN AND MARBLES: RECONSIDERING FACTIONALISM*

Introduction There is a pervasive, and to my mind incorrect, view that holds that some conflict, while full of sound and fury, is socially insignificant. Factionalism, it is argued, despite being a product of rapid social change, is not about change. Rather, faction fighting is viewed by many as a game, and hence scarcely worth the attention of today’s social scientists. Instead, they prefer to focus on conflict that they regard as socially significant – class conflict. As one aggressive seminar discussant recently put it to me, ‘Factional leaders, like Wilson and Heath, only play games for marbles!’ Related to the view that factional and class conflict are logically different types of conflict are a number of assumptions that have become commonplace in political anthropology. These include the notion that factions are vertically organized rival coalitions that cut uniformly across socioeconomic classes; that faction leaders recruit support through structurally diverse linkages; and that competing factions are structurally similar. In short, factions are seen as competing in balanced opposition. It is further held that factionalism does not have an ideological expression because rival factions compete for control over power, status and resources that are available within the existing framework of society. Hence they do not attempt to change the social order. Factional conflict is consequently viewed as segmental rather than class-based.1 The purpose of this discussion is to place several question marks after a number of these comfortable, time-worn assumptions. In fact, I shall argue Originally published as ‘Of Men and Marbles: Notes Towards a Reconsideration of Factionalism’, in M. Silverman and R.F. Salisbury (eds), A House Divided? Anthropological Studies of Factionalism. ISER Books. Memorial University of Newfoundland (1977), pp. 99–110. Reprinted by permission of the ISER /Smallwood Foundation, Memorial University of Newfoundland.

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that most of them are false. It makes more sense to regard factionalism not as a separate, exotic type of conflict, but simply as small-scale conflict, usually at a face-to-face level. Factionalism, as will become apparent, is not necessarily a product of, or even associated with, rapid social change. Factional conflict, on the other hand, seems always to be about changes in power balances and thus about those whose way of doing things is to be ‘accepted’ as ‘normal’.2 Rival factions, far from being in balanced opposition, are usually structurally and organizationally asymmetrical. Moreover, they are not invariably ideologically neutral. In short, my general conclusion is that it is not possible to draw a categorical line between factionalism and class conflict. It should not surprise us that the validity of the categorical distinction between faction and radical or class conflict is raised, historically speaking, at this time. After all, this distinction was fundamental to the structuralfunctional view of the relation between conflict and change. Factions (and rebellions) were seen as ‘normal’ conflict that did not threaten the equilibrium of the system. They were contrasted with class-based conflict (revolution) that did threaten the systemic equilibrium. In short, on logical grounds, the structural-functional notion of equilibrium required a category of conflict that would not endanger the system. It is thus quite understandable that since structural-functionalism is increasingly being called into question, the notions of conflict, which are an essential part of it, should also be questioned. Let me now be more explicit by trying to answer two questions: what is the relation between factionalism and social change? Are factions symmetrical groups in balanced opposition?

Factionalism and Social Change More than fifteen years ago Siegel and Beals stated that pervasive factionalism is ‘essentially a phenomenon of sociocultural change’ (1960a: 399). They argued that it is the result of interaction between internal ‘strains’ and external ‘stress’. Epstein also noted that ‘factions are informal pressure groups that act as mechanisms whereby gains in economic status might be realized also in terms of political and social mobility’ (1962: 289). In the Indian village she examined, economic, political, and ritual status no longer coincided after the introduction of irrigation. Nicholas also pointed to the influence of change on factional dispute. He commented that ‘. . . factions, in the absence of conventional political divisions perform necessary functions in organizing conflict’ (1956: 47). He went on to observe that ‘If we distinguish between the social disruption brought about by social change and the social order brought about by almost any kind of political systems, our attentions will be drawn to the functions of factions’ (ibid.: 57). Bailey also observed that ‘Factions may arise when the environment provides some new kind of political resource,

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which existing groups cannot exploit’ (1969: 52). Finally, after reviewing a number of studies, Bailey and Nicholas commented: It is helpful to think of a faction as a group of enterprising and self-interested men who have realized that there are new political resources available and wish to make use of them before others do . . . Factions, therefore, seem like a stopgap to fill a void that occurs when existing groups are proved ineffective in gaining political ends: In fact, they may act so as to further the decline of older political groupings. (Bailey and Nicholas 1968: 278)

These statements have two characteristics in common. First, they stress the functional, system-maintaining character of factions. Factions arise because the equilibrium of the system has been disturbed. Factions work to restore the equilibrium. Factionalism is thus a form of homeostatic activity symptomatic of systems undergoing change. Second, the change to which they refer is externally introduced. It comes from outside the system. It is not a product of tensions inherent in the societies under examination. Moreover, although many of these writers provide certain data indicating that rival factions are asymmetrical, in their analysis they treat them as though they were more or less evenly matched teams competing in a game. The notions that conflict is system maintaining, that change comes from outside the system, and that conflict groups are in balanced opposition are dominant assumptions of functionalist social science (Gouldner 1960). Despite the case made to link factionalism to external change, this relation is notably absent in several societies in which factions have been studied. For example, there is no apparent connection between externally introduced economic or political change and the factionalism described in the Akwe Shavante village, Sao Domingos (Maybury-Lewis 1967), the Orissa village, Bisipara (Bailey 1957), the Ndembu village, Mukanza (Turner 1957) and in the Bengal village, Govindapur (Nicholas 1965). Hence it would seem that factionalism is not necessarily a result of change. Alavi made much the same point: ‘[T]ypically, factional politics are found in peasant societies, such as those in South Asia, which have not been subject to rapid social change’ (1973: 47). In fact, he went on to note that ‘rapid social change, associated with the “Green Revolution” in those societies, has tended to replace the factional mode of politics by class conflict’ (see also Sharma 1973). Obviously, the relation between factionalism and social change is more complex than most authors indicate. On the other hand, if factionalism is not always a result of changes, all factional conflict seems to be about changes in power, ideology, ways of doing things and so on. Faction leaders seek to change or to protect threatened power balances or prestige ratings. Factional conflict would appear to be about attempts to change the normative concepts of who is boss, about which way of doing things is correct, about whose views will prevail and about

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whose ideas will be called ‘normal’ and ‘right’. Factions compete over those persons who will dominate, and thus over those who will be able to impose their rules. It is this element that distinguishes politics from games. Politics seem always to be about those who will rule, and hence about those whose rules will prevail. Games are not about rules. Political competition, consequently, is never a game.

Factions, Symmetry and Balanced Opposition When conflicting factions are examined closely, and with an open and enquiring mind, they are usually found to be different in many ways. Far from being in balanced opposition, rival factions usually differ with respect to access to resources and strategy, internal organization, ideology, social composition, and symbolism.

Access to Resources and Strategy Conflict groups often form in opposition to some pre-existing locus of authority and power in a community (cf. Bujra 1973: 38). The view that factions are coalitions competing for power changes in order to dominate their rivals, helps to explain why they so often appear in pairs.3 The distribution of power chances (resources) is by its nature dichotomous: some have more, and some have less. One coalition is associated with the dominant power configuration in a community. This most often is focused on the headman, chief, mayor, wealthiest landlord, chairman, club president, parish priest and the like. Ranged against this power bloc is a category of persons who are dissatisfied with the way those who have superior power wield it. Initially they may be merely disgruntled, but later they may organize themselves into a rival coalition (faction) to challenge or unseat those more powerful. Those who wield relatively more power are often referred to as the establishment; those who oppose them form an anti-establishment category: the opposition.4 The local establishment faction usually defends tradition and the status quo. The opposition faction attacks, seeking to unseat its rivals, who because they defend the established order are regarded and often labelled as conservative. The opposition faction thus becomes the ‘progressive’ faction. There is a further reason why opposition factions are more often viewed, in local terms, as progressive. In their struggle to dominate their rivals, competing factions make use of various resources available to them in order to increase their power chances. In very slowly changing societies, these will be known and, therefore, are traditional resources. But in rapidly changing societies, new resources such as offices with development, commercial or political agencies,

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education, new laws and ideologies become available. Competitors can also use these to increase their relative power. The new resources tend to change the balance of power rapidly. Thus factions do not necessarily result from the availability of new resources, as Bailey seems to suggest. Rather, new resources are used in ongoing competitions for power and prestige and tend to escalate them. This is also why some authors speak of ‘conservative’ and ‘progressive’ factions (for example, Nicholas 1965 and Epstein 1962, 1973). The use of new resources is not random; it is structured. A faction will make use of new resources when it becomes apparent that by doing so its position will be strengthened. It is then labelled progressive, in the sense of favouring change of the status quo. Thus Nicholas notes that the wealthy young entrepreneurs among the Iroquois seized upon the principle of elective leadership advocated by the larger American society to unseat the local establishment of hereditary chiefs: ‘The political aspirations of socially successful and economically mobile individuals had, before 1924, been frustrated by hereditary government. For the progressives there was no course to political power other than changing the system’ (1965: 52).

Internal Organization There is some evidence that conflict groups – whether faction, ritual moiety or political party – differ organizationally. When the opposition consists merely of a few persons jealous of or disgruntled with the local big shots, they are patently less well organized than the establishment. The organization of the establishment will consist of at the least, a better developed exchange circuit (Thoden van Velzen 1973). But if the conflict persists over time – for example, because it concerns an office such as headman or parish priest – it is quite likely that the opposition will become better organized than its rival. In Malta, opposition groups, whether parish factions or national political parties, were more tightly focussed around a single leader, were less prone to internal factionalism and had more clearly demarcated bureaucratic structures than their establishment rivals (Boissevain 1974b: 31–2; 38–9). Bailey (personal communication) also noted that the smaller opposition parties were better organized than the larger dominant parties in Orissa. It seems logical for opposition coalitions to concentrate more than their rivals upon certain organizational characteristics. One of the ways an opposition coalition can successfully compete with its stronger rival is to tidy up its internal housekeeping. It must fashion itself into an instrument which can successfully challenge its rival. It is thus more open than the establishment to organizational innovation such as creating an efficient bureaucracy, keeping records, stimulating grassroots growth and so on. Furthermore, the establishment coalition because of its superior position based on a relative surplus of

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resources tends to be more wasteful in its organizational housekeeping. It does not need to administer (in the sense of husbanding) its relatively abundant resources to the extent that the opposition does.

Ideology, Social Composition and Symbolism Many authors have noted an apparent lack of ideological commitment in factional disputes (Siegel and Beals 1966: 127; Bailey and Nicholas 1968: 278). Bujra (1973: 136) even raps Friedrich (1968) on the knuckles because he pointed to the ideological differences between the factions he studied. She accuses him of confusing ‘class conflict’ and ‘factionalism’ (1973: 138). There are several good reasons why factions are not necessarily ideologically neutral. The dichotomies between establishment and opposition and between conservative and progressive are not random and have ideological implications. It is understandable why those who form part of the establishment local power elite often hold conservative ideologies, and why their rivals are more radical. Bujra, for example, notes that it is in the interest of village headmen to give at least nominal support to the external political establishment. In India the Congress Party dominates this. Thus opposition factions usually support parties opposed to Congress (Bujra 1973: 138). These will usually be ideologically to the left, although occasionally they are to the right of the ruling regional party and thus of the dominant village faction. Nicholas also used his data on Govindapur to illustrate the ideological polarity that factional conflict brings about (1965: 40). It could be argued that the consequence of this is a sort of ‘tit for tat’ alignment between the strongest village faction and the dominant (usually conservative) national political party, and between the weaker local faction and the opposition (usually radical) national party. Implicitly at work is the transactional principle that ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’. There is a further, more pregnant relation between faction and ideology. There is considerable evidence that opposition factions recruit more support than their rivals from weaker or even marginal social categories. The strength of a faction is often a function of its size. An opposition leader cannot afford to be too particular about the nature of his support if he is to topple his rival. Just as they often turn to new ideologies and techniques that are not always socially acceptable to their rivals, opposition leaders also recruit support from those who for various reasons are less influential or are regarded as social or moral inferiors. Supporters are supporters. Turner, for example, describes how Sandombu, the aggressive opposition faction leader in Mukanza, recruited social outcasts to swell his following. These included a sorcerer who had been banned from the village, a prostitute and a juvenile delinquent. Epstein, too, describes how the leader of the

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progressive faction in Dalena protected a washerman who was boycotted by his own faction (conservative) for incurring ritual pollution, by striking the higher caste peasant who had been cuckolding him (1962: 285–86). In Malta, factions that formed after the middle of the last century to celebrate secondary saints, in competition with the clique of village notables celebrating the official parish patron saints, recruited followers from among those at the bottom of the social hierarchy. The economic class bias is still reflected in the present-day ritual divisions (festa partiti) that grew out of these factions: 83 per cent of the professionals and white-collar workers of Hal Farrug, the village I studied closely in 1961, belonged to the establishment festa partit celebrating the official parish patron, St. Martin. In contrast, 62 per cent of the village’s farmers and labourers celebrated the secondary feast of St. Roque, their patron (Boissevain 1965: 74–96, 1974b). Alavi upon re-analysing data provided by Nicholas (1965: 45, Table 1) demonstrates a definite economic class bias in factions formed to contest an election in Govindapur (Alavi 1973: 49). The way in which factional leaders recruit support may be diverse, as Firth and Nicholas have argued, but it is not structurally random, as they suggest. Having recruited socially weaker persons, it is understandable that an opposition leader reflects, develops in dialogue, or adopts an ideology and aligns himself with a political party that defends the interests of his supporters (or those whose leader he wishes to become), whether they be poor, women, children, of lower caste and so on. Moreover, given the disparate nature of those in opposition, a potential leader often must develop an over-arching ideology or symbol that will weld them into a unity. This is what appears to have happened a hundred years ago in Hal Farrug. The new parish priest established a devotion to St. Roque in order to unite anti-establishment elements against the clique of local big shots who had been running parish affairs, including the annual feast of the parish patron, under his predecessor (Boissevain 1974b). Once an ideology or moral element has been introduced, it tends, in time, to become self-fulfilling: the leader must continue to express it or lose followers. Consequently, if the conflict groups persist – and many, for various reasons, do not – moral or ideological ties will probably be more important as linking elements between opposition leaders and followers than between their establishment rivals (although much more systematic research must be done in this area). On the other hand, because leaders representing vested interests generally have more resources, economic and political calculations are probably more prominent in the way they are linked to their supporters. This difference in leader/follower linkages appears to be supported by further analysis of the Govindapur electoral factions already referred to. Of the relations between the voters for the dominant Congress party and their faction leaders, Nicholas has classified no less than 74 per cent of the party members as economically or politically motivated (they are economically

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Table 9.1 Bases of Factional Alignment of Govindapur Voters Basis of Support

Congress

Communist Voters

Economic/politic Kinship/caste Total % Total number

74% 26% 100% 191

29% 71% 100% 133

Sources: Nicholas (1965: 42, Table 1); Alavi (1973: 49, Table 1)

dependent, the leader is neighbourhood headman and/or the leader opposes mutual enemy). In contrast, 71 per cent of the pro-Communist voters are linked to their faction leaders by ties of kinship and caste solidarity. These figures are set out in Table 9.1. Finally, in many societies whose factions have become ritualized, like Maltese festa partiti and the more primitive dual organizations or moieties described, among others, by Lévi-Strauss (1956), the dominant factions acquire the most important symbols. Thus, in Malta, the symbols that are important to the people of Hal Farrug, for example, are aligned in a manner congruent with the strength of the rival partiti. These are as follows: Establishment (St. Martin)

Opposition (St. Roque)

Titular saint

Secondary saint

Statue stands on right-hand (evangel) side of parish church

Statue stands on left-hand side of church

Main altar dedicated to saint

Side altar dedicated to saint

Principal celebrating confraternity (Blessed Sacrament) walks last in procession (highest prestige)

Principal celebrating confraternity (St. Roque) walks first in procession (lowest prestige)

Partit colour: red (most important liturgical colour)

Partit colour: blue (colour unimportant liturgically)

Representatives of all parish confraternities carry statue in procession

Only representatives of the St. Roque confraternity carry statue in procession

Partit symbol: star

Partit symbol: eagle5

In short, it cannot be seriously sustained that conflict groups – whether village factions or political parties – are structurally symmetrical or in balanced opposition. Coalitions in conflict have been shown to differ in the following respects:

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(1) Access to resources: the establishment faction represents the vested interests; the opposition represents the underdogs. (2) Strategy: the establishment defends the present order; the opposition attacks it, often by means of new techniques and resources which earn it a progressive label. (3) Internal organization: opposition coalitions that persist over time are more tightly organized than their rivals. (4) Ideology: factions representing establishment interests are more often conservative, and their opposition rivals more often progressive or radical. (5) Social composition and symbolism: relatively speaking, opposition coalitions contain more socially weaker persons than establishment ones and ‘own’ less favoured social and ritual symbols. Why the obvious asymmetry of factional conflict groups should have escaped the theoretical attention of two generations of social anthropologists is an interesting question. Twenty years ago Lévi-Strauss also argued that moieties or dual organizations, long characterized as both static and symmetrical, were in fact dynamic and asymmetrical. His explanation of the reason they were mistakenly characterized this way is so relevant to the question just posed and to the foregoing analysis that I quote him at length: I have tried to show that the study of so-called dual organizations discloses so many anomalies and contradictions in relation to extant theory that we should be well advised to reject the theory and to treat the apparent manifestations of dualism as superficial distortions of structures whose real nature is quite different and vastly more complex. Yet these anomalies in no way escaped the attention of Rivers and his school – the originators of the dualist theory. They did not perturb them because they saw dual organizations (on the basis of the anomalies as the historical result of the fusion of two populations differing in race, in culture, or simply in power. In such a formulation, the social structures considered could be both dual and asymmetrical at the same time – and indeed they had to be. First Marcel Mauss, then Radcliffe-Brown and Malinowski revolutionized anthropological theory by substituting a socio-psychological interpretation, based on the concept of reciprocity, for the historical interpretation. But as schools grew up around these masters, asymmetrical phenomena faded into the background, since they were not easily integrated into the new perspective. The inequality of the moieties came to be treated as an irregularity of the system. And – much more serious – the striking anomalies that were discovered later were completely neglected. As often happened in the history of science an essential property of an object was first taken by researchers to be a special case; later on, scientists were afraid to jeopardize their conclusions by submitting them to more rigorous proof. (1956/68: 161–2, my emphasis, J.B.)

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Conclusion If factionalism is not necessarily a product of social change, it appears always to be about change, for factions are groups that compete for power to determine, and thus to change or defend, what is to be accepted as normal. Because they have different access to power chances, rival factions are not evenly matched, structurally similar groups. Their structural asymmetry is fundamental to understanding the nature of their rivalry. Structural asymmetry and competition for power to effect change are also attributes of class-based conflict groups. This suggests that the line of cleavage between conflict groups – whether faction, class, or party – cuts across moral categories and socioeconomic classes, not at right angles, as most functionalists and many Marxists postulate, but diagonally. Where the line approaches the vertical, forming conflicting coalitions with a reasonably even spread across socio-economic classes, it is reasonable to speak of factionalism (in the case of face-to-face groups) and party conflict (in the case of conflict on a broader scale). Where the line of cleavage approaches the horizontal, forming conflict groups that are clearly differentiated according to socioeconomic criteria, the term ‘class conflict’ seems appropriate. But the axis of cleavage in every case must be determined by empirical investigation. It should not be assumed. I suggest this axis will always be found to be diagonal, and that symmetrical coalitions and pure class conflict groups are the product of wishful scientific and/or political thinking. To argue about whether rival coalitions are engaged in factional, party or class conflict is ultimately sterile and can lead to such politically and scientifically naive statements as ‘Faction leaders like Wilson and Heath only play games for marbles.’ Rigid classification usually results in pigeon-holing in the course of which important attributes are ignored in the interest of a tidy decision. This, of course, leads to a sense of bafflement when it is discovered that one of the players has run away with all the marbles. Family, faction, party and class conflict, rebellions, revolutions and other uprisings always appear to be about who is to decide what is normal. All are thus sub-species of the genus conflict. That they consequently share structural characteristics is not surprising. These common attributes include the fact that competing units differ in respect to access to economic and social resources, strategy, internal organization, ideology, social composition and symbolism. The degree to which structural attributes are similar and different varies, as does the scale of changes that the competitors seek to introduce or prevent and their ability to do so.

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Acknowledgements I prepared the first draft of this chapter while I was a visiting fellow at the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, in March 1975. Various versions were discussed at the University of Sussex in March 1975 and at the conference on ‘The Anthropological Study of Factional Politics’ organized by York University at Orillia, Ontario in April 1975, at a seminar at the State University of New York, Binghamton also in April 1975 and at the University of Stockholm in October 1975. I am most grateful to the many discussants and to Jojada Verrips and Roderick Aya for helping me to clarify what I wished to say.

Notes 1. See Firth (1957), Boissevain (1964, 1969, 1974a), Nicholas (1965), Siegel and Beals (1966), Bailey and Nicholas (1968), Bailey (1969), and Bujra (1973). Alavi criticizes many of these assumptions. But he, in turn, assumes a continuum at one end of which are factions that ‘are structurally similar’ (1973: 44), thus meeting the above criteria, and at the other end of which are groups in conflict containing elements of class conflict. He examines only the latter in detail. I disagree with him only in that I reject the notion of structurally similar conflict groups. 2. ‘Accepted’ and ‘normal’ are used advisedly. I do not wish to suggest a consensual notion of legitimacy. Norms may be and very often are imposed upon a weaker party. They are accepted not because they are viewed as correct or just, but because there is force behind them: ‘Chi commanda fa la legge’ [The one who commands makes the law]; ‘Might is right’; ‘Justice comes out of the barrel of a gun’; ‘To disobey the natural law of the word of God is to risk eternal damnation’. These are statements about acceptance of action that is defined by the dominant party as lawful, right and just. Leaders of conflicting groups compete to be able to define the norms – hence to effect or to block changes. 3. For further discussion of the reason why conflicting coalitions are often paired, see Caplow (1968). 4. Thoden van Velzen (1971) writes about the ‘interest’ coalitions of local elite and government experts in Tanzanian villages and the ‘levelling’ coalitions of anti-establishment elements who combine periodically to attack the resources of the elite and try to pull them down to their level. 5. The relative prestige of these two symbols is set out neatly in the couplet often declaimed by St. Martin supporters during the feast of St. Roque: It is true that the eagle soars high; But it will never reach the star.

CHAPTER 10

WHEN THE SAINTS GO MARCHING OUT: REFLECTIONS ON THE DECLINE OF PATRONAGE IN MALTA*

Introduction The growing literature on patronage deals chiefly with its utilitarian aspect. It is conceived of as an asymmetrical, quasi-moral relation between a person (the patron) who directly provides protection and assistance (patronage), and/or who influences persons who can provide these services (brokerage), to persons (clients) who depend on him for such assistance. Clients, in turn, provide loyalty and support when called on to do so. A great deal is now known about varieties of patronage, its inner mechanics, its consequences and the way it is modified. One of the perennial problems remains the question of why patronage emerged more prominently in some countries as part of the social, cultural and moral climate. Its emergence is usually related to the partial penetration of the nation state. Silverman (1965: 188) notes perceptively that ‘the mediator represents a general form of community/nation relationship characteristic of an early phase of development of nation states, a form which regularly gives way as the process of interpenetration of the total society advances.’ However, Bax (1976) contests, quite correctly in my opinion, the notion that patronage withers as the state expands. Others have seen it as an institution linking cultures (Wolf 1956; Bailey 1969). The world of ideas and concepts in which patronage and brokerage function has all but been ignored. Some anthropologists (Kenny 1960; Campbell 1964; Boissevain 1966b; Wolf 1969; Christian 1972) have noted that there is a particularly interesting relation between religion and patronage. Catholicism in particular, with its range of benevolent patron saints intermediate between God and Originally published as ‘When the Saints Go Marching Out: Reflections on the Decline of Patronage in Malta’, in E. Gellner and J. Waterbury (eds), Patrons and Clients in Mediterranean Societies. London: Duckworth (1977), pp. 81–6. Reprinted by permission of Duckworth Publishers.

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favour-seeking dependent humans, provides an ideological worldview that closely parallels a conception of society articulated by political and economic patron–client relations. These anthropologists have argued that religious and political patronages reinforce each other.1 Each provides a model of and a model for the other. The relationship between spiritual and temporal patronage is clearly characterized by the south European custom of referring to both types of patrons as ‘saints’. The Maltese and Italian proverb ‘You cannot get to heaven without the help of saints’, thus has both religious and political significance. Other observers, while noting the congruence of action and values in spiritual and earthly patronage, have criticized the attempts made to relate them to each other (cf. Bax 1976; Gilsenan 1977; Silverman 1965). The following discussion seeks to further our understanding of the interplay of religious and secular patronage, of value and action, by exploring social developments, interpersonal relations and political and religious dependency in Malta.

Developments in Malta Malta’s history has been greatly influenced by its small size and strategic location in the centre of the Mediterranean. For centuries it was run as an island fortress, first by the Knights of St. John (1532–1798), then by the French (1798–1800), and finally by the British, who gave the country its independence in 1964. Malta’s experience of self-rule was limited by the obvious difficulty of giving full self-government to a fortress. For centuries the islands were ruled by a highly centralized civil/military administration centred in Valletta, Malta’s capital. When necessary, representatives were stationed in the villages and areas remote from Valletta to see that the policies of the central government were carried out. Following the First World War a system of modified self-government was introduced. Representatives were elected to the national parliament from multi-member constituencies. This provided institutionalized communication between the grassroots electorate and the central government. This highly centralized form of government continued following independence. The Maltese parliament now (1977) consists of fifty representatives elected from ten districts and the central government employs some 25,000 persons, who, with the exception of police and teachers, all work in the capital. The official religion in Malta is Roman Catholicism. All but a handful of Maltese are Catholic, and most practice their religion fervently. The centralized hierarchical organization of the Church provides much of the territorial organization of the islands. Each village forms a parish and some of the larger towns are divided into two parishes. The parishes of Gozo and the

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island of Comino form one diocese with its own bishop, who falls under the jurisdiction of the metropolitan archbishop of Malta. Until the advent of self-government parish priests provided a traditional but informal channel of communication between village/parish and the central government. In addition to the increasing autonomy of the central government from outside control that followed independence, five interlinked trends can be discerned which are relevant for a discussion of developments in patronage: increasing education; industrialization; tourism; increasing communication and mobility; rising standard of living. These trends have been discernible for many years. Their pace seems to be constantly accelerating, and was boosted by the two world wars, the sporadic periods of self-government and, finally, by independence. The push towards public education began just before 1900, at about the same time that the first conflict-ridden experiments in limited self-government took place. Prior to that education had been fairly exclusively controlled by the powerful Church. The development of schools increased steadily, though they were poorly attended. Compulsory education until the age of fourteen was introduced on a part-time basis following the return of self-government after the Second World War. During the next twenty years the school-leaving age was gradually increased to sixteen and school facilities greatly expanded. During the same period the economy also evolved. The island’s economy for centuries was based on furnishing goods and services to the military and naval garrisons of its rulers; in the early days of the Knights of St. John the Maltese provided food and menial services, including physically defending the island against various aggressors. Members of the professional classes were also employed in the central administration. Under the British increasing numbers of Maltese were employed in the garrison, the naval dockyard and the civil service. The numbers of professionals and businessmen expanded as entrepôt commerce flourished following the opening of the Suez Canal. It was a period of considerable economic and social ferment. The balance of power in the Mediterranean gradually passed from British hands and by the late 1950s this was reflected in the drastic decline of the defence establishment in Malta. Teams of advisors finally began to make serious attempts to find alternative economic possibilities. Foremost among these were plans to convert the giant, over-staffed, naval dockyard to a viable commercial enterprise and attempts were also made to attract manufacturing industry: in the past the British had systematically kept such industry out of the islands to safeguard the monopoly of the dockyard and the military of local skilled labour. In the early 1960s the government also began to make serious efforts to encourage tourism but despite these efforts the economy was stagnant when Malta became independent in 1964. Discouraged by the grim economic prospects, and fearful of independence, more than 9,000 emigrated that year. (The annual average

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for the previous five years had been around 4,000.) Following independence Malta’s economy proved to be remarkably robust. From 1965 to 1969 new industries and mass tourism sparked off an economic boom that gave way after 1970 to a slower but steady growth. Many foreign firms, attracted by various incentives, established themselves in Malta. Tourism grew from 23,000 annual arrivals in 1961 to over 333,000 by 1975. Increasing education, expanding employment, especially for women, and rising wage rates brought about a considerable rise in prosperity: between 1964 and 1974 virtually every Maltese household bought a modern gas cooker, a television set and a washing machine. People began to eat more meat. They also began to spend more on leisure activities. The growth of television has been particularly significant. It has brought Malta into direct contact with Italy, for the two Italian television channels are received clearly. The amount of local news broadcast has also increased remarkably. In 1954 only an hour and a half of news was broadcast daily but by 1974 news broadcasts from various sources had increased to ten and a half hours a day. A similar growth of the local press took place: in 1954 there were eight daily and weekly newspapers, producing 172 pages a week; by 1974 the number of publications had doubled, and were printing no less than 700 pages a week. Malta thus became better informed about what goes on abroad and also about what goes on within the country. Between 1964 and 1972 car ownership increased from 20,000 to 45,000, or from one car for every eighteen persons to one for every seven.

Changing Social Relations Interpersonal relations were affected by the developments touched on above. Relations became less hierarchical and also less many-stranded. These changes can be seen in the family, in the community and in the relations between people in organizations such as the church, unions and political parties. Influences are at work that slowly, almost imperceptibly, are reducing differences in relative power in families that have been characterized by strong parental, and especially paternal, authority. To begin with, children are now generally better educated than their parents. They know more and their horizons are wider. They can read documents and sign legal forms for their illiterate parents. This decreases the dependency of parents on outsiders to perform these tasks, but it increases their dependency upon their own children. Increasingly, also, girls are finding jobs, and for much of the day are away from the village and the authority of their mothers. In the early 1960s it was usual for unmarried village girls to remain at home. Now, almost all those who have left school work outside their place of residence, mostly in

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hotels and, increasingly, in the expanding light manufacturing industries. The money they earn makes them less dependent on their parents for clothing, amusements, and even marriage partners. In the past many marriage plans foundered because parents refused to provide their daughter a dowry or layout if they did not approve of her choice. Today a girl pays for these herself. She also contributes handsomely to the wedding reception given by her parents. Sons, who are better educated and have more prestigious, betterpaying jobs than their fathers are increasingly less inclined to submit to the traditional patriarchal authority. Moreover, married children are moving out of the neighbourhood of parents as inter-village marriages increase and as housing elsewhere becomes available. These factors are reducing the traditional hierarchical relations in Maltese families. These developments are also creating new group identifications and activities, thus affecting traditional community interaction patterns. Bonds of loyalty in neighbourhood, parish and club associations are declining in importance. This is partly the result of increased mobility. Improved transportation, work outside parish limits, and housing in distant estates are pulling people out of the village and neighbourhood of birth. New reference groups are also being formed. Young people from all over the island congregate between seven and nine in the evening in the main street of Valletta (or, increasingly, on the smart seaside promenade of Sliema). There they see their friends from other parts of the island, exchange news, fashions and companionship. Political party loyalty, especially following the clash in the 1960s between the Malta Labour Party and the Church, has also drawn people from different neighbourhoods and parishes together in political interest groups. New reference groups draw people out of traditional groups. A growing concept of a national Maltese community/nation has followed independence. Before 1964 the primary point of identification beyond the family was the partit (party) of their favourite saint (see Chapter 3), local parish or political party. Now, very slowly, a national ‘we’ feeling is also beginning to emerge. Moreover, as increasingly more outsiders come to live in the villages, either because they find housing or they marry someone there, the village becomes less homogeneous. In the early 1970s there was a slight but noticeable decline in the scale and participation in the annual feasts celebrating parish patron saints. Fewer young men are prepared to sacrifice hours of dangerous work to prepare fireworks. They now prefer to spend their free time with (girl) friends at the beach or the cinema. Where just ten years ago young men competed for the honour of carrying the parish saint in its annual procession, today [1976] the parish priest is often forced to hire outsiders to do this. These changes affect the quality of interpersonal relations. In a way, relations between villagers have become less multiplex – more diffuse. The mutual interdependence that existed when the village was more homogeneous, more tightly knit and more closed to outsiders has decreased. Prestige

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and honour are no longer attributes that derive exclusively from the judgment of fellow villagers. Most people now also play roles on a much wider stage. They are therefore less dependent upon their neighbours. There has also been a shift in power relations. Perhaps most notable has been the decrease in the power of the Church. At the village level, dependency upon the parish priest has been greatly reduced for a number of reasons. Increasing education has freed people from the need to use their local priest, often the only literate person they knew well, to help them with their paperwork. The expansion of government social services has freed poorer parishioners from dependency on Church charity controlled by the parish priest. As general wellbeing increased, people became less dependent upon the parish priest to obtain help. The bitter conflict between the Church and the Malta Labour Party during the late 1950s and the 1960s alienated many from the Church forever, thus further reducing the numbers of those tied to the parish priest (Boissevain 1965: 97–119). Finally, competing politicians, eager to perform services in exchange for votes, have systematically sought to suppress the traditional brokerage activities of parish priests with the central government on behalf of their constituents. These are a few of the many ways that dependency on the Church is being gradually eroded at the grassroots level, thus reducing power differences between priest and parishioner. Relations in other spheres of social activity are also becoming less asymmetrical. This is partly a result of bureaucratization and collectivization. There has been a slow expansion of the degree to which the central government impinges upon people’s lives. Government is increasingly asked to provide more education, more housing, more industry, more social services, more traffic control, etc. Government departments thus expand and become more complex. Decision-making in government and private business is becoming more collectivized: boards instead of single individuals increasingly make decisions. This reflects the growing ideology of discussion and equality. Corresponding to the collectivization of decision-making at higher levels, collectivities at lower levels increasingly represent the interests of their members. In the past twenty years membership in political parties and, especially, trade unions has greatly expanded. Church lay associations have also grown. Associations of farmers, employers, women and students, represent and defend the interests of their members. The power of persons in authority is slowly being fragmented, distributed over committees and boards, which increasingly deal with collectivities instead of individuals. Increasing prosperity has also significantly reduced the dependency of people upon each other. Education has broadened their horizons and with it their independence, as has the possession of a car, television, and work outside the village, especially for girls. Relative prosperity has increased the

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margin of safety with which people face the future, thus reducing their vulnerability, and consequently their need to maintain a protective network of patrons and brokers. One retired village dockyard worker, the son of a peasant, put it to me this way: You cannot imagine the misery, the abject dependence that my father faced when he was my age. Today I have savings, a pension and can get government medical services if I am sick. He had none of these. He had to keep working hard until the end. He also remained servile to the Church and to the local big men. I have independence he never knew, never even thought of.

The ability of persons – whether father, employer, priest, doctor, lawyer, government minister, or department head – to influence the action of others is being affected. Extreme concentration of power potentials in the hands of persons is being reduced, as are relations of dependency that bound people to them.

Transformation of Patronage Relations The transformations that have been touched on have affected the interdependence of people. As power at the local level is no longer monopolized by single individuals to the extent it once was, people today are no longer as dependent on each other as they were. Old informants described to me how just forty years ago certain local persons – large landowners, doctors, lawyers, notaries and parish priests – wielded great power in their villages. They disposed of local housing, credit facilities and labour. They also had access to important government decision makers who could issue licences, local scholarships and provide employment. They were jealous of their power. They sometimes ruthlessly protected their interests. Such concentration of direct power resources in the hands of local magnates has all but disappeared. If the power of local patrons is declining, the demand for specialized brokers is increasing. The growing need for influential mediators is not only due to the increasing complexity of government and the collectivization of decision making. It is also a consequence of the availability of new prizes, such as overseas scholarships, licences and subsidies for tourist and industrial developments. These prizes are allocated by government scholarship committees, licensing authorities, development boards that often include foreign experts and other unknown people. Most boards attempt valiantly to make decisions according to universally accepted criteria. It is difficult, if not impossible, for people without help, to influence the decision of such collectivities. This is a task for specialized intermediaries who, ideally, have the backing of organizations and of their friends and friends of friends.

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People are thus finding it increasingly efficient to have their interests represented by organizational specialists, rather than by old-style patrons. An employee now asks his union shop steward to argue his pay claim with his employer; a person seeking a scholarship, building permit, government flat or a transfer asks his local member of parliament to help him; and a parish priest who has a dispute with his bishop mobilizes the secretary of the college of archpriests and parish priests to help argue his case. The Malta Labour Party in particular has sought to strengthen these organizational relations. It has consciously channelled the mass of resources to which it has access as a government party through its formal party apparatus. Both clients and brokers have become part of formal organizations, and their relationship is changing. It is a person’s right to be represented by his union secretary, his professional association manager, or his local member of parliament. He no longer has to grovel, display his dependency, or try to make the relation a moral one to obtain this help. It will be evident that the bureaucratization of patron–client or broker–client relations is reducing the sense of personal dependency and the moral content which once characterised such relations. However, relatives and friends remain important means of establishing contact with key officials and board members. People are now also beginning to sneer at self-confessed clients of prominent politicians and persons in authority. Once clients were called parrokjan (parishioners), the dependents of a saint or patron (qaddis). Today the word bazuzlu (blue-eyed boy, teacher’s pet) is increasingly used to indicate the abject dependency of personal (political) clients. It is a term of disapproval. The general shift from the use of parrokjan to bazuzlu to designate personal clients reflects the shift in the content of patronage relations. As opposed to organizational dependency, relations of personal dependency are increasingly being looked down upon. This ethical condemnation of the patron/ broker–client tie is also related to another development. In the 1970s the word ‘corruption’ was on everyone’s lips. Patronage relations that once were accepted as normal are now increasingly regarded as corrupt. This is possibly also a reflection of the growing awareness of Maltese that certain private interests must be sacrificed for the new Maltese state. Just over ten years ago Malta was a colony. Military and government resources were controlled by Britain. They were fair game. They could be and were plundered on a grand scale without incurring opprobrium. In fact, hoodwinking the British gave prestige. For example, dockyard workers pilfered massively and still recount with admiration and awe how a fourteen-ton ship’s screw was pilfered one night from the ‘yard’. With the increasing penetration of a national ideology, a growing separation is taking place between public and private domains: increasingly the client is condemned as a bazuzlu and the patron/ broker who personally channels government resources to him is viewed as corrupt.

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Three Types of Dependency Relations It would seem that in the past hundred years relations of dependency in Malta have assumed three dominant forms. These may be termed ‘patronage’, ‘patron/brokerage’, and ‘organizational brokerage’. Patronage is the classical personal patron–client relation. This is still found occasionally between a wealthy landowner and the family of his tenant farmer or old family retainer. This is a long-term, personal, moral relation. The wealthy landowner provides his tenant with land, financial advice and influence with important people. The latter in turn provides personal loyalty, esteem and small services above and beyond the formal contractual relationship. This relationship was characteristic for people who were bound to the village as agriculturists, as they were more than forty years ago. Farmers and small artisans had very little to do with the remote central government, located far away and scarcely impinging upon their lives. Patronage/brokerage is the dependency relation between a person and the local big man, often the notary, parish priest or doctor: the patron/broker. It is characteristic of a period in which big government begins to impinge more noticeably upon the lives of villagers. People are concerned with placing their children in school, finding work for them or obtaining building permits. The local patron can provide ever fewer important services personally. But he can use his influence with people he knows well in the increasingly complex government that dispenses those prizes. There is still a personal relation with some moral overtones between the client and his patron/broker, but the relationship is no longer exclusive. The client has several specialized patrons, and is always on the lookout for new persons who can intervene on his behalf. In return he is prepared to bargain his vote and do other small services. But because the relation is unstable and increasingly pragmatic and transactional, it has little moral content. Organizational brokerage, the third type of dependency relation, is that between a person and his member of parliament, the secretary of his local party club, his shop steward, or his union secretary. Both organizational broker and client are members of the same group. They thus share a certain group loyalty. Both expect support from each other as members of the same group and their relationships have become formalized, in the sense that they may be expressed as rights and duties. The party or union secretary represents the interests of his client/constituent/fellow member to civil service decision makers. He does this not so much as a personal friend but as a representative. If he does not succeed he can mobilize further pressure on the civil servant through political party or union apparatus. He need not maintain relations with such civil servants to the same extent as the patron/broker. It will be obvious, however, that in a country as small as Malta the personal element in social relations will continue to remain strong. Organizational brokerage

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is becoming the most prominent type of relation with the authorities. It is a more egalitarian relation – a relation of incorporation in the same formal group.

Religious Changes As the party and bureaucratic bosses are slowly supplanting old-style patrons, so too are religious saints. Following the second Vatican Council (Vatican II) in the early 1960s there has been a concerted effort to bring about a more Christocentric religious orientation. The Church is placing increasing importance on the direct link between man and God. In the various parts of the liturgy where scriptures are read out loud, priests are urged to choose passages that emphasize salvation and the direct link with God. There has also been a conscious, and many Maltese parishioners say ruthless, effort to reduce the importance of saints: many saints have actually been eliminated on the grounds that they never existed; others have been downgraded. The cult of Mary is also being drastically curtailed. Linked with this there has been an increasing stress on community participation. People are urged to approach God directly with their fellow men, as part of a community of equals. The intermediary is being eliminated. This religious policy was designed to bring the Church into line with developments taking place in the world (cf. Documents 1966: 122). In Malta one of the first steps the Church took was to translate much of the liturgy from Latin into Maltese. Parishioners now understand the prayers of their priest and he is regarded as one of the community, a specialist who leads them. People now pray together as a community whereas before people individually sought contact with God. They did this as entrepreneurs in highly personal ways: through their own private intermediaries – their personal patron saints and the Virgin Mary. They planned their own programme of worship and sacrifices. Many in Maltese churches would conduct their own devotions during the service, softly reciting the rosary in a corner. Today people pray together. The importance of direct contact with God is emphasized. The changes in the rite of baptism clearly indicate the thrust of these reforms. Before the new liturgy was introduced in Malta in the early 1970s influential persons who could provide prestige and assistance were often chosen as godparents. This meant they were often outsiders who came from other parishes. The parish priest performed the baptism privately at the baptismal font behind the main altar, a small group of intimates attended the ceremony and the godmother held the baby, while its own mother remained at home. Today godparents are supposed to be chosen from the members of the parish community (though this is not yet taking place everywhere) and the mother now holds her baby while it is being baptized. The godparents are

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no longer responsible only to God for the child’s moral education: as representatives of the community, godparents are responsible to the community. More significantly, the baptismal ceremony now takes place collectively. In most parishes it is performed once a month. All babies born that month are baptized together during a public ceremony; rich and poor stand side by side. Parish priests have noted that in general this new ceremony has been very successful, although their richer parishioners object to its levelling influence. They still wish and arrange to have private ceremonies to which their exclusive friends may be invited. They don’t particularly like standing together with the poor. The Church has also consciously tried to bridge the gap between priest and parishioner. For example, the priest now meets a couple to be married at the door of the church and escorts them to the altar. Formerly he waited for them at the altar. This new action symbolizes the reduction in the distance between clergy and parishioners and demonstrates that they are members of the same community. These are some of the ways in which the church is consciously stressing its new Christocentric policy. It does this by promoting the sense of equality among the members of a worshipping community, and by downgrading the intermediaries. Communication with God today is less private, less entrepreneurial and more communal. Shifts in the teaching of the Church parallel in a striking way the changes taking place in society. Under pressure from bishops from all over the world, the Church has consciously tried to modernize itself.

Three Types of Religious Dependency The conceptualization of religious dependency relations can also be seen to have assumed three forms. The first is that of the early Church, where there was a fairly direct relation between man and God. Salvation was mediated through the intervention of Jesus Christ, who was part of the Trinity. The second form emerged in the Middle Ages and persisted until recently. Intermediaries became progressively more important. The reformed liturgical calendar following the sixteenth-century Council of Trent listed sixtyfive feasts of saints; by 1960 these had increased to 338 (Zarb 1972: 51). A man’s path to salvation still led through God, but was mediated by the saints, and increasingly by the Virgin Mary.2 She was formally set apart from, and placed well above, all other saints. This special status was confirmed by the doctrine of her immaculate conception in 1854. Finally, the third form reflects the new developments following Vatican II. Saints and other divine intermediaries have been eliminated or downgraded. The traditional mortal intermediary, the parish priest, has been incorporated into the same com-

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munity as his parishioners. Salvation is increasingly dependent more upon collective rather than on individual action. That is, while salvation still depends upon the individual’s state of grace with the efficacious assistance of the sacrament, attainment of this state is increasingly contingent upon people’s collective representations as a congregation. In this the parish priest acts as a first among equals. His monopolistic power to control the access of individuals to the sacraments has been weakened (though certainly not eliminated) by the growing collectivization of worship. Thus the attainment of a state of grace is less and less the result of dyadic transactions between supplicant and saintly or clerical broker. Increasingly it is the product of collective representations, of relations of incorporation. I suggest this reflects the lengthening interdependency chains of people in the secular world, their collectivization and the reduction of power differentials between them. The resemblance to the transformation of political and economic dependency relations is striking.

Conclusion In an earlier discussion I drew attention to the similarity between political patronage and the cult of saints and their influence on each other (1966b: 30–1). At the time I was unable to establish the nature of the relationship. It now seems quite clear to me that there is a causal relationship between belief and action. The theological conceptualization of dependency is being changed by the Catholic Church to keep it congruent with economic and political behaviour. In the deliberations of Vatican II this nexus is explicitly formulated. The Christocentric thrust of the new liturgy; the downgrading of the saints and the greater sharing of power within the Church are responses to the increasing range of communication and the reduction of power differentials in the wider society. While these secular trends are also present in Malta, they were not sufficiently evolved at the time of Vatican II in the early 1960s to have influenced all the changes the Church advocated. These were proposed and set in motion by clerical and lay representatives from societies in which such trends were already well established. Yet once introduced to Malta, liturgical changes have begun to influence behaviour. Although, as one wise monsignor observed: ‘the theological principles at the basis of the “new liturgy” have not yet seeped through down to the rank and file. One must wait some time, perhaps years, before this will come about.’ In this respect, the teaching of the Church is ahead of developments in Malta. It is consequently an agent of change. For example, though the rich now often stand alongside their poorer fellow parishioners during the new baptismal service, they don’t always enjoy doing so. Some still ask for and receive dispensation to hold the traditional, private ceremonies for guests

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from their class. Yet most people follow the new teaching.3 Religion is thus both a model of and a model for social action. The impetus to change belief systems comes from forces operating at the level at which people interact in the family, workplace and political arena. These forces eventually modify norms, values and cognitive maps. The relation between social and religious change is evident in the congruence between mortal and immortal patrons and brokers. Both types seem to thrive in periods when power was concentrated in the hands of a few, when economic and political uncertainty prevailed, when widespread poverty induced dependency. Such conditions existed in the fourteenth and nineteenth centuries following the Black Death and the French Revolution. Conditions have changed in most West European countries. There is a decrease in power differentials, there is relative political stability and there is relative prosperity. In Malta, as elsewhere in Europe, the saints appear to be marching out. Are they leaving for good? Only the future will tell. Perhaps, one day, should the conditions recur that in the past favoured them, saints will again be called upon to help men reach paradise. Until then, it seems, increasingly impersonal collective brokers will continue to gain influence.

Acknowledgements Earlier versions of this discussion were given at a Malta Rotary Club dinner, a meeting of the Netherlands European Anthropology Association, a seminar at the University of Stockholm, Department of Social Anthropology and to the conference on ‘Patronage’, hosted by the Centre for Mediterranean Studies of the American University Field Staff in Rome, November 1974. I greatly benefited from the constructive criticism of the participants at these meetings. Monsignor Professor Carmel Sant, Monsignor Professor Joseph Lupi and Herman Diederiks helpfully provided much needed and appreciated advice on matters religious and historical, and the Department of Economics of the Royal University of Malta provided important research facilities. The University of Amsterdam financed research in 1973 and 1974, on which much of this discussion is based.

Notes 1. While Foster (1963) draws attention to spiritual patronage, he views it merely as a pragmatic extension of earthly relations to include supernatural protectors. He does not explicitly conclude that the two systems of patronage reinforce each other. 2. Wolf (1969: 296) citing Christian (1966) noted that the growth of the cult of the Virgin Mary is associated with the representation of private and associational interests

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as against the growing power of the state. At the 1974 conference on ‘Patronage’ in Rome Professor John Hale contested this. He argued that the increase of the importance of saints, and particularly of the Virgin Mary, was primarily related to urbanization and to the plague. Urban growth provided new loci for cults. In the aftermath of the thirteenth-century Black Death, God the Father became an increasingly terrifying figure and His Son became associated with judgement and punishment. Saints, he noted, increasingly provided a means of mediating access to the domain controlled by these stern figures. But we should also note that the increase in the severity and remoteness of God also paralleled the erosion of local power bases in favour of a more centralized monarchy. The monarch played the rising urban elite off against the regional nobles. This consolidation of power at the national level gained momentum following the plague. As power was increasingly concentrated at the royal court, a demand developed for personal intermediaries who could represent the interests at court of those remote from it. State power continued to develop. The cult of saints and particularly of the Virgin Mary reached its peak in the nineteenth century, the era of the Immaculate Conception and of Lourdes. Again we must note the relation to political developments, for the last century was characterized by an intensive drive to consolidate the power of the secular state at the national level, in imitation of the Napoleonic state. Thus Wolf, Christian and Hale seem to complement each other rather than disagree. 3. It is probable that the Church’s great authority in Malta has prevented organized resistance to major Vatican II reforms such as have developed, for example, in the Netherlands where Latin masses have been reintroduced in some parishes. On the other hand, the introduction of the new liturgy to Malta has not always been painless. Some parishioners were highly indignant that their patron saints had disappeared from the new calendar. In Gozo the important parish of St. George has not celebrated its annual feast since 1968 out of pique because the bishop, anxious to solemnize the Easter worship in accordance with the new liturgy, prohibited the parish’s traditional rowdy Good Friday procession. The boycott was accompanied by much abuse of the bishop.

CHAPTER 11

RITUAL AND TOURISM: CULTURE BY THE POUND?*

Between May and October every town and village celebrates the feast day or festa of its patron saint . . . no holidaymaker to Malta should leave the Island without experiencing one. (1992 NTO brochure) Commoditisation of culture in effect robs people of the very meanings by which they organise their lives. (Greenwood 1989: 179)

Culture by the Pound There has been an apparent growth in the scale of public rituals. One set of explanations that keeps cropping up attributes this expansion to the increase of leisure time, commercialization and tourism (Werdmolder 1979; Manning 1983; Weber-Kellerman 1985). This chapter explores to what extent the commercialization of culture to attract tourists is taking place, and, if so, what impact it has had on parish celebrations in Malta. The argument about the influence of commercialization runs roughly like this: people in tourist destinations commoditize their culture for gain; celebrations are increased to maximize profit; this commoditization has a detrimental effect on the celebrations. Greenwood (1989), who coined the expression ‘culture by the pound’, described the effects of the commoditization of a public ritual, the Alarde, in the Basque community of Fuenterrabia. The Spanish tourism ministry and private tourist entrepreneurs promoted Originally published as ‘Ritual, Tourism and Cultural Commoditization. Culture by the Pound?’ in T. Selwyn (ed.), The Tourist Image: Myths and Myth Making in Tourism. London/New York: John Wiley & Sons (1996), pp. 105–120. Reprinted by permission of Wiley Blackwell.

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this colourful event to attract tourists to the town. The municipal government then decided that the Alarde should be performed twice on the same day to enable more onlookers to see it. From being a performance for the participants, it was transformed into a public show for outsiders. Greenwood argues that this had disastrous consequences: ‘by making it part of the tourism package, it is turned into an explicit and paid performance and no longer can be believed in the way it was before. Thus commoditization of culture in effect robs people of the very meanings by which they organise their lives’ (ibid.: 179). Maltese intellectuals have also voiced the view that certain celebrations have been commercialized and that this has degraded traditional culture. Sociologist Mario Vassallo argues that the persistence of the Maltese festa is due to the: [O]pposition by conservative elites . . . and the demand to exploit the past as a commodity . . . to lure tourists, combined to preserve the traditional festa. But even this festivity, and such other previously purely religious activities as the Good Friday processions . . . became regarded less as coherent elements in everyday activity, less as essential features of the community’s symbolic universe, and more as isolated, saleable artefacts of culture, to be produced and performed ‘to order’ for outsiders for whom they bore no intrinsic meaning but only qualities of spectacle . . . What was once sacred, jealously guarded and good-in-itself, had become another item to be put into the balance of payments as a credit-earning product. (Vassallo 1979: 207; also see 1981)

University librarian Paul Xuereb endorses this interpretation in his review of Vassallo’s book for the influential Sunday Times (of Malta): The mass servant ethos engendered by tourism has artificially prolonged the life of much of our religious pageantry but it has also secularised it by transforming it into something picturesque to be exploited and sold. Most notably, our Good Friday processions have become gaudier, more vulgarly elaborate, mainly a spectacle for the amused or patronising tourist and largely divorced from the solemnities that originally gave them birth. (Xuereb 1979)

In short, they regard the persistence, if not the increase, of celebrations as a consequence of the commercialization of culture for touristic purposes and this commoditization is regarded as fundamentally destructive of the meanings by which people organize their lives. This pessimism provides the central focus of this discussion. Is it warranted?

Malta and Tourism In 1976 Malta Government Tourist Board brochures stressed sun, sea and monuments. The 1,400-word English brochure was aimed at the middle of

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the road mass tourist. It had this to say about the country’s history: ‘Malta’s history is pre-historic history, is ancient history, is modern history. But most of all, Malta’s history is a history of foreign rulers and invaders. They came from just about everywhere in Western Europe and Northern Africa.’ Its mention of parish celebrations was equally lightweight: ‘. . . Or partying. (In Malta a party is called a Festa. And they happen all year round.) Singing, laughing, dancing in the streets. Fireworks that light the night like day. Which next thing you know it is.’ Note that the National Tourist Organization’s priorities began to change in the 1980s. Malta’s image as a seaside resort was by then well established (some would say too well, for it has been called ‘Blackpool in the sun’). The government sought a different type of tourist, a ‘quality tourist’, and one who would also come in the off-peak season. The 1992 NTO brochure targeted the tourist interested in more than swimming and nightlife. Its 4,000-word text provides a sound overview of the island’s geography, history, people and culture. It sets out in some detail the advantages of a winter visit. Beaches, swimming and nightclubs are not mentioned and instead of sun, monuments and pleasure, the NTO promotes culture and learning: ‘The intelligent visitor is never satisfied with just skimming the surface of his holiday destination. His appetite for learning urges him to delve deeper into the origins and history of the country and people he is visiting.’ Parish celebrations in particular were seriously discussed: ‘The festa is the most important event in each village’s annual calendar and the villagers eagerly look forward to this very special day . . . There is a three-day build-up to the feast and the atmosphere throughout is one of gaiety arid merriment . . . no holidaymaker to Malta should leave the Island without experiencing one.’ It is clear from the above that parish celebrations were commoditized. What effect has this had on these traditional festivities? Developments in Naxxar, a village with which I have been in contact since 1961, may help answer this question.

Naxxar Naxxar is an inland village. It has grown from a population of approximately 5,000 in 1960 to its present [1992] population of just under 8,000. The village is focused on the enormous parish church and the square in front of it, from which the principal streets radiate, and on which, or within a few minutes’ walk, are located the principle associations, band clubs and the offices of the police, political parties, parish priest, post office and health centre. The old core of the village consists of several neighbourhoods, each of which is centred on a chapel. One of these, the small Chapel of St. John, located at

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the western edge of the village, forms the focal point of the poorest neighbourhood. This is connected to the main parish square by St. Lucy Street, one of the oldest and longest streets in the village. Much of the parish’s ritual activity takes place along this street. A large belt of new housing, constructed bit by bit during the 1970s and 1980s, surrounds the old core. Much of it has been built by and for the many outsiders who have moved into the village. Many Naxxarin have also built modern houses there and moved out of the core. Many of the vacated traditional houses in the St. John and St. Lucy neighbourhoods have been acquired by foreigners who have retired to Malta or have plans to do so. These stone ‘houses of character’, with their arches, wooden beams and large interior courtyards, are now also being bought by well-off young Maltese couples from urban middle-class areas. They then convert them, often at great expense, to their conception of a ‘traditional’ rural house. They chip off the stucco, plaster and paint applied by previous generations, often adorning the bared walls with old farming implements and other icons of a rural past which neither they nor their parents experienced, and which, less than two decades ago, they abhorred. They also install modern plumbing and kitchens. Thus Naxxar’s core is slowly being abandoned by natives and reoccupied and gentrified by outsiders.

Celebrations Naxxar, like other Maltese villages, celebrates an annual cycle of religious festivities. There are two ceremonial high points: the annual festa and Holy Week. The festa of the parish patron saint, the Nativity of Our Lady (Marija Bambina), celebrated on 8 September, involves two weeks of religious preparation, band marches and firework displays. These build up to a three-day climax. Three days before the feast, on the eve-of-the-eve, (mostly) unmarried village young men and (increasingly) some of the wilder girls stage a boisterous evening parade to mark the end of the triduum, the three-day period of prayer that precedes the feast. On the eve of the feast the decorated village and its church are on show. Band marches, concerts and firework displays entertain the crowd made up of residents, visitors from all over the island and tourists. The following day the principal feast is celebrated with a solemn high mass in the morning and, at roughly the same time, another wild parade of village youths – the morning march. That evening the village and church are again on show, and a religious procession and bands accompany the statue of the patron, Marija Bambina, through the village. Hired bands also entertain the villagers, visitors and tourists again with more parades and music. At about 10:30p.m. there is a final firework salute to the patron, and the statue then returns to the church for another year.

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Figure 11.1 The statue of Christ carrying his cross leaves the Naxxar church during the Good Friday procession (1998).

The other major series of celebrations takes place during Holy Week. These include devotional exercises, rituals and pageants held in the parish church. The high points are the devotional processions commemorating Our Lady of Sorrows, Palm Sunday, Good Friday and the Resurrection on Easter Sunday. As can be seen in Figure 11.1, scores of villagers take part in these rituals as do many visitors, for not all parishes celebrate such elaborate Holy Week rituals as Naxxar. Besides these major events, a number of lesser rituals are celebrated publicly. These include the festi of the neighbourhood chapels, Christmas and the Eucharistic celebrations in June of Our Lady of Doctrine, Corpus Christi and the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

Inside, Outside, Back and Front The Maltese make an interesting linguistic distinction between the devotional rituals of a feast that take place inside the church – the festa ta’gewwa or ‘internal feast’ – and the often exuberant celebrations that take place, frequently at the same time, outside the church – the festa ta’barra, or ‘external feast’. The former is organized by the clergy and conforms fairly strictly to the prescribed liturgy; the latter is generally organized by one of the parish’s priests with committees made up of band club members and volunteers who

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arrange for street decorations, music, fireworks and much of the fundraising. The internal feast is characterized by ritual and formal rules and maintains its traditional aspects; the external feast is more playful and open to improvisation and thus more prone to change. There is another internal–external distinction. This is the differentiation between ‘insider’ and ‘outsider’ events, between celebrations that are attended primarily by Naxxarin and those that are open to outsiders – visitors from other villages and foreign tourists. Outsiders generally only attend the evening events of the eve and day of the festa and the Good Friday procession. All other events are normally only celebrated by Naxxarin. These ‘insider’ events include all the ceremonies of the festa ta’gewwa, the processions of Our Lady of Sorrows, Palm Sunday, the Resurrection on Easter Sunday, such festa ta’barra events as the band marches during the two weeks preceding the festa and the wild parades on the eve-of-the-eve and the morning of the festa. What I have called ‘inside and outside spheres’, to a certain extent parallel what MacCannell, following Goffman, has called ‘back’ and ‘front’ regions: ‘The front is the meeting place of hosts and guests or customers and service persons, and the back is the place where members of the home team retire between performances to relax and to prepare’ (MacCannell 1976: 92). MacCannell’s back regions are normally closed to outsiders, and for him their mere existence implies their possible violation. His back region is somehow more ‘intimate and real’, as against the front region’s ‘show’, and consequently more ‘truthful’, thus more authentic (ibid.: 94–9). The differences between MacCannell’s backstage events and the parish backstage activities that I have called insider events are that the latter are also performances and they are not closed to outsiders, whether Maltese or foreign.1 There is no overt feeling – at least at present – that outside spectators violate the insider events noted above.2 Since these celebrations are also staged, spectators are generally much appreciated. But outsiders just do not come. Except for the Good Friday procession, Maltese outsiders are generally uninterested in Naxxar ‘insider’ events and tourists, who might well be interested if they knew about them, are simply not told about them by Maltese cultural commoditizers and guides. They assume tourists share their own disinterest in village back regions.

Decline In the thirty years that I have been in touch with Naxxar, a period which coincides with the development of tourism in Malta, these public celebrations have undergone a number of changes. Some celebrations have declined or disappeared, while others have greatly increased. Since 1961 several processions have disappeared completely. Except for Holy Week events and the

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celebration of parish and chapel patron saints, all other processions have decreased considerably. For example, the number of participants and observers of the processions of Our Lady of Doctrine, Corpus Christi and the Sacred Heart of Jesus are down by a half to two-thirds compared to twenty-five years ago (Boissevain 1991b). The pattern of the decline noted in Naxxar is general in villages throughout Malta. The feasts that have declined in importance are, as in Naxxar, the celebrations of secondary saints and the Eucharist. These are festivities that are not identified with any particular parish and are celebrated simultaneously throughout Malta. Several reasons were offered to account for their decline. Contrasting Eucharistic celebrations with those of Holy Week, for example, people said that the former were much more difficult to identify with. They were too abstract – it was difficult to conceptualize them. Eucharistic celebrations were no longer able to hold the attention of parishioners as once they had when there were few other entertainments, and transportation out of the village was difficult. Since many feasts are celebrated at weekends, the Saturdays and Sundays from June through August have become ever more hectic as festa organizers compete for the same public. Patronal feasts, with their band marches and firework displays, draw crowds from all over the island, upstaging less spectacular devotional rituals such as the Naxxar Corpus procession. There is another contributing factor to the decline in popularity of the feasts of secondary saints. In the past, religious confraternities organized the celebrations of the saints – for example, the procession for the feast of St. Joseph, which is no longer held, used to be partly organized by the confraternity of St. Joseph, that of Our Lady of the Rosary by the confraternity of the Holy Rosary and that of Corpus Christi by the confraternity of the Blessed Sacrament – but during the past twenty-five years these religious brotherhoods for laymen have all but died out. Members who are too old to take part in processions or who die are not replaced as young men find the confraternities dull and old-fashioned. Some parish priests, faced with the total absence of confraternity members willing or able to participate, have had to resort to hiring men from other parishes in order to preserve the traditional form of the processions. The archpriest of Naxxar, for example, was obliged to hire confraternity members from other villages to take part in the liturgical procession of the annual festa; Naxxarin preferred to join the crowd and enjoy the festa. Although Naxxar volunteers still carried the statue of Marija Bambina in 1992, their numbers are dwindling year by year and Parish priests no longer have the power to oblige persons to take part in these processions. In view of MacCannell’s (1976) discussion on staged authenticity for tourists, it should be noted that outsiders are hired to ensure that the procession retains its traditional form and conforms to liturgical norms. This staging is done not for the benefit of tourists searching for authenticity, as MacCannell

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suggests, but to meet the expectations of the Naxxarin themselves and, especially, to keep the parish from losing face before the hordes of critical visitors from other villages. In short, declining interest, competition from other events and a growing manpower shortage caused by the demise of the confraternities are responsible for the decline of many of the traditional rituals.

Increase Parallel with this decline, two sets of rituals have in fact grown in popularity: those celebrating Holy Week and those celebrating community patron saints. Since 1961 the Good Friday procession grew from 420 participants to around 550 by 1990s. The increase included persons who participate wearing biblical costumes, a second band to play funeral music and more penitents dragging heavy chains tied to their ankles. The procession accompanying the statue of the Risen Christ on Easter morning grew from a ragged troop of seventeen youths and a few musicians in 1961 to a procession of 150 costumed participants accompanied by a brass band by 1991. Naxxarin now also perform a theatrical pageant of the Passion in the parish church on Holy Wednesday. The annual festa of the Nativity of Our Lady has also increased in scale since 1960. By 1992 it had acquired a noisy demonstrative morning march, the traditional triumphant eve-of-the-eve demonstration down St. Lucy Street had grown and it now ends with a spectacular firework display. The number of band marches during the festa increased from eight to twelve. In 1986 the festa committee, chaired by the parish priest, decided to move the traditional rowdy eve-of-the-eve parade from St. Lucy Street to the wider 21 September Avenue. The reason given was that the village’s Peace Band refused to accompany the parade because it had become ‘too wild’ and it felt threatened in the narrow confines of St. Lucy Street. The residents of St. Lucy Street were furious. A group of men and youths from the St. Lucy Street area resolved to defy the local authorities and do something about it. They raised funds, hired a band from Kirkop and jubilantly staged their traditional parade. Their defiance of the local establishment gained momentum, and by 1988 they had founded a second village band club and located it in St. Lucy Street.3 This episode was, in part, a rebellion against Naxxar’s establishment by St. Lucy Street neighbours and village youths who were increasingly being marginalized by wealthier Naxxarin who move to the outskirts, and by affluent outsiders gentrifying their neighbourhood. In short, the last quarter of the century has seen a slight increase in participants, events and the general theatricality of many of the religious events celebrated in Naxxar. There has been a slight decrease in organized devotional aspects of public religious rituals but a considerable increase in popular festive manifestations such as costumes, theatre, bands, fireworks and boisterous

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parades. The celebrations that have grown, except for the Good Friday processions, are mainly insider events that are celebrated chiefly by Naxxarin. As noted, visitors from other villages and foreign tourists are absent during the rowdy parades. ‘Ritual’ seems to be giving way to ‘play’; organized devotional processions are giving way to costumed events, band marches and spontaneous happenings. What is behind these developments? Have Naxxarin retained parish pageantry and expanded it in response to pressure from ‘conservative elites’ or from a desire to earn money from tourists? Conservative elites have certainly not promoted the expansion of festa exuberance – quite the contrary. Naxxar’s conservative elite has tried its best to reduce festa effervescence – those intent on protecting traditions and expanding the celebrations were working-class youths and men from the St. Lucy Street neighbourhood. Class-based tension between the local establishment and opposition interests lies at the root of most factional conflict and the factions present in so many Maltese villages (Boissevain 1965, 1978, 1988b). The growth of the festa exuberance has not taken place because Naxxarin are selling their festa to tourists. In fact the elements of the festa that have expanded – notably the wild parades – take place when tourists are not present. As already noted, these are insider events.

Context Besides the ongoing interparish rivalry and intravillage competition between band clubs, another factor behind the growth of celebrations is a desire to combat the social distance created between erstwhile neighbours by the rapid changes that have occurred since independence. Interdependence of, and thus contact between, neighbours has been reduced by developments related to Malta’s rising prosperity. Expanding work opportunities in industry and tourism have meant that most men and unmarried women work outside their place of residence. Villages have become dormitory communities. Most families now own a car (in 1992 there was one vehicle for every two inhabitants) and can leave the village when they wish and return long after 10p.m., when the bus service stops for the day. Comfortable government welfare and health benefits have sharply reduced or eliminated dependence on family and neighbours for help. Driven by runaway consumerism to take on a second (often untaxed) job, particularly in the booming construction tourist industries, many are also too busy and/or tired to socialize with neighbours. So it seems that affluence has created independence but has reduced interdependence, and thus interaction between neighbours. Increased wealth has also brought about a housing boom that together with television monopolizes free time and keeps people often more closely tied to their houses. As old neighbourhoods are broken up, new neighbours

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stare suspiciously at each other. Because of these developments, Naxxarin no longer spend as much time socializing in the streets, buses, shops, clubs and bars as they did in the early sixties. In short, there has been a marked reduction in the interaction between neighbours. The increase in the celebrations of parish and neighbourhood patron saints and Holy Week is a comment on and a reaction to the increasing isolation of Naxxarin from each other. It is a manifestation of a desire to do something together. People who have grown up together are now separated by prosperity and try to recapture, for a few moments, the feeling of belonging, or togetherness, of being part of a community. They achieve this by celebrating together. Naxxarin are expanding their celebrations for themselves, not for tourists.

Tourism Tourism does affect these popular celebrations but its role is neither as crude nor as spectacular as the critics of cultural commoditization have suggested. The influence of tourism has been complex. Those who supervise and participate in spectacles such as Holy Week events do not seek to make a profit for themselves. Naxxarin earn little or nothing from their Good Friday pageant; just occasionally the Peace Band Club makes a few pounds renting chairs to tourists. Moreover, on Good Friday all food and wine shops are closed. In fact, it costs a great deal of money to stage such processions and the clergy and others organizing the procession collect this money laboriously. It is also incorrect to suggest that all tourists are ‘amused’ or ‘patronizing’. Most are fascinated by the solemn pageantry, and many are moved by the devotion displayed by those who take part. Some, of course, are indeed patronizing if not amused. Several years ago I stood behind a Dutch couple watching the Naxxar Good Friday procession emerge from the church. The man, who had been avidly videoing the event, leaned over to his partner and exclaimed, in Dutch, ‘Jesus! What a heathen business.’ He was obviously a Protestant of the old school. Certainly, the presence of many tourists during the final two evenings of annual festa is good for street vendors and barmen. But, except for the increase and noise of fireworks and denser crowds, the scale of celebration during this phase of the festa has not really grown. Tourism is indirectly related to the revitalization of some Maltese celebrations. Rather than merely watch, tourists can actually participate in much the same way as the Maltese do: by mingling with the crowds and, with them, listening to music and watching fireworks as the procession slowly winds its way through the decorated streets. Many tourists come from anonymous urban areas in northern Europe, whereas in Malta they become welcome participants in traditional community celebrations. This enables them to share a sense of togetherness, to experience a feeling of solidarity and oneness

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that transcends their identity as foreigner or outsider (roles that most tourists seek to shed). They momentarily become part of a celebrating community. For many this is a unique experience and, in part, it accounts for the growing popularity of Malta’s parish celebrations among tourists. Tourists, through their interest in what are basically traditional working-class village festivities, have helped to make them more acceptable to the urbanized middle-class elite who previously denigrated many parochial pageants. As was usual in colonies, this class identified with the culture of its foreign masters. Recitals by British Council musicians and Shakespeare’s plays were legitimate cultural events; Good Friday village processions and festi were definitely not. Yet these events formed part of the indigenous cultural legacy. This heritage has become important to a new nation searching for its cultural identity after imitating much of the culture of its foreign masters for more than 450 years. Thus religious pageantry is beginning to play a new role. It is being accepted by many young intellectuals and, somewhat more grudgingly, by some members of the Anglicized urban middle classes as an important cultural resource. Government interest in village festa and Holy Week celebrations as a tourism resource gave them new meaning. Along with sun, sea, prehistoric temples and monuments built by the Knights of Malta, parish rituals are now recognized as valuable assets that attract tourists. This, in turn, has provided the organizers with a new sense of purpose, stimulating them to expand the celebrations, especially the fireworks. Naxxarin, like the inhabitants of other villages, want a large public to attend their celebrations.

Play and Communitas We are still left with the paradox of why most growth has taken place in the ludic, improvised rowdy celebrations that are not attended by, though not closed to, tourists, whether Maltese or foreign. The explanation lies in two aspects intrinsic to every celebration: ritual and play. These two modes correspond crudely to the distinction the Maltese themselves make between the ritual ‘internal’ feast, the festa ta’gewwa celebrations that the clergy organize according to a rigid scenario, and the ‘external’ feast, the popular festa ta’barra that laymen organize outside the church. The ritual mode is associated with the elite establishment that ritualizes and so reinforces its superordinate position. Ritual confirms the social order and structure. The ritual mode depends on traditional authority, it reflects and projects what should and ought to be. In contrast, the play mode of a celebration is associated with those in socially subordinate positions. It often negates, reverses, challenges and ridicules hierarchy and rules (Turner 1982: 28; Manning 1983: 7). In Naxxar, ceremonies that are characterized more by ritual than by play, such as the Eucharistic celebrations, have declined. The liturgical

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ritual dimensions of Good Friday and the various patronal celebrations have remained constant or increased slightly during the same period. But their play dimensions – the theatre, costumes, band marches, fireworks and wild spontaneous demonstrations – have increased markedly. The increase in the play mode may be seen as a comment on the nature of ordinary life (Handelman 1977: 186). Elements of the ‘nature of ordinary life’ on which this increase appears to comment include the increase in freedom that has followed independence and the gradual decrease in the power of the Church in Malta, the erosion of interdependence as a consequence of industrialization and the expanding activities of the welfare state, as well as the general increase in anonymity and individualism due to industrialization combined with the influx of outsiders (Boissevain 1991b). The increase in play is more than just a comment on the social order. Play also has instrumental attributes (Handelman 1987: 363). The play mode is instrumental in two ways: it promotes both a sense of identity and a sense of community. Festive celebrations promote: individual identity by providing scope for people to dress up, to be on stage, to take part as individuals in a public event; neighbourhood identity by celebrating patron saints and so creating a Durkheimian sense of segmentary solidarity around local symbols; village or parish identity via the elaboration of Good Friday and festa activities performed for outsiders; and national identity by consciously celebrating aspects of Malta’s public ceremonial cultural heritage in front of foreign outsiders. Playful celebrations in which, quite literally, participants let their hair down, put on special clothes, playfully dance and kick up their heels or watch their neighbours doing so promote a sense of communal solidarity. Much of the ordinary structure of daily hierarchy disappears as neighbours meet each other in the street or square and invite each other to a club and/or home for a drink. The playfulness creates, for a few hours each year, a sense of what Turner has called existential or spontaneous communitas, ‘the direct, immediate, and total confrontation of human identities which tends to make those experiencing it think of mankind as a homogeneous, unstructured and free community’ (Turner 1974: 169). Since, as I have argued above, there is a growing sense of isolation, of estrangement due to rapid industrial and social development, it is not surprising that especially the playful dimensions of the celebrations have grown.

Commoditization Reconsidered The celebrations of the Maltese have not increased because they sell their ‘culture by the pound’. The growth of Holy Week and festa celebrations represents a conscious attempt by Maltese villagers to renegotiate their social

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boundaries. These celebrations have become less religious, less concerned with the transcendental and more instrumental (Vassallo 1981: 57–8). While Malta is indeed now selling its colourful rituals to tourists, this commoditization is not destroying them. On the contrary, it has imbued them with new meaning. On the other hand, critics of ritual commoditization, like Greenwood, Vassallo and Xuereb, are correct in pointing out that these celebrations have in part become separated from ‘the solemnities that originally gave them birth’. The celebrations now perform new instrumental tasks – in addition to the traditional religious and entertainment tasks. First of all, parish celebrations now serve to define the boundary between self – we Naxxarin – and the new ‘others’, the outsiders who have moved into the village and the foreign tourists. Second, they are used to recapture the sense of community for people who have less and less contact with each other as neighbours or for those who have moved elsewhere but once formed part of a closely knit neighbourhood. Thirdly, they serve as vehicles for expressing Maltese culture to visitors from abroad. Finally, they are occasions that the modernized urban (mostly young and educated) elite uses in order to explore and be part of their cultural heritage. Finally, they provide neutral occasions for neighbours, who are often deeply divided by politics, to meet and socialize. In spite of the overt commoditization of some religious pageantry, the religious rituals of which these form a part are very much alive. Organizers actively encourage commoditization of outdoor celebrations; for example, tourists increase the sought-after audience for the main events on the eve and the day of the festa and on Good Friday. The number of tourist buses parked at the edge of a celebrating parish, like the quantity and quality of the fireworks, has become a marker in the competition between parishes and celebrating village festa factions. To sum up, the commoditization of culture to attract tourists does not necessarily have the destructive effect postulated by Greenwood. The observation is not new (see McKean 1989; Stott 1979), nor is it surprising. But it is worth restating in view of the increasing interest in, and promotion of, cultural tourism (Urry 1990). This discussion should not be interpreted as a signal to stop guarding against the incursion of tourists. Over the past thirty years, Maltese authorities have extended the definition of culture beyond the domain of archaeologists, art historians and folklorists to include that of anthropologists: ‘the way of life of a people’ (Hatch 1985: 178). This is modifying the tourist industry’s past lack of interest in Malta’s back regions. Some tourist agencies have recently organized tours to ‘Malta’s forgotten villages’. In one village, Qormi (a town of 19,000), tourists are taken to visit a bakery and to a band club bar, where they are served cheesecakes (pastizzi) and drink tea out of glasses, like the locals do. Both bakery and band clubs welcome tourists wandering about

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on their own but because tourists are unaware of this, such areas can be marketed as back regions and so evoke a frisson of ‘violation’, of penetration into an authentic, intimate area. Cultural tourists, increasingly bold, are also setting out on their own to look at what has been sold to them: the way of life of the Maltese. In September 1993 friends celebrating the festa of St. Leonard in Kirkop discovered two Germans peering about inside their house. The curious couple, in the village with a festa tour, had simply walked through the half-opened glass inner door into their brightly lit front room. Our friends politely showed them out. They then closed the heavy wooden outer door that is always left open during the festa so that the festive decorations can be seen from the street. Other anthropologists have reported the prowling about of tourists in private domestic back regions in Sardinia, Austria, the Lofoten Islands (Odermatt 1991; Droog 1991; Puijk 1996). Such episodes will multiply as cultural tourism is marketed to the masses. ‘That is the perversity. The commoditization of culture does not require the consent of the participants’ (Greenwood 1989: 180).

Acknowledgments I presented the first draft of this discussion at the conference of the Group for the Anthropology in Policy and Practice (GAPP) at the Roehampton College organized by Tom Selwyn in April 1988. I would like to thank the conference participants as well as Inga Boissevain, Vicki Ann Cremona, Tony Ellul, Godwin and Maryanne Ellul, Maria Farrugia and Anna Zammit for their helpful suggestions.

Notes 1. There is one exception: the procession of Our Lady of Sorrows virtually has no audience, as villagers either take part in it or conceal themselves out of a sense of shame for not joining it. 2. But this feeling may change when villages are actually confronted with masses of tourists during insider events. On Gozo, Malta’s sister island, the villagers of Nadur reacted to the growing number of expensively costumed Maltese tourists whose presence was destroying the essence of their central carnival activity: they were no longer able to recognize masked fellow villagers during the ludic costumed parade. They now only don their masks on Shrove Tuesday, after the weekend visitors have taken the ferry back to Malta. Though Nadur villagers were initially pleased with the Maltese attention, they came to realize that outsiders spoiled the intimacy of their celebration. Hence they redefined the boundaries of their carnival. Tuesday has now become a ‘back region’ celebration protected by the fact that visitors from Malta by then have

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returned home and thus are sure not to come (personal communication from Vicki Ann Cremona). It is evident that front and back regions are fluid concepts that can change over time. 3. Three years previously a group in the neighbouring town of Mosta, Naxxar’s arch rival, intent on expanding the wild demonstrative parades of their festa had established a second band club against the wishes of their parish priest.

CHAPTER 12

REVITALIZING EUROPEAN RITUALS*

Contrary to received wisdom, public celebrations in Europe are expanding. This development is neatly, if hyperbolically, summed up by Frank Manning: ‘Throughout both the industrialized and developing nations, new celebrations are being created and older ones revived on a scale that is surely unmatched in human history’ (1983: 4). Yet countless scholars had solemnly foretold that increasing secularization, industrialization, rationalization of production, mobility, mass media, alternative sources of amusement, and the liturgical reforms of the Second Vatican Council (Vatican II) would take their toll on public rituals.1 Equally surprising is that few of those working in the field of public ritual seem to have been aware that after declining for two decades, public celebrations in Europe (and North America) have been increasing since, roughly speaking, the early 1970s.2 Curiously, most of those who noted the revitalization did not view it as a problem requiring exploration (cf. the contributors to Bianco and Del Ninno 1981 and to Manning 1983). Those who did attempt to account for these developments, often as an afterthought, tended to present one-dimensional explanations of their specific cases.3 That they did so is not surprising, since they believed that they were dealing with unique events and not developments that were part of a more general trend. Even Manning barely explores the trend in his perceptive introduction to the collection he edited (1983). He merely suggests that the florescence is somehow related to modernity and, in particular, to the growth of leisure and consumption in contemporary societies. Echoing MacCannell (1976), he views such celebrations as ‘cultural productions’ that are emblematic of the modern world (ibid.: 5–6). Most surprising, however, given his lifelong interest in ritual manifestations in widely differing societies, is Victor Turner’s failure to note this Originally published as ‘Introduction’, in J. Boissevain (ed.), Revitalizing European Rituals. London: Routledge (1992), pp. 1–19. Permission to reprint by Taylor and Francis Books (UK).

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trend. In his postlude to Manning’s 1983 collection he asks, ‘But why, I repeat, have anthropologists, folklorists . . . begun of late to flock to the field of ludic studies?’ (Turner 1983: 188). His answer seems to be that, finally, we have seen the light: ‘It is gradually being brought home to us that we have been in error, in “bracketing off” such celebrations as “mystification”, “false consciousness”, “lower stages of cultural evolution”, “ideological confusion”, and similar pejorative evaluations based on consciousness of one’s own cognitive superiority’ (ibid.: 190–91). It does not seem to have occurred to him that this new scholarly interest might have been influenced by the actual increase of ludic celebrations in the societies in which the observers live and work. This general lack of interest in ritual change in itself requires explanation, but this is scarcely the place for it. It is possibly yet another manifestation of the influence that the structural-functional concern for homeostatic order still exerts on anthropology and on students of ritual in particular. At this stage we need more case studies that directly address the problem of the widespread revitalization of community celebrations. This is precisely the problem that this chapter addresses. Specifically it seeks to determine what has changed in the field of public celebrations in the societies that have been studied and why these changes have occurred.

Case Studies The nine cases discussed below are fully presented in Boissevain (1992a). They provide a contrast to Hobsbawm and Ranger’s innovative The Invention of Tradition (1983), which focuses on invented traditions and rituals in the past and at the national level. The cases in this collection differ in a number of ways. First, except for the study of Polish May Day, they deal with local rather than national celebrations. Second, although often using history, they deal with contemporary celebrations. Third, they pay more attention to the minutiae of the processes and events of ritual change. Fourth, they are not limited to invented rituals. Finally, most of them make a greater effort to place the events in a wider social context in order to provide an understanding of the changes. They attempt to answer ‘why’ questions as well as ‘what’ questions. The present volume thus complements and builds on the seminal work of the contributors to Hobsbawm and Ranger (ibid.). Our cases criss-cross Europe. Susan Wright’s study begins (1992) and provides an unusual perspective. It focuses on the depressed West Moorside district in northeastern England. In response to requests from local activists, she and a colleague helped to re-create community spirit and stimulate development initiatives by piecing together local history and symbols in a celebratory framework. Their efforts were only partly successful. Their

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invented Demonstration Day revival continued to be celebrated, but the critical history they injected to stimulate reflection on the district’s development problems was largely eliminated – not surprisingly, as many local residents, and politicians in particular, were more interested in having a good time together than in self-improvement. Moreover, they found authentic history too politically divisive to be acceptable. Zdzislaw Mach’s account (1992) of the transformation of Polish May Day celebrations also shows the extent to which those in power can manipulate public ritual for political ends. It demonstrates how public rituals can become arenas in which political rivals duel. Mach suggests that state rituals in times of peace become routinized and that people participate as a form of recreation, thereby unconsciously legitimizing the regime without being aware of the ideological significance of their behaviour. This is what occurred in the 1970s. But following the imposition of martial law in 1981, the state May Day celebration became deroutinized. People once more became aware of the political content of the symbols. Participation and abstention became conscious political acts. The Catholic Church promoted its own counter ritual, the feast of St. Joseph the Worker, providing those opposed to the regime with an opportunity to express their opposition publicly, ritually, legitimately, and, above all, actively. Political developments in Poland following 1989 swept away the political raison d’être of both rituals, and both have declined. This decline emphasizes clearly the extent to which ‘traditional’ rituals are social events that are man made and time bound and not necessarily things in themselves that are repeated ‘in a more or less invariant sequence’ (Rappaport 1979: 175). Francisco Cruces and Angel Diaz de Rada (1992) describe ritual developments in the Jerte Valley of Extremadura. They note that while certain minor religious festivities have disappeared, others, after declining during the heavy emigration of the late 1950s and 1960s, have been revitalized. The renewed festive impulse takes three forms. First, there is increased interest in exuberant patronal feasts celebrated in the summer to coincide with the holiday return of emigrants. Second, there is renewed interest in spring and winter feasts that are closely associated with tradition and local identity and are increasingly organized by younger, educated men. Finally, there are new festivals that commercially promote local products and attract outsiders. The patronal feasts, while traditional, are innovative and cater to changing popular interests. The winter festivals renew customs that declined when emigration and the desire to modernize eroded interest in maintaining traditional rituals. The new festivals are invented celebrations that cater to regional and sectional interests. Three modes of renewed festive interest are thus innovation, retraditionalization and invention. Since tourists, television reporters and commercial interests have become part of the constituency of the various festivals, the celebrants now consciously negotiate how they

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are to be viewed. With the appearance of multiple others, the festivals have assumed a more instrumental dimension. In Andalusia, as Henk Driessen (1992) shows, there has been a resurgence of interest in Holy Week celebrations and patronal festivals, particularly since the slowing down of emigration. The regionalist movement that followed the end of the Franco years views this religious pageantry as an important cultural resource and political groups subsidize and participate in it. Amidst this ritual renewal, there is one apparently declining ritual – that of the dawn bell-ringers. It, too, is part of the regional cultural heritage. Its decline is linked to the transformation of the agrarian regime, for which it is no longer functional. Those active in preserving the custom are older, middle-class male traditionalists who see themselves as custodians of the old ways. As Driessen notes, ‘by performing the rites of dawn, these men are trying to evoke a “traditional” order that is rapidly fading away’. There is some evidence that their efforts are being supported by younger men, who are reshaping the custom to suit new conditions. They ring the bells on ceremonial occasions, late at night before they go to bed. Perhaps this too will become a ritual that survives through traditionalization and the acquisition of new meaning. Mary Crain also examines an Andalusian ritual: the great pilgrimage of the Virgin of the Dew (1992). This pilgrimage has become one of the most important emblems of resurgent Andalusian regional identity and cultural pride. Its celebration has grown with regionalism, and with growth has come diversity of participants and meaning. People participate for increasingly diverse reasons: to pray, to experience an authentic rural ritual or to be seen taking part in an important regional happening. The pilgrimage has also become a media spectacle. Its constituents no longer need to take part physically in order to participate: they can consume it via television, newspapers, magazines and video. The explosion of interest in the event has created tensions. Many have abandoned the over-regimented mass spectacle at the shrine, where church and media collude to separate the public from many of the ritual events. Instead, they seek remembered devotional experience in the hardship and spontaneous camaraderie of the arduous trip to and from the shrine. Even there, conflicts erupt as village lads confront urbanized ‘yuppies’. Cesare Poppi’s (1992) study of the revitalization of Carnival in the Ladinspeaking area of the Dolomites shows the diverse modalities that renewal can assume. After being abandoned during the decades of heavy emigration and ‘modernization’, Carnival celebrations were reintroduced in the upper valley in the late 1970s by a parish priest, whose purpose was to draw the village together and reanimate it. Villagers consulted the elders who still remembered the customs and reformulated them to accommodate changing interests. The revitalized celebration flourished. In fact, it served as an example of the authentic Ladin Carnival for the villages lower in the valley, which had stopped celebrating carnival in the 1920s. They reintroduced it

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in the early 1980s to support their political claim of possessing a distinctive Ladin culture and to provide entertainment for the growing numbers of tourists. Since there were no longer persons alive who remembered how their Carnival had been celebrated, the organizers reinvented the tradition. They pieced together elements from the upper-valley celebration, from published accounts and from the repertoire of the local folklore group that had been established in the mid 1950s by Ladin political leaders to preserve the cultural heritage of the valley. Thus the celebrants in the upper valley adapted customs to suit the times, while those in the lower valley reinvented tradition, carefully seeking to preserve authenticity. My own study (1992b) of the changes in public ritual in the village of Naxxar in Malta reflects several of the developments already noted. Many liturgical celebrations either disappeared or declined in popularity. Holy Week celebrations and summer patronal festivals declined following emigration during the late 1950s and 1960s and began to grow (in size, costuming and number of events) during the 1970s. More recently young men began to revitalize the celebrations of neighbourhood patron saints by, among other things, introducing new rowdy band marches. During the same period new brass-band clubs were established in several villages. The increases were in part directed at and thus stimulated by the interest of visitors from rival villages and tourists. But the festivities of neighbourhood saints and the new wild demonstrations take place when few visitors are present. The Church authorities oppose these popular manifestations because they rival the organized liturgical events and damage parish decorum. But because of their declining power, they are no longer able to curb them. These insider events quite consciously promote group and village solidarity, much eroded by increased prosperity and the massive influx of outsiders. Formal liturgical events are thus making way for more playful, instrumental popular celebrations. The now familiar southern European pattern is also evident on Nisos, the Cycladic island that forms the focus of Margaret Kenna’s (1992) study. For over twenty years she observed the island’s patronal feast. Gradually the scale of the organized liturgical celebration of the feast declined while that of the dancing following it grew. This increase has largely been brought about by the growing affluence and influence of the island’s blue-collar emigrants, who return for their summer holidays; the process has been accelerated by the interest in the festivities of growing numbers of summer visitors and foreign tourists. Thus there has been a gradual shift away from full participation to performance for an audience of outsiders at whom many of the innovations seem to be directed. Jane Cowan (1992) discusses the impact of factional politics on the Carnival celebration of the Macedonian town of Sohos. Here, regional and national institutions and their representatives – ministries, radio and television, political parties, academics and tourists – introduced changes in the

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organization, form, and meaning of the celebration. These outsiders are busy reconstructing the local Carnival as a folkloric object. Outside interest has altered Sohoians’ perception of it and made it into a symbol of their community. It has also moved the celebration up-scale: once the main Carnival activists were rough shepherds; now the children of the local professionals who once denigrated the celebration avidly participate. Rival politicians now use outside interest, including the findings of folklorists and anthropologists, as resources for competition. They use the discourse of ‘tradition’ and ‘authenticity’ to effect changes in the Carnival proceedings. In the petty cut-and-thrust of factional politics, the political left has adopted a culturally conservative stance, defending its innovations as traditional while its politically conservative rivals accept imported symbols as necessary to keep Carnival alive in the modern world.

Modes of Renewal It is evident from these case studies that there are many modes of ritual revitalization. The term has many facets. Salomonsson has provided a useful discussion of the concept, defining it as ‘the resumption of older cultural features or their retention for new reasons’ (1984: 45). But his definition does not do justice to the diversity of the developments we have charted. ‘Resumption’ implies that the event had ceased to be celebrated, and ‘retention for new reasons’ precludes retention for the old reasons but with an increase of scale. The concept of revitalization that emerges from our studies embraces a wider range of meanings. It includes, first of all, the notion of invention, in Hobsbawm’s sense, as ‘both “traditions” actually invented, constructed and formally instituted and those emerging in a less easily traceable manner within a brief and dateable period’ (1983: 1). Examples of such invented traditions from our collection include completely new events, such as the cherry festival in the Jerte Valley and the Hewton Fair in West Moorside. Invention also embraces new aspects of existing festivals, such as the introduction of a charivari scene to the Carnival in the lower Val di Fassa, the barrels of wine in the Sohos Carnival, and the religious play on Holy Wednesday in Naxxar. Related to inventions are innovations, often copied, such as the rowdy midday parade in Naxxar or the use of recorded music at the Nisos festival. Revitalization has other connotations too. The feast of St. Lucy in Naxxar, which had never died out, was revitalized in the sense of having new energy injected into it. But the Carnival in the upper Val di Fassa, dormant for two decades, was revived, or reanimated, while the Carnival in the lower valley, abandoned since the First World War, was restored or resurrected. The winter festivals in the Jerte Valley, which had not completely died out, were restructured and made more authentic: they were retraditionalized. The men intent

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on preserving the Andalusian dawn bell-ringing ritual were asked to perform it out of context at an international conference of folklorists and anthropologists: they were folklorizing it. In fact, rituals that are very much alive and evolving can also be folklorized by urban or foreign participants who see in them the interesting remnants of an authentic way of life with which they are not and do not wish to be identified. This appears to be happening to Carnival celebrations in the upper Val di Fassa and in Sohos and to an extent to the annual festi in Malta. But Cruces and Diaz de Rada wonder whether the return to traditional practices is ‘a nostalgic reaction to industrial life or merely a strategy that provides symbolic benefits without jeopardizing an urban or modern condition’.

Context The ritual changes examined in these cases take place, by and large, in the period after the Second World War. Throughout Europe, but particularly in the south, there was massive migration during the 1950s and 1960s. Emigrants from the rural south moved north in search of work. They also streamed into their own cities. Migration and the loss of festive manpower during this period loom large in most accounts. This movement changed its course in the 1970s however. In many areas emigration tapered off, and in some areas, such as Malta and Greece, there was considerable return migration. In addition, holiday visits tended to coincide with major community celebrations – Christmas, Easter and usually the celebration of the patron saint. The postwar period was also one of increasing secularization, in part under the impact of modern, materialist developments but also because, as in Italy and Malta, the Catholic Church became embroiled in politics and lost credibility and power in the ensuing struggle. This affected its ability to defend the liturgical component of many of the celebrations, which consequently have also lost ground. Industrialization imposed new time-frames on rural Europe as agriculture became mechanized or rendered obsolete and former peasants were absorbed into the wage-labour force. Many rituals thus lost their function of marking phases in the agricultural cycle. The growth of urban areas stimulated by industrialization and the ensuing environmental pollution have called into question the values of modernity and unbridled economic growth. This in turn led to a revalorization of ‘traditional’, often rural, lifestyles, including the rituals associated with them. The rising standard of living in most of Europe and the increasing involvement of the state in providing a safety net for its citizens have meant that people have become less dependent upon each other. With independence has come isolation. Increasingly, people seek out community celebrations

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to soften, for brief moments, the alienation that has accompanied increased affluence and independence. The media explosion that accompanied the growth in literacy and the spread of television has had a profound impact on public celebrations. It stimulated the rapid dissemination of ritual practices. Via television, Maltese audiences participate vicariously in the Viareggio Carnival and watch the Carnival in Rio with goggle-eyed amazement. Madrileños can participate in the El Rocio pilgrimage from their armchairs. Watching other celebrations has made people more conscious of the performative aspects of their own rituals. The past decades have also seen the advent of mass tourism. The participation of strangers, often from distant cultures, has created a category of outsiders, an audience of ‘others’, in previously homogeneous communities, which has furthered the performative aspect of many of the celebrations. The postwar period has been, at least for Western Europe, a time of unprecedented peace and nation states have not had to rally citizens against a common enemy. Not only has this resulted in resources remaining available for ceremonial purposes; it has also permitted the focusing of attention on boundaries closer to hand – on parish and regional interests. There has also been pressure for decentralization, for more regional autonomy, and this has played an important part in the effervescence of public rituals in Spain and Italy, as regional resources are channelled into rituals that become vehicles of regional culture. Related to this there has been what may be called a general democratization. In most European countries the power of the state has been softened. The centralizing southern European dictatorships have ended, as have most of those in Eastern Europe. Shifts in power relations, whether at the national or the village level, have almost immediate repercussions on public celebrations, for most also have political dimensions. The swift demise of the Polish May Day parade following the collapse of the Communist regime is a case in point. Pressures from subordinate classes and regions, transmitted through votes and parliament, have brought about a shift in power and led to a redefinition of legitimate culture. This has permitted long-suppressed or denigrated regional and popular culture to flourish. It has also meant more support for regional and working-class cultural manifestations, such as patronal feasts and Carnival, more media coverage of them, and more funds for research about them. Increased attention, knowledge and legitimation, in turn, stimulate more activity. Virtually all the case studies illustrate this.

Patterns of Transformation What general patterns emerge from these case studies? Some have already been referred to; others include the cyclical fluctuation of celebrations,

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increasing awareness of identity and boundaries, a growing interest in history and tradition, a shift in the seasonal festive rhythm, increasing distinction between insider and outsider events, and an increase in the ludic dimensions of celebrations. There seems to have been a spurt of celebratory activity in the years immediately following the war. By the late 1950s this had tapered off, and festivities were declining. The decline persisted through the 1960s but began to reverse itself in the 1970s. In the 1980s the florescence of celebrations that Manning noted (1983: 4) was widely visible. What accounts for this cyclical pattern? The decline in the late 1950s seems, at least in the south, to be related to two developments: emigration and modernization. Emigration, especially from the rural areas, seriously affected the ability of smaller communities to celebrate festivals. Carnival, in particular, depends upon the active participation of young unmarried men but many emigrated, and those who stayed behind tended to view these festivities, often denigrated by the urbanized elite, as old-fashioned, the very antithesis of the modernity to which they aspired. As they lost interest, the celebrations declined or ceased altogether. No single factor accounts for the revival, but around the beginning of the 1970s there were a number of developments that affected attitudes towards traditional public celebrations. Established authority and the belief in continuing economic growth and its benefits were challenged, almost simultaneously, by the 1968 Paris student revolt, by the anti-Vietnam War demonstrations in the United States, by the sobering analysis of the Club of Rome’s Limits to Growth: A Report on the Predicament of Mankind (Meadows et al. 1972), by the publication of Schumacher’s Small is Beautiful: A Study of Economics as if People Mattered (1973) and, perhaps most thought-provoking of all, by the 1973 energy crisis and OPEC’s challenge to the industrialized West. Seen collectively, these amounted to a serious reappraisal of just what the frenetic economic boom of the 1960s and the postwar drive for modernization had achieved. A concern for a new concept, the ‘quality of life’, emerged. As a result of this reappraisal, the ‘traditional’ community-centred rural way of life, abandoned in the quest for modernization, began to be rediscovered and idealized, along with an interest in the environment, organic foods, home brewing, and, of course, traditional rituals. As this ideological ferment was taking place, conditions in the European periphery began to ease, and many emigrants returned home. Local economies were further stimulated by the increasing flow into the region of tourists, many of whom were interested in seeing traditional rural events. Thus the intellectual interest in traditional feasts was complemented by the increasing availability of the manpower required to celebrate them. These, then, are some of the general factors that influenced the decline of public celebrations in the 1950s and 1960s and their revival in the 1970s. In

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addition, specific developments occurred in each country that stimulated this revival, such as the death of Franco (1975), the end of the military junta in Greece (1974), and the electoral victory of the Labour Party in Malta (1971). The revival of celebrations was often but not always accompanied by a concern for tradition and authenticity. Those who restored Carnival in the lower valley of the Val di Fassa and reanimated the winter festivals in the Jerte Valley took pains to revive ‘authentic’ traditions. But concern for authenticity does not always extend to history. If the scenarios of rituals can be read as texts, they can also be rewritten. The manipulation of tradition for political ends is illustrated by Cowan’s account of the carnival in Sohos. Wright describes how West Moorside politicians prevented authentic or critical history that incorporated the class tensions and political manipulation of the past from forming part of their revived galas. Instead, they celebrated a bland ‘heritage’ version of the past, without the tensions and conflict of real life. The continuing celebration of revived and invented festivals thus would seem to depend on their ability to create solidarity, not consensus or even critical reflection. Authentic history exacerbates tensions by recounting still painful episodes from the past. The emphasis on authenticity can create disunity in another way. It excludes those unable to afford the expense of authentic costumes or unwilling to accept the authority of those capable of imposing their version of tradition (Ensel 1991). Ultimately, then, a rigid concern for authenticity and historical accuracy can threaten the unity on which the continuing celebration of most community festivals focuses and depends. The revitalization of public celebrations also marks a renegotiation of identity and a related realignment of boundaries. By eating, dancing, singing, clowning, and drinking together, a ‘we’ group defines itself vis-à-vis a ‘they’ group. A.P. Cohen has suggested that symbolic action in the form of ritual takes place to strengthen social identity and group solidarity when community boundaries and identities are blurred or undermined (1985: 50, 70). This may play a role for the inhabitants of Nisos, Naxxar and the Jerte Valley confronted by increasing numbers of tourists. But alongside this passive defensive dimension of ritual it has aggressive and instrumental capabilities that can be used to threaten others, to establish a presence and to create political interest groups. This seems to be taking place in the Val di Fassa and Andalusia. There ritual is being employed to establish the right of Ladins and Andalusians to be accepted as cultural and political formations in their own right – in short, to be recognized as having a legitimate identity. Similarly, in Poland opponents of the government proclaimed their identity by attending the celebration of St. Joseph the Worker during the official May Day celebration. These were aggressive and not defensive acts. The rhythm of many traditional celebrations is changing. Most festivals are no longer linked functionally to the agrarian productive cycle. Hence, when they are celebrated is now a matter of convenience. Therefore, many

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feasts that according to the liturgical calendar should be celebrated in winter are now celebrated in summer: summer weather usually ensures greater participation and protection of the festal decorations and tourists and holidaymakers also arrive then. Throughout southern Europe festivals are being transferred to summer. In fact, this represents a new harmonization of ritual and productive cycles, for they are now geared to the new work–leisure cycle of the industrial regime in Europe. Some, however, are still being celebrated in the winter and have taken on new meanings. These celebrations also point to a growing division between insiders and outsiders. The case studies seem to indicate that celebrations for insiders are increasing. By ‘insiders’ I mean members of what could be called the nuclear community – its permanent residents. This excludes visitors from nearby communities and tourists, whether national or foreign, and those who have moved from elsewhere. This trend is clearly illustrated by the increasing importance of non-summer celebrations in the Jerte Valley. One such celebration is the carnivalesque January feast of St. Sebastian in the village of Piornal, during which young men hurl turnips at the masked Jarramplas. It is difficult to say how widespread the renewed attention to winter feasts is. There is logic to the renewed attention to non-summer festivals. Summer feasts celebrate the extended community, comprising increasing numbers of holidaying emigrants, summer residents, newcomers and tourists. It is only in winter now that members of the nuclear community can celebrate in private, away from the attention of the crowds of visitors for whom they perform in the summer. Winter celebrations have a family resemblance to the cast parties following theatrical performances. While renewed winter celebrations may not be common, there is evidence that other insider activities are becoming more pronounced. Crain observes that many pilgrims now refuse to participate in the media circus at the shrine of El Rocio, focusing instead on the strenuous pilgrimage to and from the shrine. Poppi notes that celebrants in the Val di Fassa village of Penia have often barred outsiders – fellow Ladins from the lower valley as well as tourists – from the hall where their Carnival masquerade reaches its climax. In Malta, much of the expansion of the Naxxar festa has involved parades and ludic demonstrations well removed from the presence of outsiders. There is a relation between the increase of ludic and of insider events. In Extremadura, Malta, Macedonia and the Cyclades there appears to be a decrease in the ritual aspects of celebrations and an increase in their playful aspects.4 The distinction between the ritual and the play dimensions of celebrations is useful. ‘Ritual’ refers to the celebration’s formal, ordered events. These are characterized by rules, hierarchy, and constraints of time and place. Ritual is most often imposed and supervised by those with more power and reinforces their superordinate position. ‘Play’, in contrast, is associated with the negation of ritual. It is disorderly, innovative, egalitarian, improvised and

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disrespectful of authority. If ritual is serious and solemn, play is joyful and silly. Most of the contributors have recorded a decrease in overt liturgical ritual. For example, many of the Eucharistic celebrations have declined or disappeared in Spain, Malta, and Greece. This is largely a consequence of the secularization and loss of power of the clergy already noted. The increase in the playful elements of celebrations is more complex. I suggest that it is related to two developments that have already been touched on: the increase in insider events and democratization. Dancing, joking, clowning, and teasing are most satisfying when they take place between persons who know each other. Insider events are a refuge from the largescale celebrations staged for critical visitors from rival villages and curious tourists. It is essential for the community to display itself to these outsiders in a manner that will gain it prestige and preserve its honour. A tightly programmed round of spectacular activities ensures this. The visitors must be kept entertained, and this takes planning, organization, hard work and discipline – in other words, it must be programmed, or ritualized. Insider events permit escape from the constraints of programmed ritual, allowing villagers, figuratively and sometimes literally, to take off their make-up, let their hair down and kick up their heels. But there is a paradox here. Tourists from anonymous northern European suburbs and bent on a vigorous fortnight of something totally different are particularly drawn to the ludic insider events. They want to play, to take part, in the very events that the locals have devised to get away from them. At the same time it is certainly possible, even in the midst of a ritual, to introduce the ludic and so to mark off insiders from outsiders. Following the 1990 EASA (European Association of Social Anthropologists) conference in Coimbra, my wife and I spent a few days in nearby Lamego, where we watched thousands of rural pilgrims celebrating the Nativity of Our Lady on 8 September. Many crawled up 600 steps to the church on their knees to do so. They attended two processions, one of which, on the eve of the feast, was a long, well-organized parade of floats, bands and folklore groups. It also included many Rio-style samba schools of virtually naked local girls bumping and grinding in a way that must have made the marble Madonna blush. The procession ended with a float on which six strutting and scratching male transvestites mooned at the spectators. Here there was entertainment, local identity, play and a clear message for the visitors, all in one. Democratization also furthers play in celebrations. As noted, power has been transferred to the less well off whose entertainment in part consists of poking fun at those in authority. They do this by means of ludic actions. They dismantle or ignore the ritual events of the power elite. In Poland, May Day was boycotted when the power of the Communist regime began to wane. In the Macedonian village of Sohos, the leftist town council abolished the Carnival parade in which many of its conservative rivals displayed their elite

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status. In Malta, the clergy, weakened by measures adopted by the socialist government, found itself unable to prevent rowdy youths from demonstrating during the festa high mass. There is a dynamic relation between ritual and play.5 As play becomes increasingly organized, as occurs when the scale of a celebration expands, authenticity, authority, planning, schedules and order also become more important. Play then becomes ritualized. But as the ritual dimensions of a celebration increase, squeezing out the ludic elements in the interest of decorum, order, and general organizational tidiness, the demand for ludic space also grows. Increasing regulations of successive governments have squeezed the ludic spontaneity out of Malta’s national Carnival celebrations in Valletta. But as the national Carnival has increasingly become a rigidly organized and subsidized parade, highly ludic celebrations are (re)emerging in Gozo, Malta’s sister island. The same tendency is evident in the increasing popularity of the trip to the shrine during the celebration of the pilgrimage of the Virgin of the Dew and in the resurgence of the spontaneous blocos during the Rio Carnival (Turner 1983: 119 ff., 124). Just as celebrations are reinvented, revived and traditionalized, ludic activities are also increasing. This is reason enough to question the validity of Manning’s assertion that modernization is inimical to play and favours the rational orderliness of ritual (1983: 7, 23 ff.). While this may have been true in the recent past it would seem no longer to apply. Modernity is now also generating the pressures that give rise to play.

Conclusions This chapter has examined the events of and underlying reasons for the revival of celebrations in a few, mostly peripheral, areas of Europe. Its conclusions may appear limited, but the social events responsible for individual developments cannot be separated from wider currents; they are part of the ground swell of our times. In most European societies there have been great movements of population since the Second World War. These have weakened traditional neighbourhoods and introduced substantial numbers of outsiders. The introduction of strangers has made local populations increasingly aware of their own identity, seeking to mark off their communities from the newcomers by defining and ritualizing boundaries. Everywhere there has been a decline in the interdependence of and social interaction between neighbours. Everywhere forms of democratization have taken place. Established churches have lost power: their ability to continue their age-old combat against popular, emotional, ecstatic and ludic celebrations has been weakened. Governments, too, have been obliged to heed the growing voice of the less privileged classes and

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minorities. They have been compelled to provide media coverage, prizes, subsidies for carnivals, fairs, working-class theatre, pop music and regional and ethnic festivals – all events that just a few decades ago the elite stigmatized as devoid of culture. Finally, everywhere in Europe there is a growing awareness that the forty postwar years of industrialization, rationalization, centralized control, mobility, and hard work have exacted high social costs. One of the responses to this awareness has been the revival of public rituals that this chapter has discussed. As Europe becomes more unified in a single market, the homogenizing pressure of the Eurocrats, media men, and commercial hucksters will also increase. Our findings suggest that this will generate more ritual activity as communities at various levels assert and defend their identities by celebrating them. This might just make Europe a more cheerful place to live in.

Acknowledgements This chapter formed the introduction to Revitalizing European Rituals (Boissevain 1992a), which in turn grew out of a workshop I organized at the inaugural conference of the European Association of Social Anthropologists in Coimbra in the summer of 1990. I am particularly indebted to Mary Crain, Francisco Cruces, Margaret Kenna, and Sue Wright for their helpful comments on the first draft of this discussion.

Notes 1. A more of less random selection from the many: Le Bras (1955: 2480–81), Stacey (1960: 72–73), Gluckman (1962: 26–38), Caro Baroja (1965: 158–59), Boissevain (1965: 78–79), Christian (1972: 42–43, 181–82), Silverman (1975: 168–77) and Turner and Turner (1978: 206–7). 2. This change has been especially evident in southern Europe. Published sources show that in Spain, Italy, and Malta there has been a general increase in patronal feasts and Holy Week celebrations: see Bofill (1985: 60), Driessen (1985: 11–12), Kroese (1989), Maddox (1986: 782 n.54), Bravo (1984: 15), Gallini (1981: 104) and Boissevain (1984, 1988a, 1991b). In some places festivities have been reintroduced, often after decades of non-observance. Examples are the Good Friday procession in Lanciano, Abruzzo (Julia Bamford, personal communication), Carnival in southern France and in Campania, and related events like Sega-la-vecchia in Siena and Grosseto. See, for example, Fabre and Camberoque (1977), Rossi and De Simone (1977) and Clemente (1981). Other celebrations have been invented and presented to both inhabitants and visitors as traditional, such as the Good Friday procession in Belvedere Langue, near Torino (Bravo 1984). Throughout the north of Europe there has also been a marked increase in public celebrations. In the Netherlands, for example, Carnival, neighbourhood feasts, folk-

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lore pageants, traditional rural weddings and fairs have been revitalized. See among others, Boissevain (1991c), Helsloot (1981), Koster, Kuiper and Verrips (1983) and Werdmolder (1979). In Germany historical and folklore pageants have multiplied (Weber-Kellerman 1985). In Sweden formal graduation and wedding celebrations are increasing, and during the 1980s and 1990s people all over Scandinavia were celebrating Carnival-type samba festivals, complete with samba schools, costumes and processions (personal communications from Carita Backstrom, Ann Cederborn, Ake Daun, Waling Gorter, Barbro Klein and Gunn-Britt Martinsson) (Boissevain 1991a). 3. For example, German scholars often attribute the increase of public rituals to commercialization, in particular to tourism (see Weber-Kellerman 1985: 211 ff.). Lanternari explains the Italian revival as the consequence of a nativistic reaction to the imposition from above of cultural models (1976: 101 ff.), whereas Di Nola attributes it to a capitalist technique to increase production (1981: 90 ff.) and Rossi and De Simone to the economic crisis in the early 1970s (1977). Bravo, on the other hand, observing that the ex-peasant industrial labourers he surveyed were active in the recently introduced Good Friday celebrations, hypothesizes that they participated because the celebrations provided a haven from the disorientation of constant rural–industrial role switching (1984: 44 ff.). I attribute the increase of Good Friday processions and patronal feasts in Malta to the search for security and identity in the face of rapid social change (Boissevain 1984). Salomonsson has explained the revitalization of pre-industrial cultural features in Sweden as a reaction to large-scale technocratic planning which eliminates personal choice (1984: 37). Bax views the revival of popular religious rituals in the Dutch province of Brabant as a reaction to the liturgical reforms of Vatican II (1985). 4. Handelman (1977, 1987), Manning (1983: 7, 20–ff.) and Turner (1982: 28–9) examine this distinction in considerable detail, and I have drawn on their ideas. 5. There is more than just a family resemblance between the concepts of structure and communitas that Victor Turner has elaborated and the notions of ritual and play discussed here. For a more extensive discussion of the relation between these concepts and their implications for ritual change, see Boissevain (1991a).

CHAPTER 13

‘BUT WE LIVE HERE!’ PERSPECTIVES ON CULTURAL TOURISM*

Introduction There is a worldwide trend towards a different type of tourism. Though sun and sea remain attractive, tourists are increasingly looking for cultural experiences during more frequent but shorter holidays. They are heading inland to seek authentic local culture. How does this growing interest in cultural – as opposed to seaside – tourism affect the host populations?1 Is this developing trend sustainable? The following discussion explores these questions by looking at recent developments in Malta, and in the ancient walled town of Mdina in particular. While up to the 1990s the impact of mass tourism on Malta’s coastal ecology and built-up environment had been destructive, its social and cultural effects appeared to be relatively benign. In general, research in Malta has not supported those who have argued, as did Turner and Ash (1975: 15), that international tourism is a device for the ‘systematic destruction of everything that is beautiful in the world.’ Or that the commoditization of culture engendered by tourism ‘robs people of the very meanings by which they organize their lives’ (Greenwood 1989: 179). Or that ‘international tourism is undermining the most firmly established systems of reference’ (URESTI 1986). In Malta, tourism appears to have stimulated dying indigenous arts and crafts, such as lace making and filigree (Boissevain 1977a; Boissevain and Serracino Inglott 1979). In the 1970s and 1980s tourist interest in local culture and history helped to build a sense of national identity in a country Originally published as ‘ “But we live here!” Perspectives on Cultural Tourism in Malta’, in L. Briguglio et al. (eds), Sustainable Tourism in Island and Small States: Case Studies. London: Pinter (1996), pp.  220–239. Reprinted by kind permission of the Continuum International Publishing Group.

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that had been independent only since 1964, after more than four centuries of foreign domination. Tourism also redefined parish religious pageantry and firework rivalry – folk events which had been dismissed by the elite – as important national cultural resources (Boissevain 1984, 1991b). There was little tension between hosts and guests, as the holiday mood of tourists, who arrived mostly in the summer, reinforced the festive mood that the Maltese themselves have in the same period. Moreover, tourism seemed to have had little effect on religious and family values that are fundamental to Maltese society (Boissevain 1989a). To sum up then, through most of the 1970s and 1980s, tourism in Malta appeared – at least from the social and cultural point of view – sustainable at a common-sense level. It brought with it substantial economic benefits and employment, the infrastructure was able to cope with its continuous expansion, it was not detrimental to fundamental values, it contributed to a sense of national identity, pride and self-confidence, and it continued to be welcomed by the inhabitants. Thus it seemed on all counts to conform to the concept of sustainable development set out in the Brundtland Report: ‘Development that meets the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’ (World Commission on Environment and Development 1987). Since then the notion of sustainable tourism has been elaborated, among others by Eber (1992), and subjected to critical scrutiny by Harrison (1996). So convincing were the comments of the latter that the common-sense notion of sustainable tourism noted above – substantial economic benefits, the ability of the infrastructure to cope, not detrimental to fundamental values and welcomed by the inhabitants – seems quite useful. However, I now no longer feel optimistic about the social and cultural sustainability of tourism in Malta. This pessimism is the result of the research we carried out on Mdina in 1993 and 1994.2

Tourism in Malta Since tourism began, in the 1960s, the volume of arrivals has grown steadily (see Table 13.1). In 1993 just over one million tourists visited this mini-state. Almost half of them were British, and the proportion from the continent of Europe was steadily increasing. Half the tourists (mostly British) had also been to Malta before. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s the Malta Government Tourist Board (MGTB) promoted Malta as a seaside holiday destination. However, the priorities of the National Tourist Organization of Malta (NTO) began to change in the 1990s and it began to seek ‘quality tourists’, who would also come in the off-peak period (October–May). Popular culture, for the first time, was

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Table 13.1 Growth of Tourist Arrivals in the Maltese Islands 1960–1993 Year

Holidaymakers

Cruise Passengers

Total

1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1993

19,689 47,804 170,853 335,519 728,700 517,900 871,776 1,063,213

8,676 16,937 64,998 49,219 60,200 43,700 56,624 67,474

28,365 64,741 235,851 384,738 788,900 561,600 928,400 1,130,687

Source: Malta National Tourist Organization Annual Reports.

prominently featured (see Chapter 11). This campaign, which reflected but also stimulated the changing tastes of tourists, would appear to have borne fruit. Though whether quality tourists have increased is a moot point, as will become clearer below.

Changing Tastes Up until 1985 almost 70 per cent of visitors to Malta arrived between June and September. But by 1992, although arrivals had nearly doubled, less than 40 per cent were still coming to Malta during the summer months: six out of every ten tourists visited Malta in the period from October through to May, when the sea is usually too cold and rough to encourage bathing. Clearly the tastes of many of Malta’s tourists were changing. Compared to 1991, summer visitors in 1993 appeared to be somewhat more interested in culture and activities. According to a government survey, their interest in village feasts, water sports and sea cruises had increased, while visits to beaches, monuments and countryside had declined somewhat (Secretariat for Tourism 1993b, tables 3 and 4). While these data (and the survey upon which they were based) are not very convincing, they did indicate a trend. Besides the apparent shift in tourist activity in summer, the fact remains that tourists arriving in the off season pursue more sightseeing activities. They gaze rather than swim.3 In short, the changing pattern of tourists’ goals that appears to be emerging in Malta, as well as the government’s efforts in catering to those tastes, would seem to conform to the global pattern others have noted: not the seaside, but culture and action have become the preferences of the postmodern tourist (cf. Urry 1990; Edwards 1992; Weiler and Hall 1992). It is now time to explore what effect the growing interest in cultural tourism has had on the inhabitants of Malta.

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Maltese Reactions to the Tourist Gaze Not all Maltese are affected in the same way by tourists and tourism. Tourists constantly confront the inhabitants of the rather garish seaside towns and villages that house most of the tourist accommodation. Most tourists there are not particularly interested in Maltese culture, but rather in locating food, amusement, souvenirs, transport to places of interest, or, in summer, a quick way to the beach. On the other hand, most Maltese do not live in the tourist resorts, but in the inland villages and towns far removed from established tourist attractions. Tourists only visit their communities for two days – during the celebration of their parish’s annual festa. For the rest of the year, unless they work with tourists or go to the seaside or to Valletta, which most tourists visit for sightseeing and shopping, the majority of Maltese have little direct contact with tourist masses. There is one notable exception: the inhabitants of the medieval walled town of Mdina. Perched on a hill far removed from the sea, Mdina is one of the island’s foremost tourist attractions. Mdina was the island’s capital and seat of government until the arrival of the Knights of St. John in 1530. It is vigorously promoted by the National Tourist Organization by means of an attractively produced, informative and persuasive brochure entitled Mdina the uncrowned queen of Malta. This small town, which has a resident population of only 300 within the town walls, is visited by three out of four tourists and by many Maltese. This meant that in 1993 some 750,000 persons spent approximately one hour strolling through Mdina’s winding streets to view the magnificent palaces of Malta’s nobles, the cathedral and the spectacular panorama from the bastions. Many also visited some of the twenty-four attractions established to service tourist appetites for tea, food, antiques, jewellery, and souvenirs. History is imparted via guidebooks, cassettes that can be hired from a souvenir shop, the cathedral and the Natural History Museum. Popularized ‘cultural’ experiences are touted via leaflets handed out at the town’s entrance urging visits to the Mdina Experience film show (‘Journey through time and re-live Mdina’s tragedies and triumphs’), the Mdina Dungeons (‘Wander at your own pace and discover Horror, Drama and Mysteries from the dark past’) and the exhibition on Medieval Times (‘A spectacular recreation of fourteenth- and fifteenth-century life in Malta. Medieval Times is an entertaining and educational adventure – it is fun!’). All day throughout the year, but especially in summer, tourists circulate through Mdina. They come by public transport, by hired car and with guided tours (in 1992, 2,626 tours visited the cathedral). On weekends and during evening summer open-air concerts, Maltese join the foreign visitors. Mdina has increasingly become the embodiment of Malta’s history and a picturesque venue for all manner of events ranging from weddings and exhibitions

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Table 13.2 Attitudes towards Tourism and Tourists: General Public Compared to Mdina Residents

Dislike tourists coming to Malta Tourism is very important for Malta Tourism should decrease July–Sept. Get along badly with tourists Live worse off because of tourism Tourism has: a bad effect on Maltese culture a bad effect on historical sites a bad effect on local recreation no effect on Maltese identity

Public (%) (523 people)

Mdina (%) (75 people)

1.9 86.8 4.8 .4 .4 5.2 1.1 10.9 1.0

8 80 27 7 12 24 15 24 23

Source: Malta’s Carrying Capacity Survey (Secretariat for Tourism 1992) and ‘Mdina: Its Residents and Cultural Tourism’ (Boissevain and Sammut 1994: 4).

of classic cars to prayer groups, concerts and reinvented historical pageants. During the day and for much of the evening, both foreign and local visitors are ubiquitous. Mdina is no longer the ‘silent city’ of the tourist brochure. Mdina’s religious orders and its sixty-nine households very keenly feel the tourist presence. It should therefore come as no surprise that the attitude of its inhabitants towards tourists is considerably more reserved than the generally favourable opinion held by the Maltese public at large. For example, while only 0.4 per cent of Maltese thought they were worse off because of tourism, the corresponding figure for Mdina was 12 per cent. Other comparisons substantiate the less tolerant attitude of Mdina residents to tourists. For example, 24 per cent of Mdina’s inhabitants thought that tourism had a bad effect on Maltese culture compared to only 5 per cent of the general public. Moreover, while 27 per cent of the town’s inhabitants wanted tourism to decrease between July and September, only 5 per cent of the public shared that opinion. Also telling was the fact that 15 per cent of those who live in Mdina thought that tourism had a bad effect on historical sites, an attitude with which less than 5 per cent of the public agreed (see Table 13.2).

Living in a Monument The constant exposure to increasing numbers of tourists and the effects this has on their lives and surroundings is creating a hostile attitude to tourism among a growing segment of Mdina’s residents. Increasingly they feel that they are being asked to sacrifice their privacy and the tranquillity of their small, intimate town for the national good without receiving any compensation from either government or tour operators. Many complain that tourists

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constantly peer and sometimes even sneak, uninvited, into their houses; that they leave a mess behind; that they block the narrow roads when residents try to drive home; that they are often indecently dressed; and that encroaching commercial interests are changing the character of their town. Below are some of their comments when asked if they were affected by tourism: [T]he only positive advantage is that it has made Mdina more important in people’s eyes. Thus greater care is likely to be taken when decisions are taken which affect the city . . . too many people [come] during certain times of day, (especially buses outside the gate) and . . . little money is pumped into the city by the ones who bring the thousands to Mdina. (New resident, male, aged 38) The city has become over-commercialized. We are mostly bothered by Maltese people who come over the weekend and make their presence felt . . . There are too many souvenir shops and guides who think they own the place. Guides often . . . stop or control traffic for tourists to get by. (Mdina-born man, aged 38) What bothers me most is . . . cigarette butts and papers they leave on the ground. (Newly resident housewife, aged 30) Most tourists come at our door to peep inside. (Long-term resident, aged 72) What annoys us mostly is their indecency. They think they can wear their beachwear in the city. Disgusting! (Mdina-born shopkeeper, aged 48) Coach arrangements are chaotic. Tour leaders impolite. Operators think they can desecrate the city, also by night. (Long-term resident, aged 60) Sometimes I feel that tourists are intruding – no privacy. Also when we drive in by a car, tourists look at you as if we (residents) are the outsiders . . . they would not move from the middle of the street. (Mdina-born businessman, aged 26) No longer silent/peaceful. And guides talk loads of crap. (Mdina-born man, aged 22) The few restaurants/cafes take the best in fresh produce, while locals have to meet higher prices for fruit and vegetables. (Mdina-born woman, aged 39)

It is evident that many of Mdina’s residents are becoming fed up with the tourists. While all those we spoke to were proud that their town was so popular, they felt alienated by the behaviour of the public and the government’s neglect of such basic problems as street lighting and policing. These feelings were exacerbated when the town became the venue for cultural events that, in addition to the daily hordes of tourists, attract large numbers of Maltese. Such an event was the Mdina ’93 festival held in June 1993.

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Figure 13.1 Government-sponsored re-enactment of the Knights of Malta entering Mdina (photo: courtesy of NTOM, 1994).

Mdina ’93 Mdina ’93 was an extravaganza that included flower displays, animated guided tours, museum exhibitions, folkloric skits, street theatre, puppet shows, evening concerts and, as Figure 13.1 shows, elaborate historical reenactments. The festival took place from nine in the morning until midnight and lasted a week. The tours and skits were repeated up to ten times daily. The event attracted tens of thousands of visitors, most of whom were Maltese. The residents were obviously affected by the happening. Two-thirds considered that their needs had not been taken into consideration. They complained of lack of secured parking, noise, crowding, dirt, rudeness and invasion of privacy. At times they felt imprisoned by the wall-to-wall crowds. There was a general feeling that they had sacrificed a great deal, but had received nothing in return. One young woman summed up the attitude in an emotional outburst: ‘We are used as carpets! . . . The residents have a right to live. We want to live. When we air our views, outsiders tell us that Mdina is not ours but it belongs to the Maltese population. But we live here! We have a right to our city (pajjiezna)’. The growth of cultural tourism has clearly affected the quality of life in Mdina. It has become noisy, crowded and commercialized. We met one family that was moving out for those reasons. Other residents complained

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that their married children were unable to find affordable accommodation in the town. They had been priced out of the housing market. Entrepreneurs, from Mdina as well as outsiders, snap up vacant houses for commercial purposes – to rent to foreign settlers and tourists and for use as shops, tearooms and restaurants. Affluent Mdina families in their stately homes run several such establishments. Unless measures are taken swiftly to improve the quality of life, the long-term prognosis is that ever fewer residents will remain, and Mdina will become a commercial open-air museum devoid of the indigenous residents who now form part of its charm as a living town. As the stream of visitors grows each year, Mdina’s residents appear to be becoming increasingly disgruntled. They are asked to give much, but they receive nothing in return. They feel exploited. Until 1994 their situating was exacerbated by the absence of a local government that could defend their interests. Maltese central government is remote and has a vested interest in commoditizing local culture, since tourism earns 28 per cent of the gross domestic product.

Reporting Research In January 1994 we distributed a report on the research we had carried out to date (Boissevain and Sammut 1994) to officials at the Secretariat for Tourism and members of the newly created Mdina local council. The report provided a detailed summary and analysis of our findings. It concluded with residents’ recommendations and our own general recommendations. The residents suggested that the Mdina Festival should not be held annually; that it should be shorter; that its organization be improved, including better traffic control, safer parking for residents and public toilet facilities. Our recommendations included the following: (1) The organization of festivals in Mdina and elsewhere should include representatives of the residents in the preliminary stages of decision-making. (2) The establishment of a fund to restore public and private buildings of Mdina by charging tourists an entrance fee. (3) Visitors to Mdina should be made aware that both young and old families inhabit the town. (4) The distribution of a leaflet setting out the Maltese dos and don’ts of decent dress and respect for privacy to all tourists upon arrival in Malta. (5) The immediate resolution of the long-standing complaints regarding Mdina’s parking, lighting, public conveniences and policing. (6) The immediate development by the local council, the Ministry of Tourism and the Planning Authority of a long-term policy for the touristic and commercial development of Mdina.

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Besides this report, we presented papers and talks based on the research to a number of international and local workshops dealing with sustainable tourism.4 These were given good coverage in the local English-language press and some of our finding and recommendations were vigorously discussed there.5 From this it may be concluded that our research and its dissemination contributed in some measure to the public airing of problems that had long bothered Mdina residents, but which they accepted as inevitable. They had grumbled, but had not openly criticized government for marketing their town and way of life without consulting them. In Malta individuals are ambivalent about openly criticizing government policy. In the polarized, factional arena of Maltese politics, any public criticism of the policies of the incumbent (then Nationalist) government is viewed as siding with the rival opposition party (then Labour). In staunchly Nationalist Mdina, this was seen as unwise. Publicizing our research, which occurred at the same time as the new Mdina local council was beginning to become active, contributed to a discussion in public of Mdina’s grievances. It also served to draw the attention of Mdina’s residents to the degree to which they were being exploited. Exploitation is a relative concept and awareness often only comes when people’s attention is drawn to their situation. Until then they regard their lot, like the weather, as an unavoidable part of life. Whatever the reason, Mdina residents found their voice, as the following letter to the editor of the Sunday Times (17 April 1994) makes clear: Mdina residents penalized Noisy, snoopy, ill-clad nuisances are encouraged to be so by many tourist guides who believe the tourist is to be given maximum priority over one and all, regardless of any disruption or discomfort caused to the locals who are the real nuisance and get in the way of the money-spinning business. Mdina is one of Malta’s prime selling points . . . but almost none of the income this asset helps to generate is used to avoid deterioration, let along improve the place. With the exception of the very small Mdina business community, the only people and organizations who profit are the tour promoters, tour guides and, of course, the government. The only people who pay a price are the residents . . . The residents are being penalized for living there and for keeping this unique city alive! Perhaps we should all move out and leave the place for day-trippers to enjoy? F. Debono, Mdina

Mdina’s New Local Council In January 1994 the government of Malta organized the first ever elections for local councils. The new local councils were to be responsible for maintaining and cleaning roads, collecting refuse, caring for public gardens and playgrounds, maintaining road signs and consulting with the ‘competent authorities’ regarding planning, building schemes and work on the exteri-

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ors of buildings, etc. They were allocated limited funds to carry out their tasks. The Mdina council is composed of five councillors, with the mayor chosen from their midst. All councillors are prominent residents: one owns an exclusive leather goods shop; one is a retired policeman whose two daughters run the town’s only grocery; one, the mayor, is a teacher at a private school; one is a company director; and one, a member of an old noble Mdina family, is in business. Three of the councillors, either directly or through relatives, have touristrelated interests in Mdina. Four councillors were elected from the Nationalist Party slate, and one, the ex-policeman, was an independent. During the very low-key canvassing for election, tourism issues played only a minor role. Better lighting, policing, cleaning and parking facilities were the major concerns of the candidates interviewed. However, all thought that tourism should be made to contribute funds to maintain and restore the town’s historic buildings. After the council was installed it swiftly became involved with touristrelated issues. It vigorously defended Mdina residents’ interests in the organizing committee for the Mdina ‘94 festival, which, our report notwithstanding, was to take place for three days in June. This ultimately brought the mayor into head-on collision with the event’s NTOM (National Tourist Office of Malta) director, who subsequently took the mayor to court for his alleged abusive behaviour. At one stage the Parliamentary Secretary for Tourism had to intervene to prevent the council from boycotting the event. The chief bone of contention, according to the mayor, was the NTOM’s failure adequately to consult the council, which was thus manoeuvred into taking responsibility for decisions over which it had no control. One such issue was the allocation by NTOM 2,000 lira each to six florists to decorate the streets for the festival (LM 1.00 is £1.75 at the time of writing). Many residents were dissatisfied with the decorations. Mdina itself received no remuneration for the gross inconvenience of its residents during the festival. The inconveniences were the same as the previous year, though they lasted only three days. The upshot of the dispute was that the local council was assured that it could organize any future festival itself, and that in 1995 there would be no NTOMsponsored festival in Mdina. The council has been exploring ways to harness the volume of tourists and supplement its minute budget. It is severely handicapped by the shortage of funds. For 1994 it was only allocated LM 11,060, of which LM 9,500 was earmarked for street cleaning and refuse collection. As this was being written (November 1994), the council was finalizing a number of proposals that are quite radical for Malta. These included: (1) Limiting and regulating the flow of tourists to avoid congestion – at present it is not unusual for as many as twenty busloads of tourists to arrive within an hour.

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(2) Establishing a code of conduct for guides, who are blamed by Mdina residents – with good reason – for much of the unseemly behaviour of tourists. (3) Establishing a Mdina Restoration and Maintenance fund for the preservation of the bastions and historic public and private buildings. (4) Charging every tourist entering the town a fee of LM 1.00 to be used to fund the proposed activities and the additional staff required to administer and enforce them (elderly and handicapped persons, children under twelve and Maltese nationals and residents would be exempted). Though the Parliamentary Secretary for Tourism in general approved these measures, and a local bank was willing to lend LM 100,000 to start up the plans, certain national by-laws had to be amended before Mdina’s plans could be implemented. This was up to the Prime Minister’s Office, the agency responsible for local government. That was the next, considerable, hurdle the council faced. The council was aware that many tour operators and guides would resist its plans to schedule tours and charge entrance fees. The attitude of the mayor was that they had had it their way for too long and that now there are too many visitors. The proposed measures were not approved. The Mdina festival has become an established fixture and is held every other year. The crowds are still present and still inconvenience the town’s inhabitants. The local council is represented on the board that plans the event.

Growing Irritability? During 1994 Mdina residents became increasingly vocal in protesting against the tourist presence. The new local council was proving to be an important resource in protecting them from the effects of excessive tourist interest. But Mdina residents were not the only ones to feel the discomfort of the continuous growth of tourism. For years visitors praised the friendliness of the Maltese in letters to the editors of many local newspapers. But in 1994 this traditional friendliness seemed to be cracking. During the high season there were more letters than ever complaining about poor standards, pollution, mounds of rubbish in the countryside and grudging service. One letter in particular rubbed a painful nerve. It was this unexceptional observation made by a Norwegian couple, after travelling extensively around the island: ‘Our general impression is that you did not want to have us here. We seem to be bothering you. You did not give service and you did not smile’ (Britt Dahl and Are Kvaerk, ‘So, where’s the smile’ (Times of Malta) 12 October 1994). Malta’s leading columnist erupted four days later in a way that would have been quite unthinkable just a few years before:

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After six months of blazing hot weather, there comes a point where a tourist complains and I explode. Because Malta is so tiny, there is nowhere one can go to get away from these increasingly appalling, invasive, all-pervasive people . . . Pop into St. John’s Co-Cathedral for a silent prayer and ten tour guides are howling on about the silver gates. Walk through the streets and every five metres a group blocks the path. Walk into a cafe for a quiet cappuccino and there is an entire family of them complaining about everything . . . Everything is geared towards catering to their whims, with the dregs left for those who live here the year round. The pressure on resources is enormous. Perhaps the time has come to admit that the quality of life of Maltese people is sinking amid tourist arrival figures topping the one million mark . . . As the tension increases, we must acknowledge that something has to be done. Tourism, once regarded as our salvation and still our main means of sustenance, has become purely a necessary evil. (Daphne Caruana Galizia, ‘Let’s hear it for the locals’, Sunday Times, 16 October 1994)

Though each of her weekly columns usually generates a spate of letters protesting against her outspoken views, this outburst produced only one mild protest (‘Tourists, legitimate complaints’, Sunday Times, 6 November 1994). It is clear that she voiced a widespread feeling of discontent.

Mass Cultural Tourism in Perspective A leading Dutch tour operator, who for twenty years promoted Malta as a cultural destination ‘for people who read a book or two’, was pessimistic. He explained to me that the market was changing. The government’s attempt to entice quality tourists notwithstanding, Malta has now become a mass tourist destination for Holland: There is now a real danger that this mass tourism is straining Malta’s resources. What used to attract was the atmosphere. This is gone or going fast: increasing pollution, over-booking in hotels, tatty beaches at this time of year [November 1994], declining service as cowboy tour operators shave prices. These tourists do not return to Malta. (Nor do they plan to recommend Malta to their friends, as I learned from fellow passengers on a flight to Amsterdam.)

His conclusion: Malta is seizing up. When Turkey and Yugoslavia get back into the picture, Malta will be eclipsed. The low-season mass tourist, who is still really mainly interested in sun and sea, will find he is better taken care of there.

Here there seems to be a clear gap between what government believes it is achieving (that is, the growth of low-season tourism, cultural tourism and, therefore, an increase of quality tourism) and the actual situation. It appears that low-season tourists from Holland are chiefly mass tourists of the type

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that used to arrive only in summer. Now, because of increased affluence and leisure, they can also come in the low season for short periods. Thus, Malta has become an off-peak venue for mass tourists. Because they are on tight budgets, most don’t hire cars and since there is not much else to do at this time of the year, they go on guided tours. Thus they become by definition cultural tourists. But unlike past visitors to Malta in the off-peak season, most current visitors come to Malta not for its culture, but because the price is right, they can be accommodated and the sun shines more than at home. While in Malta they consume some culture via organized tours to major landmarks on the tourist map, like Mdina. There their mass presence, their oftencrude manners and the arrogance of many of the (Maltese) guides create the irritations detailed above.

Perspectives on Cultural Tourism As plans are being developed to market other walled cities in Malta and elsewhere as tourist attractions (Bruce 1994), we might ask what lessons can be learned from the Mdina experience. The material suggests that there are at least six negative structural characteristics particularly associated with cultural tourism, but largely absent from seaside tourism. The first is the way national and regional tourist authorities and entrepreneurs commoditize and market local culture without consulting the inhabitants (see Greenwood 1989: 180). This can lead to tension between tourists, who not surprisingly demand access to the sights and events they have been promised and have paid for, and local residents whose culture, often unbeknownst to them, has been sold to strangers. It also leads to hostility towards the tour operators, guides and government tourist officials held by residents to be responsible for their discomfort. This was seen to have been one of the primary causes of discontent in Mdina (cf. Crain 1992; Odermatt 1994). Curiosity, stimulated by skilful marketing and abetted by crude manners, leads to a second characteristic of cultural tourism: the loss of privacy. As tourists search for the culture they have paid to see, they cross thresholds and boundaries (sometimes, but not always, hidden) to penetrate private domestic space. MacCannell, following Goffman (1959), has discussed ‘back’ and ‘front’ regions in the context of tourism: ‘The front is the meeting place of hosts and guests or customers and service persons, and the back is the place where members of the home team retire between performances to relax and to prepare’ (MacCannell 1976: 92). These back regions are normally closed to outsiders, and for him their mere existence implies their possible violation. The back region is somehow more ‘intimate and real’, as against the front region’s ‘show’. The back region is consequently viewed as more ‘truthful’, thus more authentic. In short, the back region is where the tourist can experi-

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ence true authenticity, to achieve oneness with his host (1976: 94–99). The desire to penetrate back regions is inherent in the structure of tourism. The experience of Mdina residents with prying tourists is thus far from unique. It is happening elsewhere in Malta, particularly during the annual village feasts of their patron saints when hordes of tourists crowd into the celebrating communities. Anthropologists have recently noted tourists invading domestic back regions in Sardinia, Austria and Norway (Odermatt 1994; Droog 1991; Puijk 1996). Such episodes will multiply as cultural tourism is marketed to mass tourists, many of whom abandon their good manners. Which tourist would think of crossing a strange domestic threshold in his own society without a clear invitation to do so? A third characteristic of cultural tourism is the way excessive tourist attention destroys the very culture visitors come to examine. It does this by transforming natives into entrepreneurs, by destroying traditional tranquillity and physical environment and by pricing the local population out of the area, thus transforming the attraction from a living community into a museum or heritage park. Besides Mdina, this is occurring in other historical centres, for example, in Prague. ‘Sustaining the resource base on which tourism depends must be the central focus of . . . sustainable tourism’ (McKercher 1993: 131). A fourth characteristic is the hostility that locals develop when they come to realize that they are being exploited: by a government so dependent on tourism that it commoditizes their way of life, customs and immediate surroundings; by tour operators who push them about to accommodate their clients; and by tourists who, partly through ignorance, flout local mores and prevent residents from going about their daily business if it disturbs their image of authenticity. A fifth characteristic of cultural tourism is that, unlike seaside tourism, it is not necessarily seasonal. Those who live and work in popular seaside destinations must work extremely hard during the summer months. But once the season is over they are able to recover from the summer onslaught and resume the more tranquil rhythm of their ordinary lives until the following high season. In contrast, the inhabitants of popular cultural destinations, such as historic city centres, are exposed to tourist attention throughout the year. This exposure is increasing as cultural tourism becomes more popular and the number of annual holiday trips continues to grow. Without some respite from the constant gaze and demands of tourists, hosts become enervated and their behaviour towards tourists hostile. The negative attitude to tourists that is developing among Mdina’s residents and many Maltese is a case in point. Whereas just a few years ago visitors came mainly in summer, they now are present throughout the year. There is no respite. The pressure on the inhabitants is constant. A final characteristic of cultural tourism is related to its lack of seasonality. In all Mediterranean countries there is a sharp separation between the winter

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and summer seasons (see Chapter 1). From October through to March it often rains, and it can be cold and windy. Social life is controlled. The families are more closed. People work late and hurry home. In contrast, summer, which runs from April through to September, is a time of feasting, swimming and weddings. It is a joyous time. Many move to the seaside. All stay up late socializing. Social control is laxer in the summer and tighter in the winter. To borrow Turner’s terminology, summer represents anti-structure and winter, structure (1969). In summer the celebratory mood of tourists reinforces the intentions and desires the Maltese themselves have in this period. The swimming, feasting, sporting, partying and romancing that tourists come to Malta to find are also the elements Maltese themselves consider essential in the summer. The result is reinforcement and not destruction of culture. This of course is what makes the Mediterranean area in summer such a pleasant place for tourists to visit. Tourists here find resonance, not dissonance. But in winter, the antistructural activities of tourists clash with the on-going, routine structure of the residents. Increasing tourist arrivals in the closed winter months, when Maltese are more concerned with survival and discipline and thus when the demands of structure weigh heavily upon them, are intrusive. Thrusting, naked northern beer bellies, haltered torsos and garish shorts are unexceptional in the crowded summer streets of Valletta and Mdina (and reluctantly accepted as part of the price of tourist prosperity). However, they are horribly discordant among the hurried shoppers and dark-suited residents who populate the same, often sunny, streets in winter (Boissevain 1989a). To sum up, in Mediterranean countries cultural tourism in general and winter tourism in particular are more likely to generate social and cultural tension than seaside tourism in summer. Yet cultural tourism in the off-peak season is the segment of the tourist market that these countries are now most intent on developing.

A Sustainable Future? Is the developing trend towards more cultural tourism in Malta sustainable? Mdina is perhaps an extreme case of the impact of cultural tourism: 300 inhabitants of a small, non-commercial walled town invaded by now close to a million curious visitors a year. But in certain respects developments there are indicative of the overall trend in Malta. The foregoing analysis suggests that if mass seaside and, particularly, cultural tourism continues to develop at the present rate, it will not be socially and culturally acceptable and therefore sustainable. That is, it will not be tolerated by growing segments of the Maltese population. ‘There are sufficient indicators to support the view that where substantial numbers of people

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do not want tourists, the feeling is soon reciprocated. In such circumstances, tourism of any kind becomes unsustainable’ (Harrison 1996). In other words, continuing the present course may be strangling the goose that has been laying golden eggs since Malta became independent. Can anything be done to reduce the less desirable effects of the current trend and so keep the tourism goose alive? To make a beginning, two measures suggested by the Mdina local council should be introduced at the national level. The first is to limit and seriously regulate the flow of visitors as the volume of arrivals is creating tension. But this may be difficult to implement. The NTOM’s marketing director, although arguing that the summer arrivals should not increase, advocated a ten-fold increase in off-peak arrivals, thereby raising the annual arrivals from the present 1.1 million to 2.1 million by 1998 (Malta Independent, 30 October 1994). Vested interests also support continued growth. These include the owners of existing hotels and the luxury ones under construction along the shore, Air Malta and many others who profit from ever more tourist arrivals. They form a powerful lobby in favour of the present laissez faire policy. The gist of the above analysis seriously questions whether it is socially desirable to increase off-peak arrivals by a factor of ten. A second measure that would reduce the irritation caused by cultural tourists in particular would be to educate both guides and tourists. The former by means of explicit training to develop their sensitivity and responsibility towards the residents of the attractions they visit. The latter by means of simple leaflet setting out Maltese dos and don’ts – of dress, privacy and so on – which could be distributed to all visitors upon arrival at customs. In Torremolinos there is some evidence that environmental degradation has led to a decline in tourist arrivals (Pollard and Rodreguez 1993), and in Malta, too, there are indications of disillusionment among residents and tourists. It is now time to rethink and debate Malta’s long-term tourist policy and then to act decisively. Failure to do so may cause Malta’s tourism bubble to burst.

Acknowledgements This discussion owes much to many persons. Lucienne Attard and Graziella Fenech carried out the principal survey on Mdina. Nadia Sammut conducted most of the interviews. Simon Mizzi and Chris Pace made available their own Mdina survey. Anthony Ellul provided invaluable advice and technical assistance. The Maltese Secretariat for Tourism, the Department of Education and the Med-Campus Sustainable Tourism Programme of the University of Malta made available important facilities. Anthony Ellul, Carmel Fsadni and Nadia Sammut gave useful comments on earlier versions of this text. Inga

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Boissevain and David Harrison made essential suggestions to improve it for publication. Finally, many thanks to the inhabitants of Mdina who helped us with this research. I take full responsibility for the interpretation of the data.

Notes 1. Cultural tourists are interested in the lifestyle of other people, their history and the artefacts and monuments they have made. This category also includes what some have called ethnic and historical tourism (cf. Smith 1989; Wood 1984). Cultural tourism may be contrasted to recreational tourism – stereotypically focused on sun, sand, sea and sex – and environmental tourism. These categories are not mutually exclusive and usually overlap slightly. 2. During July and August 1993 we conducted a survey in Mdina to complement the survey carried out by the Secretariat for Tourism on 523 respondents from all areas of Malta and Gozo during summer 1992 (Secretariat for Tourism 1992 and 1993a). Our survey was based on a random sample of 150 Mdina residents listed in the electoral register, which also included persons living just outside the town walls. The questionnaires were distributed directly to residents’ homes, and 75 valid ones were returned, all from persons living inside Mdina, of whom there were approximately 300 in 1993 (Boissevain and Sammut 1994). Besides the survey, between July 1993 and November 1994 we also conducted some thirty in-depth interviews with housewives, shopkeepers, town councillors, other Mdina residents and NTOM officials. In addition, we were able to consult opinions expressed in thirty-four questionnaires completed by Mdina residents during summer 1992 for an undergraduate dissertation (Mizzi and Pace 1993). 3. Unfortunately, little research has been conducted on tourist activities outside the summer months. The dearth of data reflects the low priority attached to research by the Department of Tourism. This is a curious situation for a country as dependent on tourism as Malta and so intent on increasing off-peak visitors. The existing research on visitor behaviour and impact was carried out, in spite of budgetary limitations, by the Product Development Section of the Tourism Secretariat with the help of students who were given summer jobs by the Ministry of Education. Hence it was without cost to the Tourism Secretariat, but could only take place in summer, when the students are available. 4. International Workshop on Tourism and Culture in Islands, Cities and Small States, Med-Campus Sustainable Tourism Network and Council of Europe, Valletta 15–17 November 1993; ‘International Conference on Sustainable Tourism in Islands and Small States’, Foundation for International Studies, Valletta, 18–20 November 1993; ‘Tourism in Gozo’ seminar, Hotel Ta’ Cenc, Gozo, University of Malta Gozo Centre in collaboration with the Ministry for Gozo and Löwenbräu Malta Ltd., 28 January 1994; Mellieha Workshop, Moviment ghall-Ambjent, Malta International Airport, 2 March 1994 (Boissevain 1994a, 1994b, 1994c). 5. ‘Danger Signals’ (Times 0f Malta, 17 December 1993); ‘Mdina becoming over commercialized. Modest entrance fee proposed’ (The Times, 8 February 1994); ‘Mdina’s Levy’ (Sunday Times, 10 April 1994); ‘Mdina residents penalized’ (The Times, 17 April 1994); ‘Mdina threatened’ (The Times, 4 July 1994).

CHAPTER 14

INSIDERS AND OUTSIDERS: MASS TOURISM IN SOUTHERN EUROPE*

Until the early 1980s anthropologists working in southern Europe largely ignored the growing influx of outsiders, one of the most significant developments in the area since the 1960s. The increasing affluence of Western Europe and economic and political upheavals in eastern Europe and Africa have combined to bring various categories of new ‘others’ – tourists, foreign residents, second-home owners, migrant labourers/guestworkers, refugees and illegal immigrants – into established communities in the region. The introduction of outsiders with widely different customs into relatively homogeneous neighbourhoods brings about a confrontation with new ideas and customs. The arrival of outsiders also creates new categories of ‘us’ and ‘them’ and often generates suspicion, jealousy and fear (cf. Elias and Scotson 1994). The natives react by closing ranks, by attempting to (re)establish contact with each other, by redefining and projecting their own identity through rituals, but also, occasionally, by means of violence. In this chapter I propose to look briefly at only one category of outsiders: the tourists. How is the global process of mass tourism affecting communities in the region? Anthropologists working in the Mediterranean area have largely left the new outsiders to sociologists and geographers. Only reluctantly have anthropologists looked at tourism, and then mainly at its impact and not at the tourists themselves (though see Selänniemi 1994). Though mass tourism to southern Europe was well established when John Davis published his pioneering comparative study People of the Mediterranean (1977), he did not discuss tourism. At the time there were only six studies dealing with the subject.1 Five years later David Gilmore’s comprehensive survey of the ‘Anthropology Originally published as ‘Insiders and Outsiders. Mass Tourism and the European South’, in D. Albera, A. Blok and C. Bromberger (eds), L’anthropologie de la Méditerranée/Anthropology of the Mediterranean. Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose and Maison Méditerranénne des Sciences de l’Homme (2001), pp. 685– 709. Reprinted by permission of MMSH and Maisonneuve et Larose.

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of the Mediterranean’ (1982) still ignored tourism though Mediterraneanists had published at least fourteen more papers on the subject.2 But the situation appears to be changing. During the past two years [1996–97] at least five books have been published which include discussion of Mediterranean tourism.3 Somewhat like Malinowski, who disregarded white planters during his fieldwork, anthropologists seem generally to have avoided facing up to the complex presence of tourists in the region.

Gatekeepers Were anthropologists so slow to discuss tourism in the Mediterranean area because they sought the ‘other’ – the noble peasant – in isolated inland communities remote from the tourist masses? Years ago Thomas Crump mused about our professional predilection which, when it came to Italy, he observes, led too many scholars to, ‘[A]ssume that the canons of anthropological science are satisfied by forcing the Italian population through a sort of sieve to leave only a residue of relatively isolated, partly illiterate, technically retarded, rural communities, sometimes with a non-Italian local dialect’ (1975: 20).4 Of course, few, if any, tourists visited these communities. But his observation is fair comment on most anthropological research carried out during the 1950s and 1960s. But since the 1970s, the absence of tourists is no longer a valid excuse for avoiding the challenge of complex developments generated by mass tourism. There is perhaps another more cogent reason why tourism has not been discussed much in Mediterranean anthropology. The contributors to Peristiany (1965, 1968), Pitt-Rivers (1963) and the proceedings of the 1966 Aix-en-Provence conference (Anthropological Quarterly vol. 42, no. 3, 1969) established for Mediterranean anthropology what Appadurai has called the ‘prestige zones’ or ‘gatekeeping concepts’ (1986: 357). These are concepts ‘that seem to limit anthropological theorizing about the place in question and that define the quintessential and dominant questions of interest in the region’ (ibid.). Tourism in 2000 did not figure among these. But it is clear that new gatekeeping concepts are emerging.5 Gender, national identity and religion have largely replaced honour and shame, kinship, patronage and peasant economics. Although often acknowledging tourism, the gatekeepers are still sidelining it. If in anthropological (though not native) eyes honour and shame were emblematic of life in southern Europe, in native eyes the movement of people in and out of the region today is one of its most significant characteristics.

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Tourists Discussing social and cultural life along the northern shore of the Mediterranean without considering the tourist dimension is somewhat like trying to understand Nuer culture while ignoring their cattle. The Mediterranean is the world’s most popular tourist destination. In 1995 some 561 million tourists were on the move in the world and almost half of these visited Mediterranean countries. Every year their numbers increase and it has been conservatively estimated that by the year 2010 there will be some 450 million domestic and foreign visitors competing for access to accommodation, beaches, heritage sites and nature in the region (Lanquar 1995: 133). Tourists come in many forms. A tourist has been defined as ‘a temporarily leisured person who voluntarily visits a place away from home for the purpose of experiencing a change’ (Smith 1977: 2). They form a continuum that ranges from day trippers, through cruise passengers, domestic vacationers and foreign visitors travelling alone or in groups who stay for a week or more, to local and foreign owners of weekend or holiday homes and leisure immigrants who have more or less settled into what often used to be their holiday home. Owners of second homes and leisure immigrants are a category apart. They have a far greater impact on local culture and, per capita, on the local economy than do mass tourists. They become quasi-locals with an ambivalent status, often introducing new customs; they are active in cultural events and increasingly engage in local politics, for under European Union regulations they are now entitled to vote in municipal elections.6 There are some general characteristics of tourists and tourism that affect all destination communities in one way or another. These include the transient nature of the tourist and the unequal relations between tourists and locals. Because they can afford to buy the services upon which the local economy depends, and often come from more technologically advanced societies, tourists at times patronize and even abuse locals. The latter, on the other hand, can cheat and exploit the tourists because they monopolize local knowledge and services. For example, shopkeepers and cafe proprietors in Gozo, Malta’s small sister island, maintain three different prices: for foreign tourists, for Maltese day trippers and for local residents. While locals occasionally deride this overcharging, they collude. Herzfeld observed the same in Rethemnos, where cafe proprietors would ask local patrons to pay later so  that the tourists would not realize they were being charged more (1991: 84). The relations are also unequal between local residents and more powerful agencies at higher integration levels – the tourist industry, the state and the European Union – that regulate, package and sell local culture to tourists. The visitor–host relation is thus potentially fraught with ambivalence and tensions that in turn can exacerbate relations between state and civil society

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(cf. Berghe, van den, and Keyes 1984: 347; MacCannell 1984: 387; Wood 1984). Another major factor affecting relations between locals and tourists, however, is the visitors’ desire to change their life situation temporarily. They seek escape from established routines, from the constraints of time and place, and the behavioural codes that rule their daily lives. They believe this change will recharge their mental and physical batteries so that they will be better able to cope with the pressures of their daily commitments (see Graburn 1983; Lett 1983; Boissevain 1989a). Victor Turner observes that ‘cognitively, nothing underlines regularity so well as absurdity or paradox. Emotionally, nothing satisfies as much as extravagant or temporarily permitted illicit behaviour’ (1969: 176). This process is facilitated by the masking function that anonymity provides. After all, the people tourists visit do not know the normal persona of the tourist. Tourists can consequently shed their everyday status and, temporarily, become other persons and engage in ‘extravagant’ if not ‘illicit’ behaviour. Donning ‘leisure’ clothes usually signals this change. These strange, often garish, occasionally inexplicably scanty costumes unambiguously mark out the wearer as a tourist. This emblematic garb often amuses but can also offend locals going about their daily activities, whether in bank, shop or church (Boissevain 1996c: 227; Dubisch 1995: 184). Strange dress and weakened inhibitions are not infrequently accompanied by behaviour that would be quite unacceptable at home. Tourists can be loud, lecherous, drunken, and rude. In short, many tourists, for various reasons, are occasionally most unpleasant guests. Yet persons whose livelihood depends upon their presence must somehow come to terms with their difficult behaviour and cater to their often bizarre needs. There are other regular features of mass tourism with which host communities must deal: the crowding of thoroughfares, public transport, shops, and recreational facilities; pollution caused by sewage overflows; and rampant building developments. Furthermore, tourist demand and overcharging drive up the prices of fresh vegetables, fruit and fish. The region’s scarce freshwater resources also come under pressure. Many inhabitants are seriously inconvenienced and annoyed by this. On the other hand, others accept the inconveniences and overcrowding philosophically as part of the cost of the new economy. Some, especially the young and those celebrating their local festivals, welcome tourist crowds and the holiday ambience they bring. Obviously scale is an important factor. Discomfort caused by crowding is usually more keenly felt where the tourist mass is disproportionate to the local population. Among other places, this occurs during the annual Pentecost pilgrimage to the shrine of the Virgin of El Rocío in Almonte (Andalusia). Mary Crain (1996) describes how more than one million urbanites, media men and yuppies crowd out local residents. But circumstances differ elsewhere. Annabel Black (1996) notes that despite severe crowding,

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the inhabitants of Mellieha in Malta do not clash with inhabitants about seaside space. Where visitors choose the limited, excessively crowded sandy beaches, Maltese prefer the (cleaner) remote rocky areas along the coast. Summer crowding has become part of local culture and the Maltese enjoy the lively seaside cafes, pizzerias and discos established for tourists. In fact, it is notable that along the Mediterranean’s northern shore there is remarkably little open friction between tourists and natives in summer. This is because both are celebrating their leisure. Summer, for both visitors and local inhabitants (except those working directly in the tourism industry), is a time for relaxing, partying, sporting, celebrating and romancing, if possible, near the sea. The pursuits of both natives and visitors by and large harmonize in summer. In winter, the situation is often quite different. By then, local inhabitants have had to return to work, to their winter mode. The presence of boisterous holidaying strangers becomes dissonant; inconveniences are no longer overlooked and tension mounts. Roel Puijk (1996: 220–23), with ethnographic data from northern Norway, makes much the same point: the inhabitants there find winter tourists more difficult to deal with than summer visitors. Summer is the light season when relatives and friends on holiday come to visit. In winter, well-dressed, demanding visitors on holiday, circulating among men working on boats and spattered with fish blood, bring out class tensions. These disrupt the egalitarian ethos so characteristic of northern Norway. However, it is also a fact that pickpockets and bag snatchers have long preyed on tourists. There have been recent media reports of tourists being mugged, raped and murdered in the Mediterranean region. Nor are anthropologists spared and several fell victim to pickpockets during the 1996 EASA conference in Barcelona. Jon Mitchell, commenting on the somewhat rosy picture of host–guest relations in the preceding paragraph wrote the following in a letter to me: On a recent trip to Lisbon I was cornered by a young man with a knife, who demanded all my money ‘or I will cut your throat’. I consented, then ran away, and bumped into a police car, which I flagged down. We went in pursuit and luckily caught the mugger. For the next three hours I was at the police station trying to give a statement, whilst the young mugger explained to me why he’d done the crime. He was very sorry that he’d spoilt my day sightseeing, he said, but now at least I’d seen the real Lisbon, which has a lot of poor people, and a lot of drug problems. In a way, he justified his act as a different kind of tourism – to this extent his apologies were not really all that apologetic.

Sometimes, too, patience and hospitality crack under pressure of sheer numbers and there is an anti-tourist backlash. This occurred in 1994 in Malta when tourist arrivals topped 1.2 million. Neither infrastructure nor inhabitants could cope: swimming areas were polluted, hotels were overbooked and both tourists and locals complained to the press (see Chapter 13).

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Identity One of the most striking consequences of tourism is the way it initially promotes self-awareness, pride, self-confidence and solidarity among those being visited (see Chapter 12; Nogués Pedregal 1996). This self-awareness is brought about by the regular presence of outsiders, which automatically creates categories of ‘we’ and ‘they’, insiders and outsiders, hosts and guests. By being looked at, examined and questioned by strangers, locals become aware of how they differ from the visitors. It is generally a source of pride that affluent strangers choose to come to their community to admire the surroundings and customs that they have always taken for granted. These communities have discovered new dimensions of their identity through the interest of tourists. This has stimulated reflection about their own traditions and culture and fostered the preservation of moribund crafts and rituals, which in part has stimulated the more general revitalization of celebrations taking place throughout Europe. Increasingly, today’s tourist masses, like other modern consumers, are demanding more varied and customized products that meet their individual needs for self-improvement and relief from the pressure and pollution of their over-regimented urbanized environment (Featherstone 1991: 18–19; Sabel 1982; Urry 1990: 11–14). More and more are seeking holidays that meet their desire for learning, nostalgia, authenticity, heritage, make-believe, tranquillity, freedom from environmental pollution, physical action and a closer look at the ‘other’. These, in addition to sun, sand and sea, have also become the objects of the postmodern tourist (see Urry 1990; Weiler and Hall 1992). The destination countries along the Mediterranean littoral have been quick to capitalize on these changing trends. They are expanding the promotion of their historical and natural assets, often located far from traditional seaside tourist zones. Existing museums are being revitalized and new ones opened, especially at the regional and local level (Abram 1996; Manologlou 1994). Monuments and traditional architecture, long taken for granted, are being made over into ‘sacralized’ sites by being named, authenticated, framed and enshrined (MacCannell 1976). Michael Herzfeld (1991) and Peter Odermatt (1996) have described this process and the tensions it can generate between national and local interests in Crete and Sardinia. Even traditional rural houses become objects of nostalgia and heritage (Boissevain 1986; Jeannot 1994). Jon Mitchell has shown how tour guides creatively manipulate images of cultural identity to further local economic and political interests (1996). Local tourist organizations, recognizing the benefits of large public celebrations, support, revitalize and expand traditional public rituals and festivals: Carnival in the Ladin-speaking area of the Dolomites (Poppi 1992); a moribund patronal feast in Cantal (Abram 1996); and firewalking in Greece (Danforth 1989: 205–206). They also introduce new events: a cherry

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festival in Jersey Valley of Extremadura (Cruces and De Rada 1992); a stylized threshing performance in Cantal (Abram 1996); a pageant re-enacting the entrance of the Grand Master of the Knights of Malta into the island’s ancient capital (see Chapter 13).7 These few examples represent variations of themes played out in countless other localities. Tourism in many localities has also had an impact on gender identity. The economic power of women and their position in the kinship structure has been protected if not enhanced by the transition from agriculture to tourism. Poor agricultural land inherited by or given to women as dowry becomes enormously valuable, as on Skyros (Zarkia 1996). At other times, often in combination with inherited property and dowry houses, women, as an extension of the household economy, engage in tourist-related business by renting rooms, making handicraft and managing souvenir shops, as in Gozo (Boissevain 1979b), in Cambrils on the Catalan coast (Hermans 1981, 1983) and on the Greek islands of Amouliani and Samos (Salamone and Stanton 1986; Galaní-Moutáfi 1993, 1994). While involvement in touristrelated activity may not always raise their status, it has helped individual women maintain their position, and that of their crafts, at a time when their contribution to the traditional rural household economy is being undermined by mechanization and industrialization. Men, on the other hand, often seek to enhance their status by pursuing tourist women for sex. Sofka Zinovieff describes the Greek kamaki, or harpoon (metaphorically used to describe the act of a Greek man pursuing a foreign woman for sex). Kamaki ‘is a system of male competition, whereby men without material and social status establish other grounds for prestige’. Furthermore, she argues, ‘the act of kamaki highlights the sense of antagonism that many Greeks have toward “Europe” or the West. Kamakia may see themselves as belonging to a poorer, inferior society and by lying to, tricking and sexually conquering foreign tourist women from the supposedly superior societies, they have some revenge’ (Zinovieff 1991: 203; also see Kousis 1989; Bowman 1989, 1996). While mass tourism generally strengthens the identity of the hosts, in local eyes it dehumanizes the visitors and renders them faceless and interchangeable.8 Sometimes it transforms traditional ‘hospitality to servility’ (Herzfeld 1991: 86), but this is not always the case. Overcharging, cheating, rudeness and indifference rather than servility is often the reaction to mass tourism of many Maltese waiters, taxi drivers and shopkeepers (also see Pi-Sunyer 1977: 154–55). The divide between insiders and outsiders is ambiguous. In fact Kenna (1993) warns against making too rigid a dichotomy between locals and outsiders. Many tourists are holidaying emigrants and some of the most active local tourism entrepreneurs are returned migrants (see also Nogués Pedregal 1996).

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Cultural Commoditization It is evident that dealing with tourists involves large-scale commoditization of culture. Early in the 1970s Greenwood provocatively argued that selling ‘culture by the pound’ debases it and ‘robs people of the very meanings by which they organize their lives’ (1977: 137). Greenwood’s condemnation was based on the unfortunate consequences of government intervention in an important celebration in the Basque town of Fuenterrabia. This argument is sometimes advanced by local intellectuals (see Chapter 11). But it is far too sweeping a generalization (see Stott 1979). While not denying that commoditization has destroyed nature and culture, studies also show that by marketing their culture people (re)discover their own traditions and begin to realize their own worth. Museums established to entertain tourists become popular with the natives, who learn about their own history and culture. The same occurs with heritage parks, invented festivals and pageants, the revival of long-abandoned celebrations and food and handicraft markets. All are in part staged to attract outsiders, often with financial help from the tourism authorities. Most are attended by locals who are more interested in amusing and educating their children about the past and entertaining vacationing emigrant family members than in catering to tourists. Black (1996) shows that in spite of dire predictions and the massive influx of tourists, the inhabitants of Mellieha have retained their cultural integrity. The spatial separation of local and tourist accommodation, souvenir shops and restaurants have kept tourists away from the local residential areas. Commoditization and staged authenticity can often protect the back regions and privacy of local inhabitants by keeping tourists focused on the commercialized front region. For example, Testa (1992) describes how a cordon sanitaire of more than six hundred tourist attractions – ranging from shops, museums, buts tours and pretzel factories to artificial homesteads – keep the fifteen thousand Amish inhabitants in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania from being overrun by some five million annual visitors intent on seeing their farms and photographing their archaic clothing and horse-drawn carriages (see also Cohen 1989; McKean 1989). Abram sums up the case for thinking with greater care about the effects of cultural commoditization: ‘commoditization is part of a very positive process by which people are beginning to re-evaluate their history and shake off the shame of peasantry’ (1996: 198). Nonetheless, commoditizing local culture – whether rituals, monuments or territory – without the consent of the participants, as Greenwood (1977: 137) warned, can have unforeseen consequences. Franco, intent on suppressing Spanish regional cultures used flamenco to attract tourists while at the same time presenting it as a component of national, rather than Andalusian, culture (Washabough 1996). Crain (1992, 1996) describes how the commercialization of the annual pilgrimage

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to the Virgin of El Rocío in Almonte has robbed Almonteños and residents of neighbouring municipalities of an important religious and social experience. It has resulted in the valorisation of alternative pilgrimages. Odermatt (1996) recounts how Sardinian authorities decided to make a neolithic tower near Abbasanta more accessible to tourists. They set about improving access, enclosing it, and clearing ‘rubble’, including, as it transpired, the complete Roman stratum of the site. When the outraged mayor stopped the work, the regional authorities denied locals access to the monument. By converting it from a community symbol to a commercial one, the government destroyed its meaning for residents. These then defended their honour by neutralizing the monument, at least temporarily, as a tourist asset. Commercialization of private and community territory without the consent of affected residents in particular provokes indignation and outrage. Few cases of violence have been reported, but as the pressure of mass tourism increases, so will the outrage. As tourists search for the authentic culture they have paid to see, they cross thresholds and boundaries to observe it. The desire to penetrate back regions is inherent in the structure of tourism (MacCannell 1976: 94–96). In this respect tourists resemble anthropologists, who also seek access to back regions to understand the cultures they study. Tourists attempt to penetrate domestic back regions or participate in private events to the discomfort of their unwilling ‘hosts’. Many residents of the small walled town of Mdina, which is visited by some 840,000 tourists annually, have now placed signs on their houses announcing that it is private property to keep tourists from constantly peering into or entering it (see Chapter 13 and Odermatt 1996).

Protecting Back Regions It would be a serious mistake, however, to think of natives passively allowing mass tourism to destroy their culture. The inhabitants of tourist destinations have developed strategies to protect themselves from tourists and entrepreneurs who penetrate their back regions to stare, to undergo authentic experiences, to photograph and to build. The means they use include covert resistance, hiding, exclusion, aggression and organized protest.

Covert Resistance Values, rights and customs threatened by tourism are often, and initially, defended by unspectacular means. These include diverse strategies carried out during the mundane daily struggle of the weak against the powerful who seek to use them. These actions take many forms. All, however, avoid direct

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defiance: ‘They require little or no coordination or planning; they often represent a form of individual self-help; and they typically avoid any direct symbolic confrontation with authority or with elite norms’ (Scott 1985: 29). Those who work in the tourist industry depend on the goodwill of foreign visitors and so are reluctant to confront them directly. The sullen waiters, rude bus drivers and haughty shopkeepers encountered in Malta are cases in point. So are the denigrating stereotypes that circulate there about demanding Sicilians, arrogant Germans, complaining Dutch and stingy Swedes (also see Pi-Sunyer 1977: 154). Gentle parody and ridicule are effective ways of covertly expressing discomfort, opposition and hostility. Nogués Pedregal (1996) gives examples of satirical Carnival songs directed against tourists (also see Evans-Pritchard 1989; Sweet 1989). Another form of covert activity directed against tourists is the sexual humiliation of female tourists by local men structurally subordinated by tourists discussed above by Zinovieff (1991). Such low-key, covert acts of defiance enable persons subordinated by their dependence on tourists to retain their self-respect. Moreover, by these acts they keep alive the pilot light of resistance. If the occasion arises, this sentiment can sometimes be mobilized into more active protest (also see Davis 1975).

Hiding Communities ambivalent about the presence of tourists have taken to hiding aspects of their culture from visitors (Boissevain 2000a). Black discusses how her Maltese neighbours kept certain foods and spaces to themselves; nor did they share their favourite swimming areas with tourists (1996). Waldren also describes how residents of the Mallorcan village of Deià protected their small, crowded harbour from tourists by regularly removing the road sign that pointed to it (1996: 227–33). Many communities hold special celebrations before the tourists arrive, after they have left, or at the hottest time of the day to avoid the attention of outsiders. These are ‘insider-only’ celebrations for members of what could be called the nuclear community – its permanent residents. This excludes visitors from nearby communities and tourists, whether national or foreign. Insider events have a family resemblance to cast parties, when actors and stage crew celebrate the end of a performance, well out of sight of the audience (MacCannell 1976: 92, 94). Similarly the inhabitants of tourist destinations occasionally withdraw to celebrate without tourists. Mary Crain (1996: 50) describes how Almonte villagers, disgusted with the commercialization of the traditional pilgrimage of the Virgin of the Dew, increasingly participate in a rigorous mid-August devotional pilgrimage, the traslado, ‘when the heat makes the tourists wilt and keeps them far away’.

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Cesare Poppi describes how residents in the Val di Fassa village of Penia physically barred outsiders – fellow Ladins from the lower valley as well as tourists – from the village hall where their Carnival masquerade reaches its climax (1992). Other examples of such insider events are the Fête du four at Esclade, Cantal, during which neighbours share a meal of pig trotters and peas cooked in the communal oven (Abram 1996: 16), and the Castañá in Zahara (Nogués Pedregal 1996: 67), when neighbours meet on All Saints Day to feast on chestnuts, sweet wine and soft drinks. These communal meals were explicitly designed to become part of the social calendar of a community of neighbours. In the words of one of Nogués Pedregal’s informants, ‘we created the Castañá to bring the bring people closer to each other, to bring them together’. In Greece Skyrians wait until the tourist buses have left the annual celebration of their saint before they celebrate the ‘real feast’. The members of the celebrating confraternities and their friends then relax, eat, drink and sing together until morning (see Kenna 1992). During Maltese festa celebrations the spectacular demonstrations of village youths take place before the formal outdoor celebration of the parish patrons and after the official celebrations; that is the before the tourist buses arrive and after they leave (see Chapter 11). This strategy of hiding certain celebrations enables locals to continue developing major festivities to attract the tourists on which their prosperity depends without sacrificing the intimacy of celebrating with neighbours. These backstage rites of intensification are increasingly important for maintaining solidarity in communities that are both overrun by outsiders and tied to a work regime that limits socializing for months on end.

Aggression Occasionally people resort to violence to defend themselves against intrusive tourists. Some extreme cases have been recorded. In Malta hunters and bird trappers regularly menace tourists who have been encouraged by government brochures to explore the countryside. They believe that tourists threaten their hobby, since foreigners are usually critical of their shooting and trapping of migrating birds (see Fenech 1992). Recently two Maltese police field inspectors were injured in Gozo by bird-shot pellets. The hunter, when asked by the magistrate why he had shot at a bird while he could see people approaching, replied: ‘Your Honour, I thought they were tourists!’ (the Times [of Malta], 26 April 1996). Pierre van den Berghe recounts how a French tourist was stoned to death by villagers in Chiapas, Mexico for photographing their Carnival (1994: 124). Deirdre Evans Pritchard reports that a furious Navajo shot the tyres of the car of a tourist who had barged into his home to photograph his family eating. The indignant tourist explained his action by arguing that

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since his taxes had funded the reservation, he could photograph the Indians (1989: 97). But on the whole, except for hunters and trappers, the occasional stressed bus driver and overworked waiters, reported Mediterranean reactions to tourist harassment appear to be rather less violent.

Organized Protest The above methods of combating tourist encroachment are largely individual, surreptitious and often spontaneous. But local citizens occasionally organize open protest against those marketing or ‘developing’ their back regions and rights without their consent. Black (1996) and Zarkia (1996) describe how groups of concerned inhabitants dealt with the assault by scantily clad, occasionally topless, tourists on their sense of decency and thus on their sexual mores. Crain (1996) also recounts the successful struggle of residents of the region surrounding Almonte to defend them against the onslaught by tourist developers bent on expropriating their beach and forest heritage. In Malta a campaign by environmental NGOs defeated government plans to construct an airstrip on prime agricultural land in Gozo. They also successfully opposed an U.S.$82 million Italian–Maltese hotel development on St. Thomas Bay. But so far, in spite of a concerted campaign of documentation, picketing, leaks exposing Planning Authority irregularities and a hunger strike, they were unable to halt the ‘redevelopment’ of the 27-year-old Hilton hotel. This U.S.$122 million project involved the destruction of a listed monument and public sea front to construct a larger hotel, 250 luxury apartments, a 16-story business centre and a marina (Boissevain 2001).

Conclusions Mass tourism is part of an immense global commercial process. The product that it promotes is the way of life, culture, memories and expectations of real people. In this it differs from other products transnational corporations promote: the fast food, fashion, digital technology, music, cars, film and television series that have become part of global culture. Tourism’s product – the persons whose history and monuments are packaged and promoted – often vigorously resist attempts to sell their cultural heritage. Unlike the products of transnational manufacturing, media and fashion conglomerates, the tourist product can fight back if fundamental values are challenged. Host communities can and do take specific, active measures to protect their values, customs and territory if threatened by tourism. However, their ability to resist the exploitation of their culture depends on relative power of the existing political regime. Freedom to protest is a necessary condition.

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Tourist destinations have been portrayed as passive victims of the globalizing processes of acculturation and the affluence and lifestyles introduced by mass tourism (Turner and Ash 1975). The case material so far published on Mediterranean tourism, though slim, suggests that destination communities are inventive and resilient. Mass tourism has generally reinforced local cultural identity and self-confidence. But it has also led to increased government intervention in local affairs, thereby exacerbating tension between the state and civil society. Furthermore, the fleeting contacts between hosts and guests inherent in mass tourism reinforce negative stereotyping. Mass tourism does not automatically further understanding between ethnic groups, as the advocates of ‘world peace through world travel’ would have us believe. Furthermore, the impact of mass tourism, at least in southern Europe, has not destroyed community as a focal point of identity, as some globalization theorists predicted (Hannerz 1992, for example). On the contrary, it has enhanced local identity and stimulated civil society to undertake measures to protect it. The movement of outsiders into the Mediterranean region is on a vast scale. Tourism is a major component of this process. Given its impact on the region, tourism in future must occupy a more prominent place on the research agenda of Mediterranean anthropologists.

Acknowledgements Many thanks to Inga Boissevain, Peter Odermatt, Jon Mitchell and to the participants of the anthropology research seminar of the University of Malta for their helpful comments on an earlier version of the present discussion that was finally presented to the ‘International Conference on the Anthropology of the Mediterranean’ organized and elegantly hosted by the Institut d’ethnologie méditerranéenne et comparative, Aix-en-Provence, 14–16 May 1997 (see Albera et al. 2001).

Notes 1. Fraser 1973; Greenwood 1972; Moore 1970; Pi-Sunyer 1973; Schneider, Schneider and Hansen 1972; Stott 1973. 2. Boissevain 1977a, 1979a, 1979b; Boissevain and Serracino Inglott 1979; Greenwood 1976a, 1976b, 1977; Hermans 1981; Moore 1970, 1976; Nash 1979; Pi-Sunyer 1977; Stott 1979; Werff, van der 1980. 3. Boissevain 1996d; Briguglio et al. 1996; Selwyn 1996; Fsadni and Selwyn 1997; Abram et al. 1997. 4. He specifically refers to Chapter 4; Cole and Wolf 1974; Marispini 1968; Davis 1969, 1973; Pitkin 1960; and Wade 1971.

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5. My thanks to Jon Mitchell for this observation. 6. See Greenwood 1962a; Fraser 1973; Pi-Sunyer 1977; Esmeijer 1984; Verster 1985; Boissevain 1986; Bonnain 1994; Waldren 1996; Mitchell 1996, Selwyn 1997; Lindkund 1998. 7. Since this pageant was held in 1993 at least four other towns have borrowed the costumes from the National Tourist Organization to commemorate local historical events. Ostensibly staged to attract foreign visitors, they mostly draw curious compatriots. They project local identity, strengthen community solidarity and feed the existing parochial rivalry. 8. See Pi-Sunyer 1977: 155. In the revised version of his chapter Oriol Pi-Sunyer (1989) observes that tourists may not always be as faceless as he once assumed. Locals protect ‘their’ tourists if outsiders attack them.

CHAPTER 15

TOURISTS, DEVELOPERS AND CIVIL SOCIETY*

As Marx warned years ago, ‘Geography tends to become annihilated as a way of increasing the temporal flow of commodities.’ (Hirsch 1995: 15)

Malta’s traditional architectural and natural heritage was first used to attract tourists and, later, to sell apartments and commercial space to speculators and locals and foreigners seeking holiday homes. Malta’s political culture in combination with blatantly commercial interests are now threatening to destroy this heritage and with it the country’s unique identity. Environmentalists and a growing segment of civil society are increasingly contesting this commercial assault on the country’s landscapes.

Malta and Its Landscapes Malta gained its independence from Britain in 1964. Its government uses proportional representation to elect sixty-five MPs from thirteen five-member constituencies. Since independence two parties have dominated the political scene that is characterized by fierce party loyalty and a winner-takes-all policy. The Nationalist Party (PN) formed the government from 1962 to 1971, from 1987 to 1996 and again from 1998 to the present [2009]. The Malta Labour Party (MLP) governed from 1971 to 1987 and briefly from 1996 to 1998. The small Green Party, Alternattiva Demokrattika (AD), is not yet represented at the national level though it has secured representation in a number of local councils. Originally published as ‘Tourists, Developers and Civil Society: On the Commodifiction of Malta’s Landscapes’, in T. Selwyn and J. Scott (eds), Thinking Through Tourism. Oxford: Berg (2010), pp. 93–115. Reprinted by permission of Berg Publishers, an imprint of A&C Black Publishers Ltd.

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Malta’s built-up landscape still bears the stamp of its strategic location. The wealthy Knights of St. John fortified the settlements around the Grand Harbour and built Valletta as their capital city on the barren peninsula dividing the Grand Harbour from Marsamxett. Until the beginning of the nineteenth century all villages and towns, with the exception of the fortified settlements around the Grand Harbour, were located inland, well away from the coast (Boissevain 1986; 2001). Tightly clustered around enormous, cathedral-like churches, the houses had few windows to the street. Instead they looked inward to their private courtyards. This inland settlement pattern was common in much of the European Mediterranean and protected its habitants from both malaria and the incursions of corsairs seeking booty and slaves (Blok 1969). Seaborne dangers receded early in the nineteenth century, after the British navy had finally pacified the central Mediterranean. The dozen coastal parishes in Malta and Gozo, Malta’s smaller sister island, were all established subsequent to this pacification. During this period the countryside, save for a few large farmsteads, scattered stone shelters, hunting hides and some megalithic remains, was devoid of man-made structures. The attitude to landscape in the late 1950s was ambivalent. Few people lived in the countryside. Farmers, even those who possessed rural accommodation, usually returned to the villages at night. As in many other Mediterranean countries, the countryside was considered dangerous and uncivilized. Residence in the village centre conferred prestige, for built-up landscape was associated with ‘civilization’ (Silverman 1975). Bourgeois inhabitants of the towns looked down upon villagers, who in turn looked down on their farming neighbours. Farmers were regarded as uncivilized – ta’ wara l-muntanja (literally, from behind the mountain). Most Maltese showed little interest in the countryside. Out in the country you were only likely to encounter farmers going to and from their fields, hunters and bird trappers and, occasionally, bands of boys playing near their village. Maltese families generally stayed away from the open country. It was not a recreational zone. The seaside, however, was less threatening. In winter, Sunday drivers parked near each other along the coast, safely locked inside their cars and in the company of others. In summer they crowded together at popular swimming sites. The countryside, because it was uninhabited, was also viewed as a foreboding, wild area, and a convenient place to dump all manner of refuse. Old mattresses, oil drums, tins, discarded clothing, dead animals and other rubbish littered the sides of country lanes and, often, main roads in Malta. Attitudes to the urban landscape were also ambivalent. The most imposing constructions of the Knights in Valletta and around the Grand Harbour housed the British Governor and the headquarters of various British military services. British service departments, branches of the Maltese government, various social clubs, and commercial establishments, used other buildings,

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including parts of the fortifications. They were regarded as utilitarian buildings. Upkeep was the responsibility of the occupier. They were not sentimentally viewed as important constituents of the islands’ patrimony, as heritage. In fact, ‘national patrimony’ and ‘heritage’ were then totally foreign concepts. This utilitarian attitude did not apply to the sacred landscape. The many churches and wayside chapels were regarded as patrimony, not of the nation but of the parishes and the congregations they served. Parish churches were community symbols, treasure houses of collective memory. Their upkeep and embellishment were matters of often fierce debate (Boissevain 1993: 13, 74–96). The numerous megalithic temples, ruins and catacombs, while shown to visitors, were generally poorly cared for. They were definitely not considered part of the sacred landscape. Locals viewed these monuments merely as curiosities – interesting parts of the landscape to be shown to visitors, but nothing special (Grima 1998: 36).

Tourists, Settlers and Builders Britain began the rundown of its Maltese military establishment in the late 1950s. After independence, in 1964, tourism began to be promoted in earnest as an alternative source of income. Between 1960 and 1970 annual tourist arrivals increased from 28,000 to almost 236,000. By 1980 they had reached 789,000 and by 1997 over one million. The advent of mass tourism had a severe, relentless impact on the landscape. Hotels and cheap apartment complexes mushroomed in disorderly fashion, mainly but not exclusively in Marsalforn and Xlendi on Gozo and along Malta’s eastern coast in Mellieha, St. Paul’s Bay, Bugibba, Qawra, Salina, St. Julian’s, Sliema, Marsascala and Birzebbugia. Besides an extensive advertising campaign to attract tourists, the government also developed a successful programme to attract permanent settlers and new residents by means of low tax rates. Favourable tax rates, sun and domestic servants attracted these ‘settlers’, for the most part British retirees, including many former officials and expatriate residents from other former British colonies. The islands promised continuity of their comfortable colonial life style. By the early 1970s some 4,000 had settled in Malta and were beginning to have an important impact on local customs (Boissevain and Serracino Inglott 1979; Esmeijer 1984; Boissevain 1986). Some settlers sought out old farmhouses in the countryside but most preferred the traditional courtyardcentered houses in the heart of the old villages or in the rougher, ‘uncivilized’ countryside. The ‘settlers’ also walked through the countryside for pleasure. In short, they showed an appreciation of the country’s traditional urban and rural landscape that was new to Malta.

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The demand for tourist and expatriate accommodation exacerbated the already acute housing shortage. The Malta Labour Party’s promise to tackle this social problem contributed substantially to its election victory in 1971. The new government set about increasing the affordable housing stock. It constructed housing estates and apartment blocks, made available inexpensive building plots and facilitated mortgages. Rising affluence and the new measures enabled the masses, often together with relatives in cramped oldfashioned accommodation, to move into new apartments or increasingly, into their own newly built houses on the outskirts of their villages. Since the 1970s Malta has been caught up in a frenetic building boom and has become a permanent building site. The growing demand for tourist accommodation, archaic rent laws that left older housing stock empty and rampant speculation have generated overcapacity: 23 per cent of the urban housing stock was unoccupied in 1996 (Mallia 1994; Moviment ghall-Ambjent 1997). The building boom not only encroached on scarce agricultural land. It quite literally consumed much of the countryside. New quarries, ready-mix concrete batching plants (many of them illegal), and uncontrolled illegal dumping of building debris have eaten away or covered vast areas of the country’s limited terrain. Malta’s clientelistic political culture facilitated the award of building permits to political clients, thus furthering rampant abusive building and subverting the enforcement of building regulations (also see Mallia 1994: 700–2). Malta’s swift adaptation to mass tourism was due on a number of factors. To begin with, not all of Malta’s economic eggs were in the tourist basket. Malta had other sources of income that included a giant commercial dockyard, a host of small manufacturing industries and, at least until 1979, when Britain closed its last military establishment on the island, a strategic location for which it had been paying the Maltese government £15 million a year. The standard of living in Malta was relatively high compared to other Mediterranean societies in the early 1960s. Consequently, the contrast between the lifestyle of tourists and Maltese was not particularly striking and thus did not provoke the friction based on envy reported elsewhere. Maltese were also outward looking. For centuries they had been used to large numbers of foreign residents who maintained a different lifestyle. They learned to do their own thing – and in their own native language – while in face-to-face contact with foreign neighbours. There was also a tradition of service. The transition from serving the British military to serving still mainly British tourists was one of degree. Maltese maintain their independence, even as waiters, chambermaids and shop assistants. As all who have been to Malta can testify, their indifference and occasional rudeness (especially of bus drivers) is often startling. Moreover, the Maltese were able to absorb a large tourist influx without undue stress as they were used to crowded conditions and had acquired the

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social skills necessary to cope with these. General friendliness and widespread knowledge of English – the lingua franca of the tourist industry – facilitated communication with tourists. Finally, the Labour government of the 1970s demonstrated a firm intention to dominate the tourist industry, rather than be dominated by it (Boissevain 1977a). Tourism continued to increase in the 1980s and by 1985 annual tourist arrivals had reached 561,000. But lack of careful planning and weak enforcement of building codes resulted in a rampant sprawl of (often illegal) new buildings and destruction of natural habitat by illegal quarries and the dumping of building rubble in the countryside. Increasingly, sections of the public began to grumble and protest about environmental destruction and lack of adequate planning. In spite of being roughed up by politically motivated elements within the police force and Labour party activists resentful of any criticism of ‘their’ government, environmentalists began sporadic demonstrations. They protested, generally unsuccessfully, against uncontrolled building activity, rampant development of beach concessions, illegally built tarmac plants and the massive allocation of government building plots on agricultural land, notwithstanding the large amount of vacant property (Boissevain 1993: 153; Mallia 1994: 695; Boissevain and Theuma 1998: 101–2).1

Free Market, Commodification, Contention Following the 1987 elections, the new Nationalist government uncritically introduced free market principles. This speeded up the privatization and thus the commodification of the environment. By abolishing the Labour government’s strict regime that had prohibited the import of a long list of consumer goods that ranged from chocolates to television sets, the new government stimulated unrestrained competitive consumerism. The government also began to address the dire environmental situation. By 1992 Malta finally had a Structure Plan (1990), an Environment Protection Act (1991) and a Development Planning Act (1992) providing for a Planning Authority to administer and enforce the relevant legislation. The government also moved to upgrade the tourist product by prioritizing the reputedly more affluent and environmentally friendly ‘quality tourists’ over the traditional sun-seeking tourists that hitherto had been the industry’s mainstay (Horwath and Horwath 1989). Inadvertently the new tourist Master Plan paved the way for a serious escalation of conflict. Responding to the plan’s recommendations, the government actively stimulated the building of luxury hotels, housing for resident tourists and the construction of marinas. It urged excursions to the countryside in winter and spring and it promoted diving, golf and visits to monuments and traditional religious festivals. It staged invented pageants and re-enactments of historical military

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ceremonies. In short, the new policy actively commodified Malta’s history and its natural, social and cultural landscapes. Unfortunately, government planners largely ignored the impact that the appropriation of environmental and cultural resources for luxury accommodation and leisure facilities like golf courses, multiple swimming pools, beach concessions and marinas could have on the environment and on public opinion (see also Ionnides and Holcomb 2001). The new policy thus stimulated increased destruction of the rural and coastal landscape and restricted access to the countryside and foreshore. Not surprisingly, these developments provoked conflict. The environmental NGOs, now tolerated by the Nationalist government, vigorously challenged all the new mega projects and related developments. They repeatedly clashed with the Planning Authority and developers over the new projects designed to attract quality cultural tourists. Without going into details, these are some of the major campaigns that were mounted after the mid 1990s: the Gozo Air Strip (1995 to 1996); the Hilton Hotel Portomaso extension and yacht marina (1995 to 2000); the Munxar Point St. Thomas Bay Leisure Complex (1995); the Verdala Golf Course (1994 to 2004); the Siggiewi Cement Plant (1999); the Tuna Penning Project (1998 to 2001); the Xaghra l-Hamra Golf Course (2005 to 2007); the Ramla l-Hamra villa and hotel complex in Gozo (2006 to 2008); the Qui-si-sana car park in Sliema (2002 to 2009); the Mistra Bay Disco (2008 to 2009); and the Bahrija Valley villa (summer 2009). These campaigns involved petitions, demonstrations, technical reports, press briefings, lobbying local and European Union parliamentarians, and establishing websites and umbrella groups to coordinate their activities. The umbrella group that led the campaign against the Verdala Golf Course consisted of twenty different NGOs. All but two of the eleven campaigns – those opposing the Hilton Portomaso extension, marina and tuna penning – were successful in that the projects were either withdrawn by the developers, frozen by the government or rejected by the planning authorities. This may well be a unique record of NGO success. Ongoing campaigns are currently targeting some mega development projects discussed later.

Continuing Environmental Destruction At this stage one may well ask why, despite the new strict planning laws administered by the Malta Environment and Planning Authority (MEPA), did widespread, often illegal, building and general environmental destruction still persist?2 Alongside the government’s structural bias in favour of the free market and private enterprise, and the building and tourist industries in particular, there are a number of Maltese customs and attitudes that are also responsible. Here I discuss ten, but there are undoubtedly more.

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The first, and perhaps most obvious, is that until very recently the general public knew and cared very little about the countryside and were rather apprehensive about visiting it. They literally did not recognize its beauty and ecological importance. Hence they were indifferent to its pollution and the destruction brought about by its privatization. Second, the Maltese family-centred world-view holds that any action undertaken to benefit one’s family is justifiable, and expects others to behave in a similar way. This attitude has been called ‘amoral familism’,3 and it has left deep scars on the landscape. It leads to a disregard of the effects on others – neighbours, strangers and future generations – of actions undertaken to further the interests of self and family. It is part of the fabric of daily life in Malta. Among other things, it leads to indiscriminate dumping of rubbish beyond one’s front door, for public spaces are regarded as no man’s land. It also condones the illegal construction of buildings with total disregard for the laws and regulations established to protect the quality of life of others and the nation’s environment. Amoral familism conflicts with the notion that individual rights and interests must sometimes be sacrificed for the common good, such as the notion that the state’s building ordinances and zoning regulations should be obeyed because they are right and just. Third, the notions of heritage and patrimony until recently were foreign to most Maltese and Gozitans. Many – if not most – still look upon much of the country’s natural and monumental heritage as having to do with others – the Knights, the British, il-Gvern (government), the tourists – with them, not with us. It is a legacy of colonialism. The foreign powers that colonized the Maltese Islands were generally uninterested in promoting Maltese culture or pride in their country. The Maltese thus reached independence with a poor self-image and a cowed civil society that was barely acknowledged. However, slowly more people are beginning to explore the countryside, which has taken on a new meaning that approaches a sense of patrimony (see Grima 1997). Generally speaking, however, this interest is not shared by most villagers, or by residents in the working-class districts of the towns and cities. Landscape as an intrinsic component of national patrimony is not yet part of Maltese culture at the grassroots. It is there to be used for hunting, farming and building. Fourth, the extreme importance that Maltese attach to owning a house is also relevant. In the words of a Maltese sociologist: An own house is a major and safe investment; a source of family pride; a fortress to protect its owners against an all-intrusive society where privacy comes at a premium; an heirloom for the children . . . [I]n the choice between construction for private gain and maintaining a historic asset for the common good, the choice for the former is, usually, a foregone conclusion. (Baldacchino 2007: 99; my emphasis)

Fifth, the pervasive system of patronage, clientalism, nepotism and a real or imagined network of friends of friends reinforces the firm belief that

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influential friends and relatives in government or a political party can, in return for loyalty, political support, favours or cash, obtain building permits, regularize abusive building activities, influence the judiciary and obscure other contraventions (Boissevain 1974a; Mallia 1994: 698–701; Mitchell 2002). The very fact that illegal construction activities are so widespread, and that so few persons are successfully prosecuted and severely punished for this, validates this belief and encourages potential offenders to proceed without the necessary permission. Sixth, the country’s somewhat muddled and archaic legal system makes it extremely difficult for MEPA successfully to prosecute building offences and to remove illegal constructions, even if it had the resources to do so. The inability – and/or unwillingness – of the state to enforce its own building regulations encourages people to disregard them. Seventh, fear of retaliation for reporting or testifying against someone. This leads to the Maltese version of Sicilian omertà: collusion through silence (see also Baldacchino 1997: 116–24; 2008: 42–43). This fear also reflects the lack of confidence in the ability of the state to protect the rights of its citizens, and thus it underlines the need to cultivate influential protectors. There may even occasionally be some empathy with the offender: halli lil kulhadd jimxi ghal rasu (let everyone go his/her own way). The fear of reprisal for public criticism of family, neighbours, colleagues, political parties, government, or the Church is ever present. It inhibits persons from standing up and disagreeing with, or even just questioning someone who is or may be more influential or powerful. This fear of others has muzzled the voice of civil society. But, very slowly, this fear is growing weaker. Fifty years ago few dared to sign their own name to letters to newspapers criticizing government agencies or officers; now newspapers and blogs carry many signed critical letters. Most Maltese have personally experienced and/or know of persons who have been punished for criticizing their neighbours, superiors, government policy or influential persons, or for reporting some illegal activity. Common acts of retaliation include splashing paint on or setting fire to private vehicles or one’s front door, refusal of a permit, denial of a deserved promotion, scholarship or contract, and for critical employees, an unpleasant transfer. Critical news media and outspoken NGO activists are cowed by withholding advertising and/or serving libel writs on editors and columnists. The harsh, often violent, reaction of the Labour government in the 1970s and 1980s to those criticizing its policies – such as the attack on environmentalists alluded to above – also severely subdued the voice of civil society (see also Boissevain 1993: 153; Mallia 1994: 695; Boissevain and Theuma 1998: 101–2). Such punishments are of course not unique to Malta. But in Malta the fear of retribution is pervasive. It is a characteristic of those who live in small, interrelated communities in face-to-face contact with each other (see also Baldacchino 1997: 116–24; 2008: 42–43).

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Eighth, the central government manipulates planning policy for party political ends. For example, in July 2006 the parliament, without public consultation, and the strategic environmental assessment (SEA) study required by the European Commission, voted to extend the 1985 Development Zone boundaries by 2.3 per cent. Right after this contentious decision, prices across the entire property market shot up by a massive 32.17 per cent over the same month in the previous year (Vella 2008). This naturally delighted hundreds of small property owners, speculators, architects and developers who subsequently were able to obtain building permits in what were formerly ‘green areas’ outside the development zone (ODZ).4 This decision undoubtedly helped the Nationalist Party to win the national elections held in March 2008. Local environmental organizations duly reported the transgression of the SEA directive to the European Commission, which then warned the government that it would investigate the matter. As of May 2009 the Commission was still contemplating whether to start infringement procedures against Malta (Debono 2009). Ninth, short-term planning combined with greed for quick profit is also a major cause of the destruction of the landscape. This short-term vision, in turn, is in part a consequence of the colonial legacy of relying upon more powerful others – until recently Britain, now the European Union – to take care of long-term problems. But it is also partly a consequence of the short planning span stimulated by the five-year electoral cycle. The greed is fuelled by the self-indulgence encouraged by the fierce competitive consumerism stimulated by the free market policy promoted after the 1987 election. Finally, the electoral system furthers the intertwining of interests between politicians, the planning authority, developers and builders. The small constituencies generate intense pressure on politicians competing for votes from the same small pool of constituents. One way for candidates to obtain votes is to (promise to) personally intervene with authorities on behalf of their constituents. Acquaintances working in the MEPA assured me that political pressure on them at times was severe.

Confronting the Building Industry Three contentious environmental episodes made headlines in Malta between November 2007 and July 2009. They provide excellent examples of the intertwined and conflicting vested interests of politicians, MEPA board members, architects and construction entrepreneurs discussed above, and the impact they can have on the environment. They also provide a glimpse of some of the activities the environmental NGOs undertake in confronting the constant pressure of the building industry and illustrate the essential role that NGOs now play in defending Malta’s natural heritage.5

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The Lidl Supermarkets On 30 November 2007 Alternattiva Demokratika reported that once again the Development and Control Commission (DCC – MEPA’s review and appeals board, the members of which are appointed by the Prime Minister) had dismissed the negative recommendation of the Planning Directorate and approved an application for the construction of a huge supermarket between the tiny adjacent villages of Safi and Kirkop. The designated area consisted of hectares of arable land that had recently been cultivated and was scheduled as Outside the Development Zone (ODZ), thus not to be built on. Alternative Demokratika commented pointedly that, ‘It is no use designating areas “outside the scheme” when the DCC (Development Control Commission) is able to overturn the technical and professional deliberations of MEPA’s own staff’. MEPA had stated that ‘the board felt that the supermarket provided an essential service to the communities of Safi and Kirkop’.6 On 12 December 2007 the Kirkop mayor emailed me about the supermarket and complained that MEPA had never consulted the Kirkop local council about the project: ‘It is a shame. The “Contractor” [Malta’s foremost builder] bulldozed the fields in just three days. We cannot protect any Roman remains as he covered the whole ground with gravel. However, I doubt what we could do against the “Contractor”, but at least we could have photographed the site before it was bulldozed and issued a press release that the area is a sensitive archaeological site.’ The following day the Maltese language newspaper l-Orizzont published a long letter from the mayor in which he strongly protested against the building of the supermarket, arguing that ‘We should protect the little land and heritage we have left (Nipprotegu l-ftit raba li fadal)’.7 Five days later, the mayor emailed me to say that the Contractor was ‘working day and night to finish the Lidl German food mega supermarket’. There had also been excellent coverage on the Labour Party’s television channel about his objection to the development. His sister had warned him that he was, ‘risking being beheaded like St. John the Baptist’. Was this tongue-in-cheek or an expression of her real fear that he could expect trouble for publicly criticizing the authorities and, especially, the powerful Contractor? He had, since 2003, applied for permits to build a total of seven Lidl supermarkets, of which five were ODZ. Among these, two were already under construction: the one in Safi and another in the neighbouring village of Luqa. The Luqa supermarket, like the one in Safi, had also been approved despite the strong objections of MEPA’s Planning Directorate. Both the Civil Aviation Department and the Malta International Airport had objected because its proposed location was in the Public Safety Zone of Runway 24. The Agriculture Department had also objected as the site consisted of good agricultural land.

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The MEPA’s deputy chairman had originally submitted the Luqa supermarket application in her capacity as the architect of the Contractor for whom she had been working since 2006. However, following a Malta Today report that highlighted a potential conflict of interest, she had asked another architect to supervise the project for the Contractor. At the end of February 2008 the entire DCC board resigned in the wake of the MEPA auditor’s report on the Safi supermarket. The report had lambasted the board for unanimously approving the project despite a recommendation for refusal by the Planning Directorate on the grounds that ‘Such a permit should have never been issued on land that was outside the development zone and that the scale of the project required an environment impact assessment, which had not been called for’. The chairman of Alternattiva Demokratika announced that they would be applying pressure through the German Green Party on the Lidl mother company not to go ahead with its plans in Malta.8 The Malta Chamber of Planners promptly announced that the MEPA permit issued for the Safi supermarket could still be withdrawn under existing legislation. The Chamber observed that, inexplicably the DCC’s justification for the permit was based on the premise that Kirkop and Safi and the surrounding villages had to have a supermarket and that the development did not conflict with agricultural policy and provided an essential service to the communities of the surrounding villages. The Chamber pointed out that these were not isolated villages and it therefore did not see the essential need to which the DCC referred. The Chamber concluded that the decision was in breach of Development Planning and that relevant articles (Act 1992, Article 13(5) and Article 39(A)) in fact allowed the authority to revoke the permit.9 In October 2008 the Safi supermarket opened and the radical NGO, Movement Graffitti, remarked that despite the pre-election controversy over the irregular manner in which the permission had been granted and forced the resignation of the DCC board, it was unbelievable that, ‘no one lifted a finger to revoke the permit . . . with the result that a huge tract of agricultural land has been forever destroyed’.10 Disputes surrounding Lidl supermarkets continued. In May 2009 Malta Today reported that the safety of people parking their cars at the Lidl supermarket in Luqa might be at risk: a MEPA sign now warned the general public that ‘This site is located within the direct path of low-flying aircraft. The exposure to substantial health and safety risks, particularly in the event of an aircraft accident, is hereby notified.’ The paper also reported that MEPA’s auditor was investigating the approval of the Luqa supermarket. He started this investigation after the former owner of the site complained that MEPA had three times turned down his requests to develop the same land. The auditor then noted that ‘Subsequently he sold his land the to the present developer (the Contractor) who had no difficulty in obtaining the development permit requested’.11

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The Mellieha Bridge On 6 January 2008 Malta Today reported that construction activity on a bungalow being renovated in a restricted green area of the Santa Marija Estate in Mellieha caused a landslide that damaged a bridge. The project had been approved despite the negative recommendation of the MEPA case officer. He had declared the construction unacceptable because the swimming pool, water reservoir, pool deck and driveway all encroached on a protected green area. Extensive bulldozing beyond the permitted footprint had caused the collapse of a bridge. The road was rendered unusable. The developer also obliterated other parts of the valley to make way for trucks and bulldozers, though this was not covered by the MEPA permit. The architect who planned and supervised the development was none other than the MEPA’s deputy chairman and the builder was her employer, the Contractor.12 On 13 January 2008 the same newspaper announced that the Minister for the Environment had asked for the resignation of the MEPA Deputy Chairman because of her personal involvement with illegal development activities that led to the destruction in the Mellieha Santa Marija Estate. A former president of the Chamber of Architects and once chairman of the Development Control Commission, she had been promoted to her present MEPA post in December 2005. As already noted, by December 2006 she had been engaged as the Contractor’s architect for the construction of some of the Lidl supermarkets. This blatant combination of overlapping and conflicting roles prompted the coordinator of Flimkien Ghal Ambjent Ahjar (FAA – Together for a Better Environment) to exclaim, ‘This is obscene! The Deputy Chairman is effectively on the payroll of Malta’s biggest developer who has a track record of 82 environmental infringements. This is outrageous’.13

The Mistra Bay Disco Four days before the Parliamentary elections on 8 March 2008 the leader of the Malta Labour Party announced that there had been an exchange of monies in the award of a MEPA permit for the development of a disco on ODZ land at Mistra Bay belonging to a prominent Nationalist MP noted for his keen interest in the environment. When questioned about this, the Prime Minster replied that he had asked the Commissioner of Police to investigate the allegation. He then proclaimed that land outside development zones must be steadfastly protected: ‘ODZ is ODZ’. Asked whether he would revoke the permit issued for the Contractor’s Lidl supermarket in Safi, he said that he had no power to revoke the permit. ‘That is why we want the law to be changed . . . the law was designed to limit the influence of politicians and let

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the experts decide’.14 As of August 2009 the results of the police investigation had not been made public.

Promoting Tourism: Themes, Images and Landscapes From the early 1960s onwards sun and sea plus colourful fishing boats have been central to Malta’s tourist promotion. In fact when the Labour Government assumed power in the 1970s it even changed the national coat of arms to reflect these themes. Previously, this had consisted of a shield showing an emblematic Maltese flag flanked by two dolphins; in 1975 the Malta Labour Party changed this into a composition consisting of the sun, the sea, two crossed agricultural implements, a traditional boat (a dghajsa), a strip of sand and a prickly pear cactus. The National Tourism Board could have designed this, but in fact it was the winning entry of competition held among school children. After winning the elections in 1987 the Nationalist government changed the coat of arms back to a plainer version of the original, but without the dolphins. The home page of the Malta Tourism Authority website (www. visitmalta.com) displays the principal elements of Malta’s maritime heritage to entice tourists to visit Malta. In March 2009 the following fifteen photographic scenes were shown on a continuous loop: Fort St. Angelo seen from the surface of the Grand Harbour; Mdina viewed from fields below; a pristine beach with just two couples walking hand in hand; yachts anchored in a Comino bay; the St. Julian sea front; the Sliema sea front; an empty green hillside with the sea in the background; a colourful fishing boat (luzzu); a display of colourful fireworks; Marsamxett Harbour at the start of yacht race; a villa in Gozo with sea view; a scuba diver approaching a wreck; the Verdala Palace; the Upper Barrakka in Valletta; a cruise liner alongside the Valletta waterfront. The principal promotional mantra of the tourist authority thus includes, rest, empty spaces, tranquil beaches, aesthetic panoramas of sea and landscape and historic and rural vistas. Of the fifteen scenes, eleven had an obvious maritime flavour; maritime themes are still key components of Malta’s tourism marketing campaign today.15 Tourists are not so naïve that they believe everything they read and see in the promotional material. Nonetheless the reality they discover upon actually visiting Malta may come as something of a shock to many. In 2008, besides some magnificent vistas reminiscent of those they might have encountered on the tourism authority’s website, they would have found that the beaches were scarce, terribly crowded and quite often filthy; that obtrusive odours and organic debris sometimes emanated from the many cages of tuna being fattened in or near popular bays; that the roads were terribly congested and often in dangerously poor repair; that parts of the open countryside were often littered with all manner of refuse; that many picturesque rambling paths were

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closed to walkers by threatening hunters and bird trappers; that there was a giant, still-smoking, recently retired landfill – ‘Mount Maghtab’ – looming over the coast near Salina Bay; and that large billboards along the highways disturbed and often completely obscured coastal and inland vistas. Most disappointing of all for first-time visitors will be the extent to which the shoreline and bays, already substantially urbanized by a collar of large hotels and higgledy-piggledy apartment blocks, were being further citified by a series of mega speculative property developments. In order to grasp the scale of the building taking place along the north-east coast in 2009 a number of the major projects are briefly described below. All have been or are still being challenged by environmental NGOs.

Developments in Progress In the near future the 500,000 cruise passengers who annually visit Malta will pass Smart City, a new town being developed by Maltese, Dubai and United States entrepreneurs on the southern side of the entrance to the Grand Harbour, Malta’s foremost maritime treasure. Smart City is to be built on 300,000 square metres of land that includes part of Fort Ricasoli: 54 per cent will include office space for up to 11,000 ICT and business employees; 27 per cent will be a commercial area for hotels, shops, restaurants, cafes and other commercial outlets; and 24 per cent will become a residential zone, of which 19 per cent will accommodate 460 residential units in seven-story blocks and 40 luxury villas with swimming pools and sea views.16 Looming over the north side of the entrance to Marsamxett harbour and facing Valletta is the nearly completed grim façade of a portion of the Tigné Point development (see Figure 15.1). This is to consist of 460 apartments to be crammed into several eleven-story blocks built around a commercial and recreational plaza. The apartments are advertised as follows: ‘Framed on three sides by the Mediterranean Sea, Tigné Point draws its inspiration from the interplay of light and water . . . one is beset from all angles by a visual testimonial of man’s interaction with the sea’.17 Further into Marsamxett Harbour the Midi Consortium’s Manoel Island development is preparing to locate another 450 housing units, a modern yacht club, a luxury hotel, a casino, a sports centre a boat yard and a marina with 400 berths including some for super yachts. According to the Midi Consortium blurb: ‘The €450 million, 44 hectare Manoel Island and Tigné Point development is Malta’s most ambitious property regeneration project. These two prime sites are located in one of the island’s most desirable residential areas. Within view of each other across Marsamxett Harbour, Tigné Point and Manoel Island’s fabulous locations are a guarantee of their enduring appeal’.18

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Figure 15.1 The Midi Consortium’s development on Tigné Point (photo: courtesy of Marc Morell, 2007).

Just behind the Tigné Point project other developers are erecting the twenty-story apartment blocks of the Fort Cambridge complex for 341 apartments with ‘spectacular views’. In March 2009 one small (90 square metres) privately owned apartment was already being offered for sale at €395,000.19 Situated further into Marsamxett Harbour near the Gzira waterfront, the Metropolis Plaza, a €60 million development, is under construction. The three high-rise buildings, of thirteen, twenty-seven, and thirty-three floors, incorporate residential, commercial, health and leisure facilities, and 500 underground parking spaces. Future residents have been promised ‘spectacular views of Manoel Island, Sliema Creek and the sea beyond Valletta’. In November 2007 thirty-four residential units and some garage spaces in the South Tower sold for a total market value of €13.7 million within ten minutes of launch.20 A little further along the coast in St. Julian’s, the new Pender Place residential and commercial complex will consist of sixteen villas and 330 apartments in three multi-story blocks. Residents have also been promised spectacular views of Manoel Island, Sliema Creek and the sea beyond Valletta.21 Further northwards along the coast, on Xemxija hill overlooking St. Paul’s Bay, the controversial Mistra Village Complex, a project by Kuwaiti developers Al Massaleh and Maltese contractors, will comprise three boomerang-shaped eleven-story towers into which 900 apartments will be packed. Many of the

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future residents will have spectacular views of the bay, but others, it seems, will just look at each other.22 On Mellieha Bay to the north, the 120 luxury apartments in thirteen clusters of the Tas-Sellum Development are being built, with three pools, on the steep hill overlooking the bay. Residents of course are to be attracted by the ‘superb sea and country views’.23 Still further to the north, on Gozo, another controversial proposal, the Qala Creek mega project, is to be built in an abandoned quarry at Hondoq ir-Rummien that had once been earmarked by the local council to be landscaped as a nature park. It is to comprise a hotel, a small ‘traditional village’ with 200 terraced residences, 60 self-catering flats, 25 villas and a yet-to-be-excavated marina for 150 yachts. Its residents will be able to make use of the minute adjacent beach that all Gozitans prize as their only swimming area sheltered from the Majjestral, the prevailing strong north-west wind. Altogether the project will be able to accommodate some 1,500 people. This is roughly the population of the small adjacent village of Qala.24 Another contentious project in Gozo is the Ta’Cenc Golf Course, Villa and Nature Park. This is to be located near an existing tourist complex on land designated as an Important Bird Area (IBA). It is to include a new hotel and thirty-eight new villas and bungalows overlooking Mgarr ix-Xini Bay in the existing bird sanctuary and according to the proposal, would be located outside the permitted development. The proposal may also include a golf course and another hotel.25 These then are the projects that are underway or about to start in 2009. All have been or are being contested by NGOs. They involve the building of four hotels, 329 villas and terraced houses, ten mega complexes housing 4,121 apartments and the construction of two marinas. All are being built either on the coast with sea views and alongside or overlooking bays and harbours. All have come into being in the new millennium and are clearly catering for foreigners, expats, resident tourists and affluent Maltese. With the exception of the Qala Creek project, they make no attempt to imitate or blend in with vernacular architecture as has been done in many tourist locations in the Middle East (Daher 2006: 18). To the contrary, they seem to be patterned on the modern, cement, mass-tourist developments along the Spanish costas. During the last decade there was a sharp increase in property purchased by foreigners looking for a Mediterranean second home. In fact, between 1998 and 2003 their purchases increased annually by 41 per cent. With Malta joining the European Union in May 2004 there was constant growth in foreign purchases, of which 60 per cent were for apartments and 28 per cent for terraced houses.26 Some Maltese are able to afford to purchase these new luxury seaside apartments into which they move in the summer or rent out. Property in Malta has always been regarded as a good, safe investment. Local

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property prices had been going up by between six and ten per cent annually since the 1960s. Malta has a large, growing grey to black economy. Much of it was invested locally and abroad in property. While the Maltese economy stagnated after 2000, recording on average zero growth in GDP from 2001– 2004, property prices boomed, reaching an average increase of 18.80 per cent in 2004. However, the price boom ended in 2008.27 When it became possible to repatriate overseas savings without too many questions asked, many invested in building projects. This local investment increased as the entrance date to the European Union and its stricter fiscal and banking controls approached. As noted, the Maltese property market, and the Smart City and Mistra Village projects in particular, have also benefited from some of the Gulf’s ‘U.S,$80 billion in liquidity awaiting investment’ (Daher 2006: 51).

Conclusions From the 1960s through the 1980s the panoramic vistas of the islands’ coasts were used to attract settlers and tourists. Now these same aspects of Malta’s maritime heritage, while still attracting tourists, have since the 1990s been extensively exploited by property speculators and building entrepreneurs to attract affluent local and foreign speculators and second-home owners. These new real estate ventures are changing the character of the inland and coastal landscape. This unique environmental heritage is irreversibly being urbanized and made ugly. In the words of the vice-president of leading NGO Din l-Art Helwa, ‘Fort Cambridge, Tigné Point and Pender Place represent institutionalized vandalism’ (Scicluna 2007: 20). Such has been the progress of the commercialization of Malta’s landscape. The country’s coastal zone is increasingly coming to resemble other overdeveloped Mediterranean coastal resorts. Malta as a picturesque tourist destination is losing out as these other resorts have far more and better beaches and extensive hinterlands. The new real estate developments are destroying the country’s unique landscape and overwhelming its indigenous architecture. These are the very characteristics that give Malta a competitive edge to attract visitors interested in discovering something authentically traditional and different from the usual massive, built-up resorts of its aggressive, larger rivals in the region. This uniqueness is an essential element of its own identity and, in the long-run, the most precious resource with which to attract the tourists on which its economy heavily depends. Besides the ongoing building activity of real estate speculators, the coast is also being desecrated by voracious tuna ranchers who have filled the entrance of many of the islands’ bays and adjacent water with the greatest concentration of tuna pens in the Mediterranean (Boissevain 2004). Since 2000 this growing tuna industry has polluted the surrounding waters and has all

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but exterminated the Mediterranean’s bluefin tuna stock.28 Again this is an example of how commodification of a valued resource leads to its destruction. In short, Malta increasingly is sacrificing important aspects of its heritage to local and foreign speculators. They profit from the poorly regulated property market, the failure of the majority of the country’s citizens to recognize the importance of their own cultural and natural heritage and the weakness of a government entwined with the building industry. Can Malta continue to sell off this heritage – its family silver – to outsiders without destroying the essence of its own identity and the patrimony of future generations? Is the discussion above merely the subjective discourse of a nostalgic foreigner who for the past fifty years has watched Malta progressively become more subservient to Mammon and slowly lose essential, irreplaceable elements of its identity? Many Maltese themselves are making the same observations. But their government is still ignoring their warnings – and so the desecration and great sell-out continues. Still, could it be that the quite remarkable record that the environmental NGOs have achieved during the past decade in killing off nine out of eleven environmentally destructive projects they challenged is an indication that the political class has in fact been obliged to listen seriously to civil society? Be that as it may, at present Malta is suffering from paradigm paralysis.29 It is high time that Malta’s economic planners and politicians follow the advice of Malta’s chief lateral thinker (de Bono 1967: 30) and climb up out of the deep hole crowded with colleagues paralyzed by the prosperity-and-sustainable-development-through-building-more-and-more paradigm and look around for another paradigm before any more of Malta’s natural landscapes are destroyed.

Acknowledgements An earlier version of this paper was presented to the conference on ‘Ships, Saints and Sealore: Maritime Ethnography of the Mediterranean and Red Sea’ organized by National Maritime Museum of Malta, 16–19 April 2009. I am most grateful to Dionesius Agius, Godfrey Baldacchino, Michael Briguglio, Tim Gambin, Rachel Radmilli, Mario Salerno, Julie Scott, Tom Selwyn and Astrid Vella for their very helpful comments and suggestions. As always, my very special thanks to Inga for her constructive criticism and eye for the apt word.

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Notes 1. The allocation of building permits despite a surplus of vacant properties is still ongoing. The Malta Environment and Planning Authority (MEPA) approved 65,737 new dwellings between January 1998 and May 2008 although more than 43,000 properties were completely vacant all year round (de Bono 2008). 2. This section is largely based on Boissevain (2006a). 3. The ethic of amoral familism is found throughout the Mediterranean region, the Middle East, Africa, Latin America and Asia. It is a reflection of the cultural and social importance attributed to kinship, especially where the state is unwilling or unable to protect its subjects against injustices. It exists in a particularly concentrated form in Malta because of the importance of the family and the close-knit, small-scale, face-to-face character of the crowded islands and the legacy of alien domination. E.C. Banfield (1958) first explored the concept of amoral familism. See Silverman (1968) and Miller and Miller (1974) for critical discussions of the term. 4. In the five years between 2002 and 2006 MEPA approved permits for the building of almost 38,000 dwellings and a record 10,500 in 2006 alone (Scicluna 2007: 18). 5. See http://www.maltatoday.com.mt/2007/12/23/n4.html 6. See http://www.maltatoday.com.mt/2007/12/23/n4.html 7. See http://www.l-orizzont.com.news2.asp?artid=40485 8. See http://www.dinlarthelwa.org.content/view/117/70. 9. See http://www.dinlarthelwa.org.content/view/118/70/ 10. See http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20081008/local/safi-supermarket-opensdespite-building-permit-controversy 11. See http://www.maltatoday.com.mt/2009/05/24/t7.html 12. See http://www.maltatoday.com.mt/2008/01/06/n12.html 13. See http://www.maltatoday.com.mt/2008/01/13/tl.html 14. On 9 July 2009 the Prime Minister finally promulgated a long-promised MEPA reform. Henceforth planning and environmental policies would be drawn up within the office of the Prime Minster while enforcement would be at the centre of a better environmental policy that respected rights. Din L-Art Helwa (The National Trust of Malta) protested that ‘shifting responsibility for policy from MEPA back into the hands of ministers and politicians is a grave mistake . . . It is a step back into the past.’ (See www. timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20090714/local/shifting-policy-responsibility-topoliticians-a-grave-mistake-din-l-art-helwa; http://www.maltatoday.com.mt/04/06/n5 .html.) 15. There are many other essential elements of Malta’s maritime heritage that are not actively promoted to attract tourists. Memories of this heritage are housed in the Maritime Museum in Birgu. Among other elements they include the traditional fishing industry, boat repair and building, the famous Malta Dockyard, and scenes of fierce sea battles waged by the navies of the Knights and the British near Malta. 16. See www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20080423/local/smartcity-to-have-larger-ictcomponent 17. See http://www.tignepoint.com/living.html 18. See http://www.midimalta.com and http://www.euvision.org/MIDI%20Consortium. pdf 19. See http://www.homesonsale.co.uk/fort_cambridge_direct_by_owner_sliema_tigne_ malta-o68065-en.html

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20. See www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20090315/business/green-light-formetropolis-plaza 21. See http://www.pendergardens.com/penderville/content.aspx?id=29744 22. See www.foemalta.org/home/index.php/prs-archive/78-green-ngos-condemn-mistras-mega-project and www.maltatoday.com.mt/2008/06/11/n16.html 23. See http://tassellum.com/sellum/default.asp 24. See http://www.adgozo.com/?news=480&type=odz 25. See http://www.birdlifemalta.org/photos/otherfiles/268/pdf and http://www.projectgaia.org/media/26-08-08.html 26. ‘Foreigners may purchase property in Malta that is not for a prime residence (a second or holiday home), but one must pay a minimum price for an apartment, a house or a villa to be able to obtain an AIP (Acquisition of Immovable Property) permit which is granted by the Ministry of Finance and usually takes some 6-8 weeks. These prices are € 174,703 for a house or villa or € 98,066 for an apartment’ (see www.remaxmalta.com/buying.aspx#pr2). 27. http://www.propertylinemalta.com/statistics.asp and http://www.globalpropertyguide .com/Europe/Malta. 28. For current developments regarding tuna farming see: http://www.maltatoday.co. mt/2008/7/06/t1.html; http://www.maltatoday.com.mt;/2008/08/06/t6.html; www. maltatoday.com.mt /2008/08/24/t9.html; http://www.maltatoday.com.mt/2008/09/03/ t7.html; http://www.maltatoday.com.mt/2008/09/14/t2.html; http://www.timesofmalta.com./articles/view/20080930/local/ag-finds-enough-evidence-to-arraignowners-of-trawlers 29. ‘A paradigm is a shared set of assumptions about how we perceive the world, allowing us to develop expectations about what will probably occur based on these assumptions. But when data falls outside our paradigm, we find it hard to see and accept them (sometimes described as the “paradigm effect”). When the paradigm effect is so strong that we are prevented from actually seeing what is under our very noses we are said to be suffering from “paradigm paralysis”’ (Harrison 1994; www.mnsu.edu/comdis/ kuster/Infostuttering/Paradigmparalysis.html).

CHAPTER 16

ON PREDICTING THE FUTURE: SECOND THOUGHTS ON THE DECLINE OF FEASTS AND PATRONS*

Some years ago I predicted that the celebration of parish rituals in Malta would decline. A few years later I also suggested that patronage was diminishing. I was wrong on both counts. Parish festi have expanded in a most extravagant fashion and patronage is more pronounced than ever. Why were my attempts to predict the future so unsuccessful?

More Fireworks for the Saints In the early 1960s there were good reasons to believe that the competitive celebration of parish festivals, in particular the festi of patron saints, would decline. During the 1950s heavy emigration had drawn off much of the manpower needed to mount spectacular celebrations: improving public transport was enabling young men to meet friends in Valletta instead of spending their evenings in the local brass band clubs practising music, making fireworks or just hanging around; football was increasingly drawing youths out of the band clubs; but most of all, the growing activity of the political parties was commanding more attention and resources. At the time it seemed logical that the growing political competition at the national level would continue to command more attention as Malta approached independence, thus upstaging traditional parochial rivalry about saints and Good Friday processions. Finally, I also thought that enthusiasm for such religious spectacles would diminish as part of the general wave of secularization that was emptying churches throughout Europe (Boissevain 1965: 78–79; 1969: 90–93; Chapter 10 this volume). Originally published as ‘On Predicting the Future. Parish Rituals and Patronage in Malta’, in Sandra Wallman (ed.), Contemporary Futures. Perspectives from Social Anthropology. London: Routledge (1992), pp. 68–80. Reprinted by permission of Taylor & Francis Books (UK).

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During the late 1960s and early 1970s it seemed as though my predictions were on track. Although the crowds attending the celebrations of parish patron saints appeared to be as numerous as ever, thanks to the growing influx of curious tourists, the feasts were muted. Some of the spark had gone out of them. The corrosive rivalry between the governing Nationalist Party and the Malta Labour Party (MLP), as predicted, was still running high and creating factional cleavages in band clubs, which in turn inhibited the cooperation required to celebrate a rousing festa. Moreover, many Labour supporters, still angry with the Church for interfering with the elections of 1962 and 1966, boycotted many church functions, including festi. In Farrug, which fiercely used to celebrate the parish’s feasts, enthusiasm for the feast of St. Martin had so declined by the mid 1970s that the parish priest had to hire a team of Valletta men to carry the saint’s heavy statue during the procession. Thus, it seemed as though national politics had indeed upstaged parochial politics, as I had predicted would happen. By the late 1970s, however, I became aware that my prophecy had failed. Village festi were noisier, more crowded and contested with greater vigour than I had ever seen. Good Friday processions had also grown substantially. These events, as well as frequent and spectacular political party rallies and heated football encounters, continued to expand during the 1980s. Malta was celebrating as never before (Boissevain 1980: 128–29; 1984; 1991b; Chapter 12 this volume). What had happened? Why had the decline of community-level celebrations that at the time had seemed clear and logical not continued? Elsewhere I have discussed some of the factors that contributed to what is clearly a revitalization of community activity in Malta (Boissevain 1984, 1988a, 1991b, Chapter 12 this volume). The background is complex and the space available is limited. Briefly, this is what happened. Since the early 1960s the pattern of interaction between Naxxarin has changed profoundly. Furthermore, the Labour government (1971–1987), ‘in the interest of productivity’, reduced the number of public religious holidays from eleven to three. Finally, as a result of the rapidly falling birth rate, the number of family celebrations to mark baptisms, confirmations, birthdays and weddings also declined. For various reasons, then, there are progressively fewer festive occasions on which neighbours and kinsmen come together to celebrate. They consequently have less contact with each other. Contact between neighbours was further reduced by a range of developments related to Malta’s rising prosperity. Expanding work opportunities in industry and tourism means that most men and unmarried women work outside the villages, which have become dormitory communities. Most families now own at least one car, enabling members to leave at will and remain outside the villages long after the bus service stops for the day at 10pm. Increased wealth has also brought about a housing boom: people now spend

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much of their free time (re)building and beautifying their houses, which have become the most important status symbols; television and video also keeps people tied to the interior of their houses; the spread of supermarkets has put many small neighbourhood shops out of business; refrigerators and freezers permit quantity shopping, reducing the need for frequent shopping expeditions to neighbourhood shops; finally, old neighbourhoods have been broken up, as families move to new houses – often their former houses are bought by foreigners and wealthy urbanites in search of traditional ‘houses of character’, thus gentrifying old neighbourhoods. This is what happened to Naxxar’s St. Lucy Street (Boissevain 1986). As a result of these developments, Naxxarin no longer spend as much time conversing in the streets and neighbourhood shops they did in the early 1960s. Moreover, intense political factionalism has become endemic, further inhibiting contact between neighbours who support different political parties. In short, since independence there has been a serious reduction in the interaction between neighbours. People often remark that Naxxar had changed: it used to be a ‘friendlier’ place where people used to see more of each other, have more communication with one another, do more things together. To my mind, the increase in certain celebrations – the festi of parish and neighbourhood patron saints and Passion Week – is a manifestation of a desire to celebrate the community. People who have grown up together in poverty and are now separated by prosperity wish to achieve, for a few moments, the feeling of what Turner has called ‘communitas’: ‘the direct, immediate, and total confrontation of human identities which tends to make those experiencing it think of mankind as a homogeneous, unstructured and free community’ (Turner 1974: 16). They achieve this by doing something together, by celebrating. During these community celebrations kin meet up, but so do neighbours, ex-villagers who have moved to other parishes, and more distant acquaintances. Tourists can also participate in these celebrations, which accounts in part for their popularity among these visitors from abroad. Thus for a few, often fleeting, moments these events generate a Turnerian sense of communitas. But just as such occasions reinforce the inward bonds of community, so too they establish boundaries and project an image of solidarity to similar, and often rival, outside units. Community celebrations act to structure and to project group identity in this small, densely populated and intensely competitive island. This means that such festivities also mark boundaries and generate rivalry, which in turn increase pressure to expand them in order to defend community honour. In short, for various reasons there has been mounting interest in increasing community relations. Tourism, the return of emigrants, unemployment, the reduction of the power of the Church and the democratization of ‘culture’ have facilitated the increase in the scale of community celebrations. The astounding growth of

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tourism in Malta – up from 20,000 visitors in 1960 to over one million annually by the 1990s – has also stimulated parish pageantry. Because many tourists began to watch these colourful events, government (and the anglicised elite, who had once looked down upon such folk occasions) began to view parish religious pageants as an important cultural resource. This has given them added social status, and so encouraged their organizers. Rising prosperity halted emigration, and by the middle of the 1970s there was a net return migration. This meant that more willing hands and money became available to parish festa organizers. Because many young men were un- or underemployed, they formed a pool of energetic labour easily mobilized for projects that celebrated community honour. Such activity gained added spice if it provoked established authority or was directed against a rival. The bishop and his parish priests generally opposed any increase in popular celebrations. They argued that these celebrations diverted attention from the liturgical content of the rituals and siphoned off funds from more useful parish activities. Above all, the clergy opposed their expansion because they were seen as fostering competition between associations, neighbourhoods and parishes that could assume extreme, even violent forms (Boissevain 1965: Chapter 6). However, by the mid 1970s the power of the Church to prevent the increase of such celebrations had been diminished: its earlier opposition to the Labour Party had lost it much respect; rising educational standards had reduced dependence on priests as literate intermediaries with government; but most of all, the Labour government implemented a number of specific measures to curtail the Church’s power – these included the 1975 government instructions to the police to issue permits for festa decorations, band marches and fireworks independently of the wishes of the parish priest. Collusion between the Church and police had been customary under the colonial administration and had for decades also served to limit some of the excesses of parochial rivalry. Labour government policies unwittingly favoured the expansion of these feasts in two more ways. First of all, new laws limiting the celebration of calendrical feasts to the weekends and declaring other feasts no longer public holidays antagonized many. A number of the upper-class, urbanized Nationalist supporters who had previously avoided parish feasts, began to attend them as an act of political protest (cf. Mach 1992). Secondly, the Labour government democratized culture. The government promoted popular culture via contests, festivals, brochures and, especially, by broadcasting and televising Good Friday processions and festa celebrations. This attention helped to promote them and to make them more acceptable to a wider public and so encouraged the organizers. To summarize, by the mid 1970s there was growing interest in popular community activities, the human and financial resources were available, government policy was (at times inadvertently) favourable and the power of

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the Church to prevent an increase had been curtailed. The result – with the wisdom of hindsight, to be sure – was predictable: a sharp increase in parochial celebrations and rivalries. Opposition by government and Church authorities merely fanned community spirit and challenged the organizers, provoking them into more overt and innovative activity, thereby stimulating growth. If people had suggested to me in 1961 that twenty years later there would be an increase in traditional competitive parochial celebrations, including the creation of new band clubs, I would have said that they had no understanding of how Maltese society worked. Why had my predictions been so inaccurate? The easy answer, correct in part, was that I could not have foreseen the rate and complexity of the changes that were to sweep over Malta. As noted, these included the tourist influx, the end of emigration, the growth of material wealth, the housing boom, political and administrative centralization and the sense of isolation, bewilderment and disorientation that these rapid developments engendered. But I had also underestimated the cultural momentum of the Maltese attachment to their religious pageantry. This lapse is curious, because quite explicitly I had related the prevalence of public religious rituals in the 1960s to tradition and customs ‘acquired since childhood to seek in the bosom of religious ceremonies the relaxation that other people find in public festivals and entertainments’ (‘contractée dès l’enfance de chercher au sein des cérémonies religieuses un délassement, que les autres peuples trouvent dans les spectacles et les réjouissances publiques’) (Miège 1840: 168, in Boissevain 1965: 56). More historically oriented research has subsequently shown me that the expansion of festa and Good Friday celebrations was of long standing and, especially since the beginning of the nineteenth century, had been growing rapidly (Cassar Pullicino 1956; 1976: 35–39). The developments since 1970 merely continued this pattern. Seen in historical perspective, the decline I observed and extrapolated was a momentary hiccup in a long-term trend.1

The Saints Did Not Go Marching Out In 1974, after four months of trying to assess developments in Malta since the late 1960s, I wrote an article optimistically suggesting that the saints were marching out and patronage in Malta was declining’ (see Chapter 10). In it I argued that the days of the powerful old-style, multi-purpose professional-class patrons (doctors, lawyers, priests), called ‘saints’ (qaddisin), were numbered. Because of democratization and nation building, professionals were losing power to a government that increasingly controlled the most important economic and cultural resources. To gain access to these resources,

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people required intermediaries. Political parties and trade unions, rather than prominent professionals, increasingly filled this role. Improved education and increasing prosperity further reduced the need to maintain a protective network of patrons and brokers. I concluded that the concentration of power resources in the hands of the professional classes was being reduced and that organizational brokers were replacing the ‘saints’. By the 1980s, however, it was apparent to me that new, more powerful patrons were firmly in place. The saints had not marched out. In 1974 there had seemed sound support for these views, not least because the Labour government under Prime Minister Dom Mintoff, elected to office in 1971, was profoundly shaking up the old social order. The Malta Labour Party had campaigned vigorously for clean, efficient government. It promised to rid the country of patronage and corruption, which had been pronounced under the previous Nationalist government. This campaign and the actions of the new government had sensitized the country to the evils of patronage and government fixers. The new Labour government had created many new boards, including an employment board. These were intended to bring together those offering work and those seeking employment, thus bypassing patrons willing to provide jobs to their clients on a personal basis. Political clients and fixers were denigratingly referred to as bazuzli, a term new to me, meaning ‘teachers’ pets’, ‘kept men’ or ‘toadies’. The status of political client was thus being ridiculed. Parish priests lost a lot of power as the Labour government curtailed the power of the Church. Improving education had also made people less dependent on priests to interpret the increasing stream of government directives. In addition, the new government had sharply reduced the power of the professional classes: it had imposed much heavier income taxes on them, and it had forbidden civil servants to help priests, doctors and lawyers unconnected to the Labour Party to obtain favours for their clients. Moreover, the growth and complexity of the central government created an increasing role for specialist brokers – intermediaries who knew their way about the ministries. But as the chains of intermediaries lengthened, the moral content of relations between client and patron – which had been so characteristic of the link between the old-style professional class patrons and their clients – was reduced to an instrumental relation. Union and Labour Party officials seemed much more effective than the traditional patrons in channelling requests for help and favours. Individuals had their interests put forward as a right, by representatives of the organizations of which they were members, rather than as a favour. In 1974 the Maltese seemed to be entering a new era, with individuals less dependant on traditional patrons and able to represent their interests to a more efficient bureaucracy through the officials of the collectivities to which they belonged. Political intermediaries and fixers were looked down upon

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and associated with the traditional patronage system based on dependency and inequality. There was also a growing realization that government was no longer foreign, alien. Because the government was ‘ours’, people began to accept that occasionally private interests had to be sacrificed to national interests on matters such as income tax, sick leave and the like. So it seemed to me in 1974. During return visits to Malta in 1976 and 1978 it became clear that the trend that I had discerned in 1974 had not continued. The more egalitarian society, where resources were increasingly allocated according to merit by relatively impartial civil servants rather than via patrons, had not materialized. By the late 1970s the Labour government was well into its second term of office. Leading Labour politicians had built up fiefdoms. Labour politicians had replaced the old-style professional patrons. Ministers had become immensely powerful patrons, heading vast clienteles of party officials, ministerial bureaucrats, commercial interests and hangers-on. Several ministers were also able to mobilize bands of thugs to beat up those who criticized them, whether housewives, students or environmentalists. The word bazuzlu was heard no more. Political saints had certainly not disappeared. With the concentration of power at the level of the central government, and thus controlled by the Malta Labour Party, patronage had become overtly political. Only persons politically connected to the Labour party were able to tap the government resource barrel of scholarships, licenses, subsidies, grants, building permits, special medical benefits and the like. Above all, employment was subject to political patronage. Between 1971 and 1987 more than 11,800 new government jobs were created, some 3,000 just before the 1987 elections (Annual Abstract of Statistics 1987: 79). During this period, the government’s share of the gainfully employed increased from 21 per cent to 28 per cent. Corruption was rife. For example, one acquaintance told how his family had provided cash and free building services to certain Labour politicians in exchange for permits to build in restricted areas. Others described how when they returned from trips abroad, they regularly gave presents to customs officers to avoid paying duty. Seen from the perspective of the thirtyodd years I had been in contact with the island, Malta’s bureaucracy has gradually become more slothful, inefficient and laced with corruption and influence-peddling. In short, there has not been a reduction of patronage and corruption. Power differentials have not declined. Dyadic deals between patrons and clients have not given way to organizational brokerage. There has been no noticeable willingness to give national interests precedence over private interests. What went wrong with my predictions? Looking back I can only conclude that my 1974 analysis reflected much of the rhetoric circulating in the heady period following the election of the Malta Labour Party to office in 1971. The corruption of the 1980s was to a large extent a consequence of the long period

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in power of a single party in a small, very close-knit society saturated with the ethic of reciprocity and patronage. In 1974 it was not possible to foresee the long run that the MLP would achieve, or to foresee the degree to which it could and would manipulate government resources, including the police and judiciary, for party ends. This use of power by the governing party provided a fertile breeding ground for many ways of using public office for private and party benefit; in other words, for corruption. The Labour government between 1971 and 1987 attacked the privileges of the professional class, increased educational facilities, expanded welfare and medical provisions and improved working-class incomes. This indeed reduced power differences between classes, as I predicted. But this did not reduce the number of powerful patrons, as I thought it would. The new set of patrons who emerged, often from the working class, were the Labour members of parliament. Of these, the most powerful by far were the ministers. The growing concentration of power at the level of the central government, the long period in office and the harsh, often abusive measures the Labour government adopted to silence opponents reinforced the power base of these new patrons. Ministers became Malta’s new saints. They were political bosses heading vast clienteles that included not only the civil servants in their own departments, their constituency party apparatus, personal canvassers, fixers, bodyguards and enforcers, but also a wide range of persons throughout the country who had received or were negotiating favours. Many of Malta’s leading professionals, commercial magnates and industrialists were beholden to ministers for past favours and, in their turn, were prepared to make available resources they controlled, such as jobs, should the minister call upon them so he could satisfy his own political clients. In this way ministers wielded great power, not only through their office but also through the personal political machine they had built up during their period in office. These powerful political saints were able to dispense far more favours to their clients than the professional patrons of the previous generation. The replacement of the dyadic, face-to-face relation between patron and client by a more impersonal, organizational, bureaucratic form of brokerage did not take the form I had predicted. The reason was the country’s small scale. Malta is small and densely populated. The politicians are personally acquainted with virtually all the families in their small constituencies (there are thirteen constituencies each containing approximately 17,500 voters, and returning five members to parliament). Personal relations predominate. These are essential for the private deals and favours which people expect, and are often promised, in return for their votes. Politics, like most aspects of social life in Malta, have remained intensely personal. There is little room for impersonal organizational brokerage. The reason there is little evidence of a willingness to favour national interests above private ones, a sentiment if not a trend I discerned in 1974, is due,

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I think, to three factors. First, the country has become highly polarized. The government in power is recognized as legitimate, as ‘our’ government, by only half the population, for party loyalty is fierce and parties are evenly matched. Second, during the later years of the Labour regime opposition members feared government. No one, whether Labour or Nationalist, expected impartial justice. Labour supporters counted on it being biased in their favour, and Nationalist supporters were resigned to this. Finally, the very rapid and often far-reaching changes that occurred in Malta over the past two decades created uncertainty and a sense of disorientation. For these various reasons, then, most people sought security in the bosom of their own families. There they could rely on kinsmen for protection. Malta has consequently remained intensely family-centred. There is little evidence of a notion of allegiance to the state, or of owing loyalty or service to the nation. Government is viewed as partisan. Where loyalty is given to entities larger than the family, it is to the faction or party, not to the state. If persons give the government their support, it is because their party runs it.2 Why did I fail to perceive these possible developments, most of which were thoroughly grounded in the data I had discussed in earlier publications? I think that my 1974 research was conducted too much with informants who were friends of long standing and reflected my own liberal attitudes. Many of these persons, though not traditional Labour supporters, had voted for the MLP in 1971. In 1974 they were still prepared to credit the party’s rhetoric, for its track record between 1971 and 1974 had been excellent: by 1974 it had implemented most of its 1971 electoral manifesto targets (Boissevain 1977a and c). In part there was also a measure of wishful thinking on the part of both my informants and myself. Moreover, many of my informants were university students so most were too young to draw on experience with which to be able to predict the future. In reviewing my 1974 field notes, I observed that the comments of older informants were considerably more reserved and sceptical about political developments. In other words, my research was influenced by my own biases as well as those of my informants. This was partly a consequence of my new role in 1974 as teacher and established academic. In 1961, as a graduate student, I had spent all my time in Malta fully engaged in research. That was my work. In 1974, if only by virtue of my association with the University of Malta and the light teaching I was doing there – in part to have access to informants who could discuss my research and provide me with indigenous ‘texts’ – my view of what was happening in Malta was coloured. The bias accorded with my own political leanings, and with some of the preliminary, rather theoretical trends and analyses I had been working out (1974b and Chapter 6 of this volume). The involvement with students, university colleagues and a circle of informants, of whom many were friends of long standing, was a consequence of my long-term contact with Malta. I had, as it were, preselected many of

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my informants. In this respect my research in 1974 was very different from my earlier research. In 1960–1961 I had confined most of my socializing to the inhabitants of the villages where I was doing research. I spent hours in the evening away from home talking to a wide cross-section of people in the bars and clubs. The experience was very intense. In comparison, the second period of research was much less intense. I was already encapsulated in a network largely of my own making which reflected, as so many personal networks do, many of my own ideals and views on the world. In retrospect, it is interesting to observe the degree to which my analysis of the decline of old-style patronage in Malta also reflected the current political thinking of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Democratization was in the air in Western Europe. Marx was a patron saint, though often unacknowledged, in many university departments of social sciences and of a number of parliamentary democracies. There was a concern with class relations and the analysis of class-based inequality. Social science and socialist politics together were to achieve a more egalitarian, less paternalistic society – one certainly without patronage, nepotism and corruption. In retrospect, the ideas set out in my analysis of the decline of Maltese patrons are congruent with many of these developments and the Utopian sentiments that were current at the time. Finally, the inaccuracy of my prediction also reflects my eagerness to isolate and describe a ‘trend’. The fairly intimate knowledge I had of Maltese society – the importance of the family, the importance attributed to face-to-face relations, especially, with powerful ‘saints’, the impact of scale and proximity, the workings of the small multi-member constituencies – should all have alerted me to the improbability of radical changes in Maltese political behaviour in so short a time span. I made the mistake of thinking a trend is established if behaviour appears to change over a few years.

Conclusions While I had perhaps the legitimate excuse of being unable to foresee the rapid and extensive social developments that took place following independence, and especially during the Labour government, I had no excuse for failing to place the developments I observed in a more adequate historical framework. My fascination with the emerging present led me to neglect the past (cf. Elias 1978: 160). This neglect is, in part, a professional bias of my generation of anthropologists – especially of those trained in Great Britain. We were educated to focus on the present and the immediate past. In part, neglect of the past also reflects the arrogance of field researchers who believe that the events that occur during the short time that they are there to observe them are of major significance. It is essential to place your ‘trend’ in a time frame that provides a longer perspective than the few years that you have

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personally experienced. This means more history, more examination of the past. Another lesson learned from this analysis is to be more aware of the circle of informants used to develop the ideas on which you have based your ‘trend’. This is of particular importance when making a quick re-study. As an old hand, you are apt to look up friends rather than work through a wider and thus more scientifically valid collection of informants. It is also important to examine and attempt to assess the extent to which ideas current in your own personal network and society are impinging on your own analysis. These are noble sentiments that are more easily given as advice than implemented, for wishful thinking remains a seductive pastime. I have been fortunate in having been able to return frequently to my field site since 1960. This has enabled me not only to correct myself, but also to become aware of the relativity of trends ‘observed’ during a short period of research. It has also provided me with concrete lessons on the difficulty of predicting the future and, when doing so, on the importance of using a longterm perspective grounded in historical time.

Acknowledgements This chapter was presented to the Annual ASA conference held at the University of Edinburgh in April 1990. The comments of the participants, and Raymond Firth and Sandra Wallman in particular, were very helpful. Part of the discussion on my festa predictions appeared in Boissevain (1989b). My discussion on why Maltese patrons remained marking time instead of marching out is a reply to Peter Serracino Inglott’s (1989: 37) remarks about my marching thesis. These were also discussed at the Netherlands Association of Sociology and Anthropology workshop on patronage held at the Latin American Documentation Centre, Amsterdam, on 16 November 1990.

Notes 1. However, it is a consolation that I was not alone in observing a decline and predicting that it would continue. A more-or-less random selection from the many: Bras (1955: 480–81); Stacey (1960: 72–73); Gluckman (1962: 26–38); Caro Baroja (1965: 158– 59); Christian (1972: 42–43, 181–82); Silverman (1975: 168–77); Turner and Turner (1978: 206–7). See Chapter 12 for a more extended discussion of why this revitalization is occurring throughout Europe. 2. See Boissevain (1993: 150–54) for brief account of the 1971–1987 Labour government. See also Bax (1976) who gives an excellent account of the operation of political patronage in Ireland that in many ways resembles the situation in Malta since it uses the same electoral system, namely proportional representation with a single transferable vote.

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INDEX

Abbink, J. 26 Abela, A.M. 26 Abram, S.A. 234, 235, 236, 239 Abram, S.A. et al. 241n3 absentee landlords 49 academic prejudice 4 accommodation, demand for 246 acknowledgments 10 Acquisition of Immovable Property (AIP) 262n26 administrative instability 74–6 agency 7–8 aggression against visitors 239–40 agri-production, techniques of 48 Agrigento, power of Bishop of 54–5 Aiello, Piera 83 airports 15, 228n4, 252 Alarde in Basque community of Fuenterrabia: mass tourism in southern Europe 236; ritual and tourism 182–3 Alavi, H. 159, 164, 167n1 Albera, D., Blok, A. and Bromberger, C. 11n1, 11n2, 229, 241 Alleanza dei Coltivatori Diretti 60, 61 Alternattiva Demokrattika (AD) 243, 252, 253 Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America 100 Amish in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania 236 Amnesty International 152 amoral familism 4, 249, 261n3 amusement, alternative forms of 197, 200, 204, 207, 210 Andalusia 3, 200; social process in Europe 146, 151 anonymity, masking function of 232 Anthropology of the Mediterranean 11n1, 229 anti-clericism 55–6 anti-tourist backlash 233, 235 Appadurai, A. 230 Arab conquest of southern Europe, memories of 22–3

Arensberg, C.M. 3 armed insurrections 43 Arnold, K.L. 131, 135 Asad, Talal 144, 147, 153 Association of Italo-Canadian Professional Men (APIC) 100–101 Association of Social Anthropologists of the Commonwealth (ASA) 130, 144 associations: in Farrug, conflict within 35–7; of Montreal Italians 98–102 Atria, Rita 83 atrocities, prejudice as catalyst for 24 attachment to locale, strength of 44 Attalides, Michael 144 Attard, L. and Fenech, G. 227 Aya, Roderick 167 Azarya, F. 7 Backstrom, C. et al. 211n2 Bailey, F.G. 11n3, 126, 127, 129n17, 158, 159, 161, 167n1, 168 Bailey, F.G. and Nicholas, R.W. 159, 162, 167n1 balance of power: competition in balanced opposition 157; factionalism and 143, 151, 159, 161, 170 Baldacchino, G. 10, 249, 250, 260 Bamford, Julia 210n2 Banfield, E.C. 4, 113n3, 261n3 baptism, changes in the rite of 177–8 Baric, Lorraine 2 Barnes, John A. 3, 11n3, 117, 120, 127, 127n3, 128n12, 131 Baroja, Caro 210n1, 273n1 Barth, F. 28, 128n8, 134, 140 Bascietto, G. 83 Bax, M. 24, 147, 156, 168, 169, 211n3, 273n2 Bayley, C.M. 90, 97, 102, 113, 113n4, 114n5 behaviour, code of 47–8, 66–7 belief systems, impetus for change in 180 Bella Vista Golf Club in Montreal 101, 102

298 Ben Bella, President of Algeria 17 Berghe, P.L. van den 239 Berghe, P.L. van den and Keyes, C.F. 232 Beukenhorst, Dirkjan 18 Bianco, C. and Del Ninno, M. 197 bias, influences of 271–2 Bijvoet, Teun 10 Black, A. 232, 236, 240 Blok, A. 10, 11n1, 81, 86n8, 144, 153, 156, 244 Bofill, J. 210n2 Bohannan, P. 128n10 Boissevain, Inga 10, 18, 81, 113n, 195, 227–8, 241 Boissevain, J. and Friedl, J. 145, 156 Boissevain, J. and Sammut, N. 216, 219, 228n2 Boissevain, J. and Serracino Inglott, P. 212, 241n2, 245 Boissevain, J. and Theuma, N. 247, 250 Boissevain, Jeremy 1, 4, 6, 16, 17, 153; civil society, tourism and 244, 245, 247, 250, 259, 261n2; cultural tourism 212, 213, 226, 228n4; European rituals, revitalization of 197, 198, 210, 210n1, 210n2, 211n2, 211n3, 211n5; factionalism 161, 163, 165, 167n1; factions, parties and politics in Maltese village 30, 32, 33, 41n1, 41n2, 41n3; feasts and patrons, thoughts on decline of 263, 264, 265, 266, 267, 271, 273, 273n2; mass tourism in Southern Europe 232, 234, 235, 238, 240, 241n2, 241n3, 242n6; non-corporate groups, place of 107, 113n4, 114n7, 114n8, 122, 123, 127; patronage in Malta 168, 173; ritual and tourism 188, 190, 193; sociology of social anthropology, place for 134, 139 Bolzoni, A. 84 Bonnain, R. 242n6 Borch, Comte de 19n2 Borsellino, Paolo 83, 84 Bott, E. 3, 11n3, 121, 123, 127n2, 127n4, 128n12 Bottomore, T.W. 119, 129n16 Bouhdiba, A. 25 Boumedienne, Colonel 17 Bowman, G. 235 Bras, G. le 273n1 Braudel, F. 6, 13, 14, 16, 18, 20 Bravo, G.L. 210n2, 211n3 Brewer, J.D. 26 Briguglio, L. 212 Briguglio, L. et al. 241n3 Briguglio, M. 260 British Museum 3 British Social Anthropology 133–4; anomalies in 134 brokers 123–4 Brown, Richard 138 Bruce, D. 224 Brunt, Lodewijk 113, 147, 150, 156 Brydone, P. 19n2 building codes, weak enforcement of 247 building industry, civil confrontation with 251–5

Index Bujra, J. 160, 162, 167n1 bureaucratization, patronage and 173 Caboto, Giovanni (John Cabot) 87 Camera del Lavoro 60, 61 Campbell, J.K. 4, 81, 168 Canadian Italian Business and Professional Men’s Association (CIBPA) 97–8, 100–101 Caplow, T. 167n3 Caruana, Galizia, D. 223 Casa d’Italia 91, 101, 109, 111 Casacalenda Society 102 case studies: rituals in Europe, revitalization of 198–202, 207; social process in Europe 145–7 Cassa per il Mezzogiorno 5 Cassar, Pullicino 23, 267 Cassin, E. 4 Cassola, A. 23 Castro, Fidel 35 Catanzaro, R. 86n9 Catholic labour syndicate (ACLI) 56 celebrations: Church power, community celebrations and 265–6; community celebrations: decline in 263–4; reversal of decline in 264–7; context of celebratory growth 190–91; decline in celebrations, patterns in Naxxar 187–9; democratization of ‘culture,’ community celebrations and 265–6; emigrants, community celebrations and return of 265–6; identity, community celebrations and 265; parish celebrations, importance of 184; playful celebration, communitas and 192–3, 207–9; Polish May Day celebrations, transformation of 199; popular celebrations, Church resistance to 266; popularity of celebrations, increase in 189–90; public celebrations, expansion of 197–8, 209–10, 210–11n2, 211n3; Sohos in Macedonia, Carnival celebrations in 201–2; tourism, ritual and 185–6; traditional celebrations, changing rhythms of 206–7; unemployment, community celebrations and 265–6 celebratory growth, context of 190–91 central government: autonomy of 170; concentration of powers within 269; growth and complexity of 268 centralization, rituals in Europe and 197, 204, 210 Chambers, R. et al. 14 change: baptism, changes in the rite of 177–8; belief systems, impetus for change in 180; disruptiveness, change and 40–41; external change, factionalism and 159; external forces of change 142–3; factionalism and 157, 166; homeostatic activity symptomatic of systems undergoing change 159; internal forces of change 139–42; liturgical change 178, 179; Naxxar in Malta, changes in public ritual in 201; religious changes, patronage and 177–8, 179–80; ritual change, context of 203–4; scientific ideas, continuity and change in

Index 131–3; social change and factionalism 158–60; social relations in Malta, changes in 171–4; tastes of visitors, changes in 214 Chapman, Charlotte Gower 3 Chinoy, E. 119 Chistu fa i fatti suoi! (He minds his own business!) 47, 66–7 Christian, W.A. Jr. 168, 180n2, 210n1, 273n1 Christians and Turks, mock battles between 22–3 Church (Roman Catholic Church): authority of 54–7; deep roots of religion in Sicily 56–7; and Labour Party (MLP) in Malta, conflict between 173; Montreal Italians, relationship with 98; official religion in Malta 169–70; power of, community celebrations and 265–6; redecoration of church, controversy surrounding 38, 40 Cimichella, Monsignor 112 Circolo Civile (club for white-collar workers) 62–3 civil society, tourism, developers and 10, 243–62; accommodation, demand for 246; building codes, weak enforcement of 247; building industry, confrontation with 251–5; campaigns against planning and development 248, 260; coastal overdevelopment 259; commodification of history and culture 247–8; competitive consumerism, free market in 247; Development Planning Act (1992) in Malta 247; developments in progress 256–9; Environment and Planning Authority (MEPA) in Malta 248–9, 250, 251, 252, 253, 254, 261n1, 261n4, 261n14; Environment Protection Act (1991) in Malta 247; environmental destruction 247, 248–51; foreign property ownership 258–9; Gozo, Ta’Cenc Golf Course, Villa and Nature Park on 258; ‘green areas’ outside development zone (ODZ) in Malta 251; heritage, sacrifice of 260; identity 260; landscapes, attitudes to 243–5; landscapes of Malta 243–5; Lidl supermarkets 252–3; maritime heritage of Malta 255; Marsamxett Harbour, Malta 255, 256, 257; mass tourism, advent of 245; mass tourism, Malta’s adaptation to 246; Mellieha Bay, Tas-Sellum Development at 258; Mellieha bridge 254; Mistra Bay disco 254–5; real estate speculation 259–60; realities for tourists in Malta 255–6; service, tradition of 246–7; settlers, campaign for attraction of 245; Sicilian omertà in Malta 250; strategic environmental assessment (SEA) in Malta 251; Structure Plan (1990) for Malta 247; tourism promotion 255–6; tuna ranching 259–60; utilitarian attitude to sacred landscapes 244–5 Clarendon Press 4 class: conflict and factionalism 157; status in Montreal and 110–11; work, poverty and politics in Sicily and 48–52 Clemente, P. 210n2

299 climate of the sea 13 Clough, Paul 27 clubs 61–3. see also associations coastal overdevelopment 212, 248, 259 Cohen, A.P. 206 Cohen, E. 236 Cole, John 156 Cole, J.W. and Wolf, E.R. 241n4 collectivization: of decision-making 173; patronage and 173; of worship 179 Colonial Social Science Research Council (CSSRC) 3 Colson, Elizabeth 2 commercialization: diversity and commercialism 25; influence of 182–3; without consent, problem of 237 Commissariato Generale dell’Emigrazione 90 commodification 25; of history and culture 247–8; social boundaries and 193–5 commoditization of culture: cultural tourism and 212; ritual, tourism and 183 communal bonds, winter consolidation of 18 communal rituals 16 communication technology 15 communitas 211n5, 265; playful celebration and 192–3, 207–9 communities: Alarde in Basque community of Fuenterrabia 236; Church power, community celebrations and 265–6; community celebrations: decline in 263–4; reversal of decline in 264–7; concept of 7; concept of nationalism and 172–3; democratization of ‘culture,’ community celebrations and 265–6; dynamic aspects of 96–7; face-to-face relationships (and communities) 64, 95, 119, 158, 166, 246, 250, 261, 270, 272; factions and politics in Maltese village 7, 28–41; growth of Montreal Italian community, stages of 87, 88–9; identity, community celebrations and 265; Leone 7, 42–86; Montreal Italians 7, 87–114; popular community activities, growth of interest in 266–7; social history Montreal Italian community 89–92; terminology of 6–7; unemployment, community celebrations and 265–6 competitive consumerism, free market in 247 complex societies 117 Confederazione Generale Italiana di Lavoro (CGIL) 60–61 Confederazione Italiana dei Sindacati Liberi (CISL) 60, 61 conflict, internal segmentation and 104–12 conflict groups: balanced opposition of, dominant assumption of functionalist social science 159; factionalism and 161; within a village (partiti) 31–4 confraternities 188–9 conquest memories 21 constituted authorities 52–7 Convegno Sulle Condizioni di Vita e di Salute in Zone Arretrate della 61

300 Cooperative for American Relief to Everywhere (CARE) 81 corporationists 119 corruption 5, 65–6, 83, 175, 268, 269–70, 272 Cosa Nostra 83, 84. see also Mafia Council of Europe 152 Council of Trent 178 covert resistance against tourist infiltration 237–8 Cowan, Jane 201, 206 Craig, J.C. 113n4 Crain, M. 200, 207, 210, 224, 232, 236, 238, 240 Cremona, Vicki Ann 195, 196n2 Crick, M. 26 crime against tourists 233 crowding, problem of 232 Cruces, F. and Diaz de Rada, A. 199, 203, 235 Cruces, Francisco 210 Crump, Thomas 146, 156, 230 cultural commoditization 236–7 cultural destruction, tourism and 225 cultural exchange 20–21; state policy and 26 cultural frontiers 20 cultural identity, manipulation of images of 234–5 cultural tourism 10, 212–28; arts and crafts in Malta 212–13; commoditization of culture 212; cultural destruction, tourism and 225; interest in, expansion of 212, 228n1; living in a monument 216–17; local council in Mdina 220–22; Malta Government Tourist Board (MGTB) 213–14; mass cultural tourism in perspective 223–4; Mdina ‘93 extravaganza 218–19; National Tourist Office of Malta (NTOM) 28n2, 221, 227; parish religious pageantry, redefinition of 213; perspectives on 224–6; privacy, loss of 224–5; religious orders in Mdina 216; reporting research 219–20, 228n2; research recommendations 219–20; routine structures of residents, disruption of 226; seasonality of, lack of 225; sustainability of, future prospects 226–7; sustainability of tourism in Malta 213; tastes of visitors, changes in 214; tourism, ritual and 195; tourism in Malta 213–14; tourist attraction of Mdina 215–16; tourist gaze, Maltese reactions to 215–16; tourist goals, changing patterns of 213; tourist presence in Mdina, protests about 222–3; tourist regulation, proposals for 221–2; winter and summer seasons, separation between 225–6 Curtis, J. and Petras, J. 131 customization of tourist product, demand for 234 Daher, R.F. 258, 259 Dahl, B. and Kvaerk, A. 222 Dahrendorf, R. 129n16 Danforth, L.M. 234 Dante Alighieri Society 97 Davis, A. et al. 125

Index Davis, John 11n1, 146, 149, 156, 229, 238, 241n4, 277 de Bono, Edward 135, 136, 141 de Staël, Madame Anne Louise 18n1 Debono, F. 220 Debono, J. 251, 260, 261n1 decision-making, collectivization of 173 democratization: of ‚culture,‘ community celebrations and 265–6; rituals in Europe, revitalization of 204, 208–9 demonstrations, strikes and 60–61 DeNon, M. 19n2 dependency relations 175–7 Development and Control Commission (DCC) 252, 253, 254 developments: patronage in Malta 169–71; political-economic developments 15, 18; in progress, civil society, tourism, developers and 256–9; social process in Europe 149–53 Devons, E. and Gluckman, M. 154 Di Falco family 49 Di Nola, A. 211n3 Dickie, J. 86n9 Diederiks, Herman 180 Din L-Art Helwa (National Trust of Malta) 259, 261n14 Dionesius Agius 260 Dionigi, A. and Blok, A. 1 Direzione Generale degli Italiani all’Estero (General Agency for Italians Overseas) 90 disorientation, sense of 271 disruptiveness, change and 40–41 diversity, religious and ethnic 6, 20–27; Arab conquest of southern Europe, memories of 22–3; atrocities, prejudice as catalyst for 24; Christians and Turks, mock battles between 22–3; commercialism 25; cultural exchange 20–21; cultural exchange, state policy and 26; cultural frontiers and 20; Passover 21–2; Realpolitik, nationalism, prejudice and 25; tourism and relationships with local people 25–6; wars, memories of 21 divisiveness 21 Djilas, Milovan 24 Dolci, Danilo 61 dominant paradigms 132–3 Driessen, H. 10, 22, 23, 200, 210n2 Droog, M. 195, 225 Durkheim, Emile 2, 18n1, 138 Duynstee, Salvinus 61, 81, 82 EASA (European Association of Social Anthropologists) conference in Coimbra (1990) 208 Easton, David 134 Eber, S. 213 economic class bias in factions 163 Edwards, A. 214 Eggan, Fred 3, 130 egocentric interaction systems, concept of 115, 117, 120–21

Index Elias, N. and Scotson, J.L. 229 Elias, Norbert 134, 135, 137, 153, 154, 229, 272 Ellul, A. 195, 227 Ellul, G. and Ellul, M. 195 emigration: cash flows from emigrants 51; community celebrations and return of emigrants 265–6; patronage, decline in Malta and 170–71; rituals in Europe and revitalization of 205 Emmet, Dorothy 134 Ensel, R. 206 entertainment, rituals as 201, 208 environmental destruction 247, 248–51 Epstein, A.L. 123, 126, 128n12, 158, 161, 163 Esmeijer, L. 242n6, 245 Europe: anthropological research concerning 3–4, 4–5; Mediterranean lands, northern European conquest of 21; northern Europe, Mediterranean relationship with 15–16 European Association of Social Anthropology (EASA) 8, 208, 233 European Economic Community (EEC) 151, 152 European Union (EU) 5, 27n2, 231, 248, 251, 258, 259 Evans-Pritchard, D. 116, 134, 238, 239 Evans-Pritchard, E. E. 2, 3, 4 evolutionary theories, abandonment of 138 external change, factionalism and 159 external forces of change 142–3 Fabre, D. and Camberoque, C. 210n2 face-to-face relationships (and communities) 64, 95, 119, 158, 166, 246, 250, 261, 270, 272 factionalism 9, 157–67; assumptions concerning 157–8; balance of power 143, 151, 159, 161, 170; balanced opposition, competition in 157; change and 157, 166; class conflict and 157; conflict groups 161; balanced opposition of, dominant assumption of functionalist social science 159; economic class bias in factions 163; external change, factionalism and 159; faction and radical or class conflict, categorical distinction between 158; factional alignment 163–5; factional conflict 157–8; factional conflict groups, asymmetry of 165; “Green Revolution” 159; group structures and 39–40; homeostatic activity symptomatic of systems undergoing change 159; ideology 162–5; India, Congress Party in 162; internal organization 161–2; leader/follower linkages 163–4; opposition and ‘progressive’ factions 160–61; opposition coalitions 161–3; resources, access to 160–61; rival factions, organization of 158; social change and 158–60; social composition 162–5; strategies  160–61; symbolism and 162–5; symmetry, balanced opposition and factions 160–65, 166 factions and politics in a Maltese village 7, 28–41; associations, conflict within 35–7;

301 church redecoration, controversy surrounding 38, 40; conflicting groups within a village (partiti) 31–4; disruptiveness, change and 40–41; factionalism, group structures and 39–40; factions: Lasswell’s definition of 29; social organization and 28, 40–41; governmental history of Malta 29–30; group structures and organization 39; history of Malta 29; incidents unrelated to festa partiti or national politics 37–8; patterns of conflict 30–34; political rivalry 34–5; setting for study 29–30; terminology 28–9. see also Farrug Falcone, Giovanni 83, 84 families: conflict and honour within 104–5; differences in relative power in 171–2; Montreal Italians 93–4; Sicilians 46–7 Farrug (pseudonym for the village of Hal Kirkop, see 51n1): anti-clerical policy of Labour Party (MLP) in 35; Church policy and conflict in 36–7; clubs and societies in 30; competition between festa partiti in 31–2; conflict in, patterns of 30–34; conflicts between groups in 126; disputes between partiti, devotional matters and 33; kinship and affinity in 30; Labour Party (MLP) support in 34–5; major skimishing in, details of 33–4; origins of partiti in 32; political loyalties and conflict in 36; social composition of partiti in 32–3; St. Martin as patron saint of 31, 32–3, 34, 36, 37, 38, 39, 126, 163, 164, 167n5, 264; St. Roque as important alternative saint in 30, 31, 32–3, 36, 38, 41n3, 126, 163, 164, 167n5 Farrugia, Maria 195 Fasci and Dopolavoro (social and recreational) clubs, establishment of 90 Featherstone, M. 234 Fenech, N. 239 festa partiti 31–2, 33, 34, 35–6, 37–8, 39, 40, 41n2, 41n3, 163, 164 festa ta’barra, or ‘external feast’ 186–7 festa ta’gewwa or ‘internal feast’ 186–7 Firth, R. 2, 3, 29, 39, 80, 116, 127n4, 128n8, 128n12, 134, 167n1, 273 folklorization 203 foreign property ownership 258–9 Fortes, Meyer 2 Foster, G.M. 4, 180n1 France 5, 21; south of 2, 210–11m2 Franco, Francisco 206, 236 Frankenburg, R. 3 Fraser, R. 241n1, 242n6 Freeman, S.T. 22, 148 Friedl, E. 4 Friedrich, P. 162 friendship: among Montreal Italians 94–5; friends of friends 63–72 Friggieri, J. and Friggieri, T. 18 Fronte Unico Italiano di Montreal 90–91 Fsadni, C. and Selwyn, T. 241n3 Fsadni, Carmel 227 Furgolar Furlan folklore group 97

302 Gadourek, I. 122 Gagné, Therèse 81 Galaní-Moutáfi, V. 235 Gallini, C. 210n2 Galtung, J. 152 Gamaliel, Rabban 22 Gambin, T. 260 Gans, H.J. 114n5 Garigue, P. 100, 113n4 Garigue, P. and Firth, R. 93, 114n5, 114n6 gatekeepers, Apppadurai’s concept of 230 Gellner, E. and Waterbury, J. 168 gender identity, tourism and 235 generational conflict 105–7 Gennep, Charles-Arnold Kurr van 2 gentrification 265 geographical mobility, local power balances and 151–2 German Green Party 253 Gilmore, David 229 Gilsenan, M. 169 Ginsberg, M. 119, 129n16 Glenny, M. 24 globalization, tourist destinations and 241 Gluckman, M. 2, 9, 116, 127n5, 130, 134, 154, 210n1, 273n1 Godin, Claude 113 Goffman, E. 187, 224 Good Friday procession at Naxxar 189–90, 191 Goody, J. 128n11 Gorter, Waling 147, 149, 151, 156 Goudsblom, J. 122, 144 Gouldner, A. 135, 137, 140, 153, 159 Gozo: Nadur on 195–6n2; Ta’Cenc Golf Course, Villa and Nature Park on 258 Graburn, N. 232 Greece 4, 5–6, 17, 21, 22, 138, 203, 206, 208, 234, 239 “Green Revolution” 159 Greenwood, D.J. 27n1 Greenwood, M. 93, 182, 183, 194, 195, 212, 224, 236, 241n1, 241n2, 242n6 Grima, R. 245, 249 Group for the Anthropology in Policy and Practice (GAPP) 195 group fulfilling prophecy 116 group identifications 172 group structures and organization 39 groupology 126 Hale, Professor John 180n2 Handelman, D. 193, 211n4 Hannerz, U. 241 Harris, M. 135, 153 Harrison, David 213, 227, 228 Harrison, J. 262n29 Hart, C.W.M. 134 Hatch, E. 194 hatred 20 Heath, Edward 157, 166

Index Helsloot, J. 211n2 heritage, sacrifice of 260 Hermans, D. 16, 17, 18, 235, 241n2 Herzfeld, M. 231, 234, 235 Hess, H. 86n9 hiding culture from visitors 238–9 Hirsch, E. 243 Hobsbawm, E. 202 Hobsbawm, E. and Ranger, T. 198 Hoebel, E.A. 128n10 Hoekstra, Hannie 156 Holy Week in Andalusia 200 Homans, G.C. 119 homeostatic activity symptomatic of systems undergoing change 159 honour: attitudes towards 47–8; violence and 47–8 Horton, P.B. 119 Houde, Camillien 91 Hugo, Victor 77 Huntington, E. 18n1 Hussein, Saddam 25 identity: boundaries and, renegotiation of 206; civil society, tourism, developers and 260; community celebrations and 265; gender identity, tourism and 235; mass tourism in southern Europe 234–5 ideology: factionalism and 162–5; ideological fermentation 205 Idris, King of Libya 17 independence for Malta 170–71 India 1, 2, 4, 117, 126; Congress Party in 162 individual and groups in society, continuum between 117–20, 124, 126–7 individual-centred interaction systems 117 industrialization 197, 203, 210 informal organization 115–16 Inglott, Peter Serracino 273 innovations: acceptance of 144; generation of 140–41 internal segmentation, conflict and 104–12 internment at Petawawa 91 interpersonal relations: patronage, decline in Malta of 169, 171, 172–3; sociology of social anthropology, considerations on 136–7 introversion 21 The Invention of Tradition (Hobsbawm, E. and Ranger, T.) 198 Ionnides, D. and Holcomb, B. 248 Ireland 3, 151, 273n2 Italy 3, 4, 5, 7, 17, 21, 22, 42–86, 138, 146, 155, 171, 203, 204, 210n2, 230; Christian Democratic Party (DC) 59, 61, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76; Communist Party (PCI) 59, 72, 73, 75, 76; Nationalist Party (PN) 243; SocialistCommunist coalition (PSI-PCI) 72, 73, 75; Socialist Party (PSI) 59, 75. see also Montreal Italians; poverty and politics in Sicilian agrotown

Index Japan 1, 2 Jeannot, G. 234 Jerte Valley of Extremadura, ritual developments in 199–200, 202, 206, 207 Jesus Christ 22, 57, 58, 178, 186, 189 Johnson, H.M. 115, 116, 119, 127n2 Jonker, Carla 129n17 Kadt, E.de 25 Katz, Phillip 146 Katz, P.S. and Verrips, J. 150 Keesing, F.M. 128n10 Kenna, M. 201, 210, 235, 239 Kennedy, President John F. 56 Kenny, M. 4, 122, 168 Khattab, N. 26 Kiljunen, M.-L. 5, 6 kinship 3; kin relationships 46–7; Montreal Italians, kinship relations amongst 93–4 Kirkop see Farrug 52n1 Knights of Malta 192, 218, 235 Knights of St.John 169, 170, 215, 244 Koster, A., Kuiper, Y. and Verrips, J. 211n2 Kousis, M. 235 Kroese, G. 210n2 Kuhn, Thomas S. 131, 132, 133, 135, 136, 140 Kuper, A. 131 Labour Party in Malta (MLP) 34–5, 36, 243, 264, 271; Church and 266; egalitarian hopes following election of 269–70; government patronage and 268–9 labour shortages in Sicily 52 Ladin Carnival in the Dolomites, revitalization of 200–201 Lakatos, I. and Musgrove, A. 132 land: land reform 49, 80; land resources 79; landless agricultural labourers (braccianti) 50–51; ownership of 49; politics in Sicily and 48–52, 61, 67, 69, 71–2, 79–80, 85n4, 85n5; power and, relationship between 49 landscapes, attitudes to 243–5 languages in Montreal 96, 111–12 Lanquar, R. et al. 6, 231 Lanternari, V. 211n3 Lasswell, H.D. 29, 31, 39, 40 Le Bras, G. 210n1 Leach, E.R. 2, 117, 134 leader/follower linkages 163–4 leisure immigrants 231 Leonardo, Avvocato 123, 124 Leone (pseudonym for Palma di Montechiaro, see 85n1) 7, 42–86; absentee landlords 49; administrative instability 74–6; Agrigento, power of Bishop of 54–5; anticlericism 55–6; armed insurrections 43; attachment to locale, strength of 44; behaviour, code of 66–7; Catholic labour syndicate (ACLI) 56; Chistu fa i fatti suoi! (He minds his own business!) 47, 66–7; Christian Democratic Party (DC) 59,

303 61, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76; Church authority 54–7; Circolo Civile (club for white-collar workers) 62–3; class, work and 48–52; clubs 61–3; Confederazione Generale Italiana di Lavoro (CGIL) 60–61; Confederazione Italiana dei Sindacati Liberi (CISL) 60, 61; constituted authorities 52–7; Convegno Sulle Condizioni di Vita e di Salute in Zone Arretrate della Sicilia Occidentale 61; demonstrations, strikes and 60–61; emigrants, cash flows from 51; epilogue (2011) 82–5; family 46–7; friends of friends 63–72; honour, violence and 47–8; kin relationships 46–7; labour shortages 52; land 48–52, 61, 67, 69, 71–2, 79–80, 85n4, 85n5; land and power, relationship between 49; land ownership 49; land reform 49, 80; land resources 79; landless agricultural labourers (braccianti) 50–51; local politics 72– 8; local taxes, increases in 42–3; Mafia 70–72, 84–5; mafiosi 67–70, 83–4; maladministration 77–8; municipal corporation (comune), organization of 52–4, 84; neighbourhood 43– 5; obligations of amicizia (friendship) 68, 69– 70; omertà 65–7; patrons 63–5; piazza at heart of town 44; political history 72–8; political parties 57–9; poverty, local administration and 73, 79; production, techniques of 48; protective intermediaries (patrons), social role of 64–5; PSI-PCI bloc in local government 72, 73; remittances from emigrants 51; Roman Catholic religion, deep roots of 56–7; Sicilian proverbs (and code of behaviour) 66–7; social status attached to possession of land 49–50; Socialist Party, decreasing popularity of 74; state authority 52–4; subsidization of Church by state 56; taxation and conscription 42; town council election results 73; town patriotism (campanilismo) 44; unions 57, 60–61; women and honour, attitudes towards 47–8; work, class and 48–52 Lett, J.W. 232 Levi, Primo 61 Lévi-Strauss, C. 2, 164, 165 Lewis, O. 28, 126 Lidl supermarkets 252–3 Limits to Growth: A Report on the Predicament of Mankind (Meadows, D.H. et al.) 205 Lindkund, C. 242n6 Lindo, F. and van Niekerk, M. 21 Linton, R. 28 Liquornik, Lily 113 Lison-Tolosana, C. 4 liturgical change 178, 179 living in a monument 216–17 Livitano, Rosario 84 local politics 72–8 local taxes, increases in 42–3 locals and tourists, factors affecting relations between 231–2 London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) 2, 3, 7, 8

304 Loomis, C.P. and Beegle, J.A. 116, 119 Lupi, Monsignor Professor Joseph 180 MacCannell, D. 25, 187, 188, 197, 224, 232, 234, 237, 238 McGrath, J.E. and Altman, I. 128n10 Mach, Zdzislaw 199 McKean, P.F. 194, 236 McKercher, B. 225 Maddox, R.F. 210n2 Mafia 67–72, 83–5, 86n9 Maghreb 21 Maine, H.S. 39 Mair, L. 2, 3, 40, 81, 116, 119, 128n11 Makarios, M.K.M., Archbishop and President of Cyprus 17 maladministration 77–8 Malinowski, B. 2, 118, 141, 165, 230 Mallia, E.A. 246, 247, 250 Malta 1, 2–3, 4; Agriculture Department 252; arts and crafts in 212–13; Civil Aviation Department 252; Development Planning Act (1992) 247; discrimination against Arabs and blacks in 24; Environment and Planning Authority (MEPA) 248–9, 250, 251, 252, 253, 254, 261n1, 261n4, 261n14; Environment Protection Act (1991) 247; Government Tourist Board (MGTB) 213–14; priorities of 183–4; governmental history 29–30; ‘green areas’ outside development zone (ODZ) 251; history of 29; Important Bird Area (IBA) 258; independence from Britain (1964) 169–71; International Airport 252; Labour Party (MLP) 243, 246, 269, 270, 271; landscapes of 243–5; Maltese festa, persistence of 183; maritime heritage 255; Maritime Museum in Birgu 261n15; Marsamxett Harbour 255, 256, 257; Mellieha Bay, TasSellum Development at 258; National Tourist Office (NTOM) 28n2, 221, 227; National Tourist Organization (NTO) 184, 213, 214, 215; Naxxar, Good Friday procession in 25–6; North African ‘other,’ portrayal of and prejudice against 23–4; Parata carnival in 22–3; realities for tourists in 255–6; rivalry between Nationalist Party and Labour Party (MLP) in 264; Secretariat for Tourism 214, 216, 219, 228n2, 228n3; Sicilian omertà in 250; strategic environmental assessment (SEA)  251; Structure Plan (1990) 247; sustainability of tourism in 213; tourism and relationships with local people 25–6; Tourism Authority 255; tourist gaze, Maltese reactions to 215–16. see also civil society, tourism, developers and; factions and politics in Maltese village; Farrug; Mdina; Nazzar; patronage, decline in Malta of; tourism, ritual and Mamo, Franklin 27 Manila 2 manipulators 123–4

Index Manning, F.E. 182, 192, 197, 198, 205, 209, 211n4 Manologlou, E. 234 Marija Bambina 185, 188 Marispini, A.L. 241n4 Markham, S.F. 18n1 Mars, Gerald 10 Marx, Karl 137, 153, 243 mass media 197, 200, 204, 207, 210 mass tourism: advent of 245; Malta’s adaptation to 246; mass cultural tourism in perspective 223–4; mass servant ethos engendered by tourism 183; in southern Europe 229–30, 232, 237, 240–41, 245 mass tourism in southern Europe 10, 229–42; aggression against visitors 239–40; Alarde in Basque community of Fuenterrabia 236; Amish in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania 236; anonymity, masking function of 232; ‘Anthropology of the Mediterranean’ (Gilmore, D.) 229–30; anti-tourst backlash 233, 235; commercialization without consent, problem of 237; covert resistance against tourist infiltration 237–8; crime against tourists 233; crowding, problem of 232; cultural commoditization 236–7; cultural identity, manipulation of images of 234–5; customization of tourist product, demand for 234; gatekeepers, Apppadurai’s concept of 230; gender identity, tourism and 235; globalization, tourist destinations and 241; hiding culture from visitors 238–9; identity 234–5; leisure immigrants 231; locals and tourists, factors affecting relations between 231–2; mass tourism 229–30, 232, 237, 240–41, 245; Mellieha, cultural integrity in 236; organized protest against tourist infiltration 240; outsiders, introduction into homogeneous neighbourhoods 229, 241; patronization of locals 231; People of the Mediterranean (Davis, J.) 229–30; pollution, problem of 232; prices, tourist demand and increases in 232; scale factor 232–3; second home owners 231; tourism, anthropological perspective on 229–30; tourists, varieties of 231–3; Virgin of El Rocío in Almonte 236–7; winter mode, tourists as problem for 233 Mauss, M. 2, 13, 165 Maxwell, G. 71 Maybury-Lewis, D. 125, 159 Mayer, A. 11n3, 28, 117, 122, 127, 128n12, 129n16, 130 Mazzacchi, S. 84 Mdina: local council in 220–22; Mdina ’93 extravaganza 218–19; religious orders in 216; tourist attraction of 215–16 Meadows, D.H. et al. 205 Mediterranean: balance of power 170; economic migration through northern coast 5–6; emigration from rural communities, depopulation and 5; European Union (EU)

Index and investment 5; lands of, northern European conquest of 21; northern coast, gateway to EU 5–6; northern Europe, Mediterranean relationship with 15–16; seasonality of coastal areas 14–18; shores 5, 20, 21, 23, 25, 231, 233, 256; social and cultural unity of 1; studies of societies 4–5; tourism, development of 6 The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II (Braudel, F.) 6 Meertens, Donny 144, 146, 149, 151, 156 Mellieha: bridge at 254; cultural integrity in 236; Mellieha Bay, Tas-Sellum Development at 258 Melon, P. 19n2 Melvyn, Carla 113 Meyer, Birgit 10 Miège, M. 267 military actions and conflicts 17–18 Miller, R. and Miller, M. 261n3 Milocca, Sicily 3 Mindanao 2 Mintoff, Dominic 1, 35, 268 Mistra Bay disco 254–5 Mitchell, J. 119, 233, 234, 241, 242n5, 242n6, 250 Mizzi, S. and Pace, C. 227, 228n2 mobility 197, 210. see also emigration Montesquieu, C.-L. 18n1 Montreal, Archbishop of 89 Montreal Italians 7, 87–114; Association of Italo-Canadian Professional Men (APIC) 100–101; associations 98–102; Bella Vista Golf Club 101, 102; Canadian Italian Business and Professional Men’s Association (CIBPA) 97–8, 100–101; Casa d’Italia 91, 101, 109, 111; Casacalenda Society 102; Church 98; class, status and 110–11; community 103–4, 112–13; community, dynamic aspects of 96–7; community, social history of 89–92; conflict, internal segmentation and 104–12; Dante Alighieri Society 97; demographics 88; Direzione Generale degli Italiani all’Estero (General Agency for Italians Overseas) 90; family 93–4; conflict and 104–5; Fasci and Dopolavoro (social and recreational) clubs, establishment of 90; formative period of Italian settlement 90; French and English languages 96, 111–12; friendship 94–5; Fronte Unico Italiano di Montreal 90–91; Furgolar Furlan folklore group 97; generation, conflict and 105–7; growth of community, stages of 87, 88–9; historical perspective 87–9; internal segmentation, conflict and 104–12; internment at Petawawa 91; Italian consulate 90, 102–3; Italian culture 95; Italianness as asset 92; kinship relations 93–4; languages 96, 111–12; livelihoods 95–8; mutual aid societies 99; neighbourhood 94–5; parish and 109; parish, neighbourhood and 109; political divisions 111; postwar immigrants, success of 91–2; regional differences 107–9; Roman

305 Catholic Association of Italian Workers (ACLI) 99; savings 96; self-satisfaction 97–8; settlement patterns 88–9; social framework 92–104; social history of community 89–92; status and class 110–11 Moore, K. 241n1, 241n2 moral standards, summer relaxation of 16–17 Morell, Marc 257 Moreno, J.L. 128n9, 129n15 Moreno, J.L. and Jennings, H.H. 128n9 Moreno, J.L. et al. 129n18 Morris, H.S. 29 Moss, L.W. and Cappannari, S.C. 3, 50, 113n3 Mulkay, M.J. 141 municipal corporation (comune), organization of 52–4, 84 Murdock, G.P. 28 Murphy, R.F. 131, 135 Muscat, Beryl 156 Mussolini, Benito 90 mutual aid societies 99 Nadel, S.F. 116, 128n6, 128n11, 129n16 Nadur on Gozo 195–6n2 Naguib, General 17 Nash, D. 241n2 National Tourist Office of Malta (NTOM) 28n2, 221, 227 Nativity of Our Lady (Marija Bambina) in Naxxar 185–6, 189 Naur, Maja 18 navel gazing 131 Naxxar: changes in public ritual in 201; decline in celebrations, patterns in 187–9; Good Friday procession in 189–90, 191; Nativity of Our Lady (Marija Bambina) in 185–6, 189; prediction of trends, thoughts on 265; tourism, ritual and 184–5 neighbourhood: Montreal Italians 94–5; parish and 109; poverty and politics in Sicilian agrotown 43–5 neighbourliness, effects of prosperity on 264–5 Netherlands 147, 150, 151 networks: climatic effects on 122; non-corporate groups, place of 120–23, 126–7; social networks 3; structural characteristics of 121–3; uses of 122–3 Nicholas, Ralph W. 125, 126, 129n17, 158, 159, 161, 162, 163, 164, 167n1 Niemeyer, Rudo 10, 127 Nisos in the Cyclades, patronal feast on 201 non-corporate groups, place of 8, 115–29; brokers 123–4; complex societies 117; continuum between individual and groups in society 117–20, 124, 126–7; corporationists 119; egocentric interaction systems, concept of 115, 117, 120–21; Farrug, conflicts between groups in 126; group fulfilling prophecy 116; groupology 126; individual and groups in society, continuum between 117–20, 124, 126–7; individual-centred interaction

306 systems 117; informal organization 115–16; manipulators 123–4; networks 120–23, 126–7; climatic effects on 122; structural characteristics of 121–3; networks, uses of 122–3; non-corporate groups, recognition of 117; quasi-groups 124–6; social anthropology, subject matter of 116; social behaviour 116, 118, 123; social catalysts 123–4; social interaction systems 115–16; social organization, forms of 115–16; social priority, order of 117–18; society, continuum between individual and groups in 117–20, 124, 126–7; static, observable society, notion of 116; subject matter, restricted perspectives on 116 non-governmental organisations (NGOs) 240, 248, 250, 251, 253, 256, 258, 260 Nordic Samish Council 152 normal science, Kuhn’s concept of 132, 133, 135 North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) 152 Norway 3, 147, 149, 151 obligations of amicizia (friendship) 68, 69–70 Odermatt, P. 195, 224, 225, 234, 237, 241 omertà 65–7, 250 opposition: opposition coalitions 161–3; ‘progressive’ factions and 160–61 Order of Italo-Canadians 90, 99 Order of the Sons of Italy 99, 101, 102 Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) 15, 152 Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) 205 organizational brokerage 176–7 organizational specialists, representation by 175 organized protest against tourist infiltration 240 Ottoman Empire 21 outside development zone (ODZ) 251, 252, 254 outsiders, introduction into homogeneous neighbourhoods 229, 241 oversocialization, dangers of 141–2 Paine, R. 127n5 Palma di Montechiaro see Leone 85n1 paradigms: paralysis of 260n29; persistence of 134–7 parish: celebrations, importance for 184; neighbourhood in Montreal and 109; religious pageantry, redefinition of 213; rituals 263, 266–7 Passover 21–2 patronage, decline in Malta of 9, 168–81; baptism, changes in the rite of 177–8; belief systems, impetus for change in 180; bureaucratization 173; central government autonomy 170; Church and Labour Party (MLP), conflict between 173; collectivization 173; community, concept of nationalism and 172–3; Council of Trent 178; decisionmaking, collectivization of 173; dependency relations 175–7; developments in Malta

Index 169–71; emergence of patronage 168–9; emigration 170–71; families, differences in relative power in 171–2; group identifications 172; independence 170–71; interpersonal relations 169, 171, 172–3; Knights of St. John 170; liturgical change 178, 179; Mediterranean balance of power 170; organizational brokerage 176–7; organizational specialists, representation by 175; patronage/ brokerage 176; patronage relations, transformation of 174–5; personal clients, shift in patronage relations on 175; political patronage 168–9, 179; power relations, shift in 173; priest and parishioner, gap between 178; prosperity, dependency reduction and 173–4; public education, push towards 170; religious authority 181n3; religious changes 177–8, 179–80; religious dependency 178–9; religious patronage 168–9, 179; Roman Catholicism, official religion 169–70; salvation, dependency relationship of 179; self-rule, experience of 169, 170; social relations, changes in 171–4; television, growth of 171; tourism 171; utilitarian aspect of patronage 168; Vatican II 177, 178–9; Virgin Mary, cult of 177, 178, 180–81n2; worship, collectivization of 179. see also prediction of trends, thoughts on patronization of locals 231 patrons 63–5 patterns of: conflict 30–34; transformation 204–9 Pedregal, Nogués 234, 235, 238, 239 people, focus on 130–31 Peristiany, J.G. 4, 11n1, 230 personal clients, shift in patronage relations on 175 Peters, E.L. 117 Philip II of Spain 13, 15, 18, 20 Philips, Derek, 144 Pi-Sunyer, O. 27n1, 235, 238, 241n1, 241n2, 242n6, 242n8 Pitkin, D.S. 3, 81, 113n3, 241n4 Pitt-Rivers, J. 3, 4, 11n1, 230 planning and development, campaigns against 248, 260 playful celebration, communitas and: rituals in Europe 207–9; tourism, ritual and 192–3 Pocock, D.F. 134 pogroms, memories of 21 Polish May Day celebrations, transformation of 199 political divisions in Montreal 111 political-economic developments 15, 18 political elites, theoretical constructs and 138 political history of Sicilian agro-town 72–8 political parties in Malta 34, 243 political parties in Sicily 57–9 political patronage in Malta 168–9, 179 political polarization 271 political rivalry 34–5 Pollard, J. and Rodreguez, R.D. 227

Index pollution, problem of 232 Poppi, Cesare 200, 207, 234, 239 popular celebrations, Church resistance to 266 popular community activities, growth of interest in 266–7 popularity of celebrations, increase in 189–90 Pospisil, L. 117, 129n16 postwar immigrants in Montreal, success of 91–2 Pouwer, J. 117, 128n7 power: Agrigento, power of Bishop of 54–5; balance of power: competition in balanced opposition 157; factionalism and 143, 151, 159, 161, 170; central government, concentration of powers within 269; centralization of 145–6, 152; Church power, community celebrations and 265–6; differentials in, economic relations and 150–51; of European nation-states 152; families, differences in relative power in 171–2; geographical mobility, local power balances and 151–2; land and, relationship between 49; power relations, shift in 173; professional-class patrons, loss of powers of 267–8, 268–9; shift in locus of 21 prediction of trends, thoughts on 10, 263–73; bias, influences of 271–2; central government: concentration of powers within 269; growth and complexity of 268; Church power, community celebrations and 265–6; communitas 265; community celebrations: decline in 263–4; reversal of decline in 264–7; corruption 269–70; democratization of ‘culture,’ community celebrations and 265–6; disorientation, sense of 271; emigrants, community celebrations and return of 265–6; gentrification 265; identity, community celebrations and 265; Labour Party in Malta (MLP) 271; Church and 266; egalitarian hopes following election of 269–70; government patronage and 268–9; Malta, rivalry between Nationalist Party and Labour Party (MLP) in 264; Naxxar 265; neighbourliness, effects of prosperity on 264–5; parish rituals 263, 266–7; patronage: development of bureaucratic brokerage of 270–71; in Malta 263; in Malta, decline in 267–9, 272; in Malta, reversal of decline in 269–72; political polarization 271; popular celebrations, Church resistance to 266; popular community activities, growth of interest in 266–7; professional-class patrons, loss of powers of 267–8, 268–9; prosperity, emigration and 266; public religious holidays, reduction in numbers of 264; tourism, community celebrations and 265–6; unemployment, community celebrations and 265–6 prejudice 20, 23, 24–5 prices, tourist demand and increases in 232 priest and parishioner, gap between 178 privacy, loss of 224–5

307 processes, inter-relatedness of 146 professional-class patrons, loss of powers of 267–8, 268–9 professional self-examination 131 prosperity: dependency reduction and 173–4; emigration and 266 protective intermediaries (patrons), social role of 64–5 Provence 146 Przyzcki, Ann 10 PSI-PCI bloc in local government 72, 73 public celebrations, expansion of 197–8, 209–10, 210–11n2, 211n3 public education, push towards 170 public religious holidays, reduction in numbers of 264 public welfare activities 146 Puijk, R. 195, 233 quasi-groups 124–6 Radcliffe-Brown, A.R. 2, 8, 39, 130, 131, 136, 138, 165 Radmilli, R. 260 Rappaport, R.A. 199 rational procedures 134–5, 135–6 rationalization 197, 210 Ravesteijn, Wim 3 Reader, D.H. 134 real estate speculation 259–60 Realpolitik, nationalim, prejudice and 25 reanimation of rituals 202–3 Redfield, Robert 4 religion 16; authority of Church 54–7, 181n3; dependency and patronage 178–9; religious patronage 168–9, 179. see also Church (Roman Catholic Church) remittances from emigrants 51 renewal, modes of 202–3 research: recommendations of 219–20; reporting research 219–20, 228n2 Reski, P. 83 resources, access to 160–61 restoration of rituals 202–3 retraditionalization of rituals 202–3 revitalization: concept of 202–3; revival of ‘authentic’ traditions 206 Reynolds, M.. 280 ritual change, context of 203–4 rituals in Europe, revitalization of 10, 197–211; amusement, alternative forms of 197, 200, 204, 207, 210; case studies 198–202, 207; centralization 197, 204, 210; context of ritual change 203–4; democratization 204, 208–9; EASA (European Association of Social Anthropologists) conference in Coimbra (1990) 208; emigration 205; entertainment 201, 208; folklorization 203; Holy Week in Andalusia 200; identity and boundaries, renegotiation of 206; ideological fermentation 205; industrialization 197, 203, 210; The

308 Invention of Tradition (Hobsbawm, E. and Ranger, T.) 198; Jerte Valley of Extremadura, ritual developments in 199–200; Ladin Carnival in the Dolomites, revitalization of 200–201; Limits to Growth: A Report on the Predicament of Mankind (Meadows, D.H. et al.) 205; mass media 197, 200, 204, 207, 210; mobility 197, 210; Naxxar in Malta, changes in public ritual in 201; Nisos in the Cyclades, patronal feast on 201; patterns of transformation 204–9; playful celebration, communitas and 207–9; Polish May Day celebrations, transformation of 199; public celebrations, expansion of 197–8, 209–10, 210–11n2, 211n3; rationalization 197, 210; reanimation 202–3; renewal, modes of 202–3; restoration 202–3; resurrection 202–3; retraditionalization 202–3; revitalization, concept of 202; revival of ‘authentic’ traditions 206; secularization 197, 203, 208; Small is Beautiful: A Study of Economics as if People Mattered (Schumacher, E.F.) 205; Sohos in Macedinia, Carnival celebrations in 201–2; traditional celebrations, changing rhythms of 206–7; Vatican II 197, 211n3; Virgin of the Dew in Andalusia 200; West Moorside, Demonstration Day in 198–9; winter feasts, renewed attention to 207 rival factions, organization of 158 Rizza, Sandra 83 Rochefort, Renée 48 Rokku, Dun 126 Roman Catholic Association of Italian Workers (ACLI) 99 Roman Catholic religion see Church (Roman Catholic Church) Rossi, A. and De Simone, R. 210n2, 211n3 rural sociology 8, 11n3 Sabel, C.F. 234 Sachetti, G.B. 90 Saint Martin (pseudonym for Saint Leonard, see 51n1) 31, 32, 34, 36, 37, 38, 39, 126, 163, 164, 167n5 Saint Roque (pseudonym for Saint Joseph, see 51n1) 30, 31, 32, 33, 36, 38, 41n3, 126, 163, 164, 167n5 Saladin 25 Salamone, S.D. and Stanton, J.B. 235 Salerno, M. 260 Salomonsson, A. 202, 211n3 salvation, dependency relationship of 179 Salvatore, Giuliano 71, 123, 124 Sammut, Nadia 227 Sandombu (opposition leader in Mukanza) 162–3 Sant, Monsignor Professor Carmel 180 savings 96 Scaccia, P. 84 scale factor 232–3 Schaffer, Bernard 144

Index Schapera, Isaac 2 Schneider, P. and Schneider, J. 85n8, 86n9 Schneider, P., Schneider, J. and Hansen, E.D. 127n1, 241n1 Schumacher, E.F. 205 Sciascia, Leonardo 61 Scicluna, M. 259, 261n4 scientific ideas, continuity and change in 131–3 scientific trespass, compartmentalization or 154–5 Scott, J. 238, 260 seasonality 6, 13–19; activities in summer 16–17; climate of the sea 13; communal bonds, winter consolidation of 18; constraints of, independence of 13–14; of cultural tourism, lack of 225; of Mediterranean coastal areas 14–18; military actions and conflicts in summer 17–18; moral standards, summer relaxation of 16–17; phases of 13; social behaviour, seasonal variation of 13, 18; summer 14–18; summer leisure, patterns of 17; summer migrants 17; visitors in summer 15–16; winter 16, 18 second home owners 231 secularization 197, 203, 208; secular entertainment 16 Selänniemi, T. 229 self-rule in Malta, experience of 169, 170 self-satisfaction 97–8 Selwyn, T. 10, 182, 195, 241n3, 242n6, 260 Selwyn, T. and Scott, J. 243 service, tradition of 246–7 settlers: campaign for attraction of 245; Montreal Italians, settlement patterns of 88–9 Sharma, H. 159 Sicilian Association 99 Sicilian proverbs (and code of behaviour) 47–8, 66–7 Siegel, B. and Beals, A.R. 28, 158, 162, 167n1 Silverman, R.F. and Salisbury, R.F. 157 Silverman, S.F. 168, 169, 210n1, 244, 261n3, 273n1 Simic, A. 24 Sjoberg, G. 81 Slotkin, J.S. 119 Slough, Rosemary 113 Small is Beautiful: A Study of Economics as if People Mattered (Schumacher, E.F.) 205 Smith, Denis Mack 81 Smith, M.G. 40 Smith, V.L. 228n1, 231 Snell, H. and Snell, T. 147, 149, 151, 152, 156 social anthropology: of Europe 147–9; subject matter of 116 Social Anthropology, Conference on New Approaches in (1963) 130 social behaviour 116, 118, 123; seasonal variation of 13, 18 social catalysts 123–4 social change and factionalism 158–60

Index social composition, factionalism and 162–5 social framework in Montreal 92–104 social history of Montreal Italians 89–92 social interaction systems 115–16 social networks 3 social organization, forms of 115–16 social priority, order of 117–18 social process in Europe 9, 145–56; Andalusia 146, 151; case studies 145–7; developments in Europe 149–53; future research 155; geographical mobility, local power balances and 151–2; Netherlands 147, 150, 151; Norway 147, 149, 151; power, centralization of 145–6, 152; power differentials, economic relations and 150–51; power of European nation-states 152; processes, inter-relatedness of 146; Provence 146; public welfare activities 146; scientific trespass, compartmentalization or 154–5; social anthropology of Europe 147–9; supranational organizations, nationstates and 152–3; Switzerland, federalist structure of 146; terminology 145; theoretical implications 153–4; Tuscany 146; Tyrol, South 146, 150 social relations: asymmetrical nature of 140, 143–4; patronage and changes in. 171–4 social status, land and 49–50 Socialist Party in Sicily, decreasing popularity of 74 society: continuum between individual and groups in 117–20, 124, 126–7; static, observable society, notion of 116 sociology of social anthropology, considerations on 8–9, 130–44; anti-establishment criticism 143; Association of Social Anthropologists of the Commonwealth 130; British Social Anthropology 133–4; British Social Anthropology, anomalies in 134; change, internal and external forces of 139–43; dominant paradigms 132–3; evolutionary theories, abandonment of 138; external forces of change 142–3; innovations: acceptance of 144; generation of 140–41; internal forces of change 139–42; interpersonal relations 136–7; navel gazing 131; normal science, Kuhn’s concept of 132, 133, 135; oversocialization, dangers of 141–2; paradigms, persistence of 134–7; people, focus on 130–31; political elites, theoretical constructs and 138; professional selfexamination 131; rational procedures 134–5, 135–6; scientific ideas, continuity and change in 131–3; Social Anthropology, Conference on New Approaches in (1963) 130; social relations, asymmetrical nature of 140, 143–4; sociology of science, establishment of 131; structural-functionalism, appeal of 137–9; structural-functionalism, economics of use of 139; The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Kuhn, T.) 131–3; theoretical schools, formation of 137

309 Sohos in Macedonia, Carnival celebrations in 201–2 Sons of Italy 109 Soon Young 146 Spain 4, 5–6, 21, 22, 27n1, 138, 204, 208, 210; North African immigration to 26 Spinhuis, Het 21 Srinivas, M.N. and Béteille, A. 117 Stacey, M. 210n1, 273n1 state authority 52–4 Steinberg, S.H. 17 stereotyping 20, 24, 25, 26, 107, 228n1, 238, 241 Stille, A. 86n9 Stirling, Paul 2 Stott, M. 16, 17, 194, 236, 241n1, 241n2 strategic environmental assessment (SEA) 251 Strickland, Lord 37 structural-functionalism: appeal of 137–9; economics of use of 139; theoretical paradigm 7–8 subsidization of Church by state 56 summer: leisure, patterns of 17; migrants 17; moral standards, summer relaxation of 16–17; seasonality and 14–18; visitors 15–16; winter and summer seasons, separation between 225–6 supranational organizations, nation-states and 152–3 suspicion 20, 21, 46, 69, 104, 105, 108, 229 Sweet, J.D. 238 Switzerland, federalist structure of 146 symbolism, factionalism and 162–5 symmetry, balanced opposition and factions 160–65, 166 Taine, H. 18n1 tastes of visitors, changes in 214 taxation, conscription and 42 technology, developments in 15, 17, 18 television, growth of 171 Testa, R.M. 236 theory: formation of theoretical schools 137; social process in Europe, theoretical implications 153–4 Thoden van Velzen, H.U.E. 134, 161, 167n4 Tito, Marshall Josep B. 24 Torremolinos 227 Toulmin, S. 132, 134, 135, 140, 153 tourism, ritual and 9–10, 182–96; Alarde in Basque community of Fuenterrabia 182–3; anthropological perspective on 229–30; celebrations 185–6; commercialization, influence of 182–3; commoditization: of culture 183; and social boundaries 193–5; community celebrations 265–6; confraternities 188–9; context of celebratory growth 190–91; cultural tourism 195; decline in celebrations, patterns in Naxxar 187–9; festa ta’barra, or ‘external feast’ 186–7; festa ta’gewwa or ‘internal feast’ 186–7; Good Friday procession

310 at Naxxar 189–90, 191; ‘insider’ and ‘outsider’ events, distinction between 187; Malta and tourism 183–4; Malta Government Tourist Board, priorities of 183–4; Maltese festa, persistence of 183; mass servant ethos engendered by tourism 183; Nativity of Our Lady (Marija Bambina) in Naxxar 185–6, 189; Naxxar 184–5; parish celebrations, importance of 184; patronage, decline in Malta of 171; playful celebration, communitas and 192–3; popularity of celebrations, increase in 189–90; relationships with local people 25–6; tourism and celebrations 191–2, 195–6n2; tourism promotion, civil society and 255–6; traditional working-class village festivities, tourist interest in 192, 194–5. see also civil society, tourism, developers and; cultural tourism; mass tourism in southern Europe town patriotism (campanilismo) 44 trade unions 57, 60–61 traditional celebrations, changing rhythms of 206–7 traditional working-class village festivities, tourist interest in 192, 194–5 transport technology 15, 17 Tripoli 2 Trouwborst, Albert 127 tuna ranching 259–60 Turkey 2, 6, 17, 223 Turner, L. and Ash, J. 212, 241 Turner, V. and Turner, E. 210n1, 273n1 Turner, Victor W. 2, 159, 163, 192, 193, 197, 198, 209, 211n4, 211n5, 226, 232, 265 Tuscany 146 Tylor, social theory of 137 Tyrol, South 146, 150 unemployment, community celebrations and 265–6 Unité de Recherche en Sociologie du Tourisme International (URESTI) 212 United Nations (UN) 152; Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) 27 Urry, J. 194, 214, 234 utilitarianism: patronage and 168; sacred landscapes, attitude to 244–5 van der Leeden, A.C. 127 van Nieuwenhuize, C.A.O. 81 van Opzeeland, Jolanthe 144 Vanderzanden, J.W. 119 Vangilisti, G. 87, 89 Vassallo, Mario 183, 194 Vatican II 181; patronage, decline in Malta of 177, 178–9; rituals in Europe, revitalization of 197, 211n3 Vella, A. 260

Index Vella, M. 251 Vermeulen, Hans 21, 144 Vernon, G.M. 128n10 Verrips, Jojada 10, 129n17, 147, 149, 150, 156, 167 Verster, A. 242n6 Virgin Mary, cult of 177, 178, 180–81n2 Virgin of El Rocío in Almonte 236–7 Virgin of the Dew in Andalusia 200 Wade, R. 146, 150 Wagner, Ulla 26 Waldren, J. 238, 242n6 Wales 3, 152 Wallman, Sandra 156, 263, 273 wars, memories of 21 Wartenstein, Burg 11n1 Washabough, W. 236 Weber-Kellerman, I. 182, 211n2, 211n3 Weiler, B. and Hall, C.M. 214, 234 Weinberg, Daniela 146, 151 Wennergren Foundation, Bad Wartenstein 4, 11n1 Werdmolder, H. 182, 211n2 Werff, P.E. van der 241n2 West Moorside, Demonstration Day in 198–9 Whyte, W.F. 125 Wilson, E.K. 128n10 Wilson, Godfrey 138 Wilson, Harold 157, 166 winter: communal bonds, winter consolidation of 18; seasonality and 16, 18; and summer seasons, separation between 225–6; winter feasts, renewed attention to 207; winter mode, tourists as problem for 233 Wiser, W. and Wiser, C. 2 Wolf, Eric R. 11n3, 130, 168, 180n2 women, attitudes towards 47–8 Wood, R.E. 228n1, 232 work, class and 48–52 World Council of Churches 152 worship, collectivization of 179 Worsley, P. 134 Wright, S. 198, 210 Wylie, Lawrence 2, 81 xenophobia 20, 27n2 Xibilia, Arturo 81 Xuereb, Paul 183, 194 Yablonsky, L. 116, 125 Yoon, Song 151 Yugoslavia 2 Zammit, Anna 195 Zammit, Edward 156 Zarb, S.M. 178 Zarkia, C. 235, 240 Zinovieff, S. 17, 235, 238