A Structuralist Account of Community and Identities in an Alpine Valley
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THE HARD PEOPLE A STRUCTURALIST ACCOUNT OF COMMUNITY AND IDENTITIES IN AN ALPINE VALLEY BY PATRICK JAMES HEADY SUBMITTED FOR THE DEGREE OF PH.D. IN SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY LONDON SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS AND POLITICAL SCIENCE UNIVERSITY OF LONDON 1995 1 UMI Number: U091374 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Dissertation Publishing UMI U091374 Published by ProQuest LLC 2014. Copyright in the Dissertation held by the Author. Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 m m F 7121, 5521^5 ABSTRACT The thesis is about the assertion of identity and the maintenance of solidarity in Carnia - a mountainous area in the north east of Italy. The topic is analysed in relation to three interlocking themes: the social units which embody identity and organise cooperation; the tension between rivalrous assertion and the desire for harmonious cooperation; and the different social fields - economic activity, ritual, communication, property and prestation, kinship, and relationships with natural forces - in which the tension is acted out. Constraints on the possibilities of social organisation arise from formal characteristics specific to each field. The structuring of these social fields both shapes and reflects people's commitment to key institutions: patrilocal domestic group, corporate village, church, state, nation. The corporate village is shown to have an affinity with free choice of marriage partners (at least within the village), linguistic particularism, and state organisation. Recent changes in economic life and communications have transformed local society - leading to widespread despondency, self-conscious modernity, but also emphasis on tradition, and political regionalism. It is felt that social relationships should ideally be characterised by sympathetic cooperation and legitimate authority, but the fear is that they may collapse into - or be redefined as - conflicts involving the dangerous force of envy. Two contrasting strategies enable people to deal with this ambiguity: either use of one's own strength and vitality to exclude or overcome opposition, or identification with potential enviers and an emphasis on self-sacrifice. The strategies chosen by individual people depend on the context as well as on their sex, age, and wealth. But social solidarity requires an overall solution which assigns a legitimate role to each strategy. 2 Implicit in the substantive analyses is a methodological point: that a structuralist approach can make a major contribution to our understanding of European societies. 3 CONTENTS Page List of maps and tables 6 Note on language typeface and spelling 8 Acknowledgements 9 1 Introduction A Environment, history, and economy 13 B Research aims 23 C Gathering the data 28 D Interpreting the data 34 2 The practical organisation of village life A Ovasta, a village in the comune of Ovaro 42 B Households and families as cooperative units 56 C Villages as cooperative units 60 3 Rivalry and cohesion: envy, sympathy, and divergent fortunes A Conflict and envy 72 B Solidarity and shared experience 77 C Sympathetic cooperation in the village community 82 D Unity and divergent fortunes 95 4 Communication, strength, and boundaries A Contrasting attitudes to sociability 103 B Communication and social pressure 106 C Strength, closedness, and resistance to social pressure 112 D Comparative material and theories about envy and the evil eye 118 E Boundaries, strength, and status 124 5 Property, provision, and sacrifice A Property and social assertion 138 B Provision, gifts, and sacrifice 147 C The practical and social meaning of work 155 D The traditional elite - siors and priests 158 4 Page E The ideology of purity 164 6 Marriage and village unity A Endogamy 169 B The ritual enactment of endogamy 173 C The implications of the 'wheels' ritual 180 7 Social relationships and nature symbolism A Society and nature 190 B Life-force and order 1 93 C Animals and disorder 202 D Plants, light, and the definition of social units 208 8 Stability and change - Carnian society as a feedback mechanism A Forces for change 220 B Economically motivated responses to change 223 C Rivalry and solidarity in a changed context 233 D Salvaging the traditional community 240 9 Regional identity and nationalism 254 A Patriotism, regionalism, and politics 255 B Regional identity and the experience of difference 260 C The abandonment and recovery of regional identity 271 D Theories of nationalism and regionalism 280 10 Structural explanation and European society A Attitudes to structuralism 286 B Elements of structure in traditional Carnian society 289 C Affinity, property, and social structure 295 D Family, village, church, and state 303 E The structural preconditions of nationalism 307 Bibliography 314 5 LIST OF MAPS AND TABLES Page Map 1 Friuli and Carnia 11 Map 2 The Val Degano / Canale di Gorto 12 Table 1.1 The decline in the population of people in Ovaro comune 21 Table 1 .2 The decline in the population of cattle 22 Table 2 .1 Population of Ovasta by age and sex in 1991 42 Table 2 .2 Population of Ovaro comune by age and sex in 1991 43 Table 2 .3 Whether Ovastan women were doing paid work in 1991, by age group 45 Table 2 .4 Whether Ovastan men had ever worked abroad, by age group 45 Table 2 .5 Composition of maximal residential groups in Ovasta 47 Table 2 .6 Example of a family land-holding in Ovasta in 1955 52 Table 2 .7 Division of land between heirs - examples from Ovasta before 1955 53 Table 2 .8 Division of land between heirs - examples from Ovasta in latter half of 1960s 56 6 Page Table 6. 1 Marriages of ever-married men living in Ovasta in 1991 169 Table 8. 1 Net permanent emigration from the comune of Ovaro, and from Carnia, between 1962 and 1988 224 Table 8. 2 Employment and unemployment by sex in Ovaro comune in 1991 225 Table 8. 3 Brothers of Ovastan women who married within Ovasta 230 7 NOTE ON LANGUAGE, TYPEFACE AND SPELLING In order to distinguish between the two languages used in the valley, Friulian words are printed in bold italics while Italian words are printed in ordinary italics. Ordinary italics are also used for other non-English words and for emphasis. The following conventions are used for spelling Friulian words. 'Ci' 'ce' 'sci' 'see' 'chi' 'che' 'gn' are pronounced as in Italian. Approximate English equivalents would be 'chi' 'che' 'shi' 'she' (as in 'shepherd') 'ki' 'ke' and the 'ny' sound in 'onion'. 'cj' represents a sound in between the English 'ch' and the 'ky' sound in the English word 'cute'. 'gj' is the voiced version of the same sound. 's' represents the English sound 'sh' in front of 'a','i','o','u' and at the end of words. 'S' represents the English sound 'ch' in front of 'a','i','o','u' and at the end of words. '2' represents something like the English 'j'. Vowels with circumflex accents are long. 8 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This project would not have been possible without the help and advice of many different people, and these acknowledgements cannot fully express how much I owe them. One of my main debts is to the staff and fellow students of the anthropology department at LSE over the years since 1983 when I began the part-time MSc. Peter Loizos, who supervised this project, provided guidance and encouragement while I was in the field. Afterwards, both his own comments and the comparative reading which he suggested were crucial in helping me to sharpen initial impressions and intuitions into a coherent argument. The anthropology department's thesis writing seminar was very valuable, above all for the opportunity to share ideas and problems with people in the same situation. I also benefited from the opportunity to present early versions of some of these findings to seminars at the Accademia di Scienze Lettere e Arti at Udine, the Museo degli Usi e Costumi della Gente Trentina, University College London, and Sussex University. Several people commented on plans and drafts at various stages. They include Alfred Gell, who helped supervise the early part of the project, Cesare Poppi, Pier Paolo Viazzo, Janet Carsten, Norman Denison, Filippo and Caroline Osella, Tony Manners, Fenella Cannell, Paola Filippucci, and Jaro Stacul. In 1988 I visited the anthropology department at Sienna for a week, where Professors Solinas and Clemente and Dr LiCausi were generous with their time and comments about northern Italian society. Vanessa Maher at Turin also provided helpful advice, and introduced me to Dionigi Albera who generously gave up a day to take me to visit the alpine valley where he was working. Leo Piasere did the same for the countryside round Verona. It was these 9 two visits, along with some films made by the faculty at Sienna, which gave me a real sense of what working in the north Italian countryside might be like. Cesare Poppi provided me with contacts in Friuli, and Giorgio Ferigo provided introductions to people in the Val Degano itself as well as the benefit of his own knowledge of and enthusiasm for Carnia's present and past. Pieri and Viviane Fontanin, and Cornelia Puppini provided hospitality and insiders' perspectives on the autonomist movement. I was able to discuss plans and initial impressions with Raimondo Strassoldo at Udine university. I owe a very particular debt to Gian Paolo Gri and to Donatella Cozzi, then both at Trieste university, for their detailed knowledge of Carnian society, and for very stimulating discussions of impressions and interpretations.