Calabria is still low on social capital

One of the commenters from my previous post on riots in Italy observed that “Calabria is low on social capital.” Rachel Donadio’s follow-up story on the riots tends to confirm this hypothesis:

The economy is so weak here [Rosarno, Calabria] that locals and immigrants are competitors. In a town where people are reluctant to reveal their last names and often their first, a mysterious element complicates any full understanding of the riots…

Edward Banfield’s Moral Basis of a Backward Economy is one of the most explicit analyses of what living in a society without trust looks like. Banfield was examining Sicily in the 1950s. Calabria is very close to Sicily, so his analysis tends to hold there as well. The part of the book that I remember most vividly was Banfield’s discussion of how people would often stop talking to their neighbors if they moved houses. His explanation was that people would talk to their neighbors to help keep peace between them. When one of them moved away, the exigency ceased to exist, thus they stopped talking. Donadio’s article echoed Banfield. What’s sad is that Banfield was writing half a century ago.

Riots in Italy

Immigrant riots in Italy?

The images emerging from Calabria over the weekend — of torched cars and angry African immigrants hurling rocks — were the most vivid example of the growing racial tensions in Italy, which have been exacerbated by an economic crisis whose depth has only recently been acknowledged in the national dialogue. Both the official and underground economies increasingly rely on immigrants, while Italy remains torn between acceptance and xenophobia.

The riots also shone a bright light on a side of the country rarely seen in tourist itineraries. On Sunday, the authorities began bulldozing the makeshift encampments outside Rosarno where hundreds of immigrants live in what human rights groups describe as subhuman conditions…

“This event pulled the lid off something that we who work in the sector know well but no one talks about: That many Italian economic realities are based on the exploitation of low-cost foreign labor, living in subhuman conditions, without human rights,” said Flavio Di Giacomo, the spokesman for the International Organization for Migration in Italy…

In recent years, the center-right government of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has issued strong anti-immigrant statements…

A member of the powerful Northern League Party, known for its anti-immigrant language, [Interior Minister] Maroni also defended a proposal introduced by his party last week to cap the number of immigrant students in public school classes at 30 percent. “Sometimes they speak different languages, and there’s no common balance in the classroom,” Mr. Maroni said.

I guess social capital doesn’t extend to immigrants.

Italy’s “White Christmas”

As if on cue, more bizarre news out of Italy. Yesterday someone tackled the Pope during Christmas Mass at the Vatican. This is not the most disturbing Christmas craziness in the country, however. I think this award goes to the mayor of Coccaglio, Italy, Franco Claretti, who wants to make sure his town has a unique type of white Christmas. It’s gives the lyrics “may all your Christmases be white” kind of a new meaning.

What is up with Italy?

A few weeks ago, Belusconi gets a punch in the face. Now this? On Christmas eve? What is up with Italy?

Berlusconi takes a punch

Literally.