Table Of ContentSTUDIES IN SOCIAL DISCONTINUITY
Under the Consulting Editorship of:
CHARLES TILLY EDWARD SHORTER
University of Michigan University of Toronto
William A. Christian, Jr. Person and God in a Spanish Valley
Joel Samaha. Law and Order in Historical Perspective: The
Case of Elizabethan Essex
John W. Cole and Eric R. Wolf. The Hidden Frontier: Ecology
and Ethnicity in an Alpine Valley
Immanuel Wallerstein. The Modern World-System: Capitalist
Agriculture and the Origins of the European World-Economy
in the Sixteenth Century
John R. Gillis. Youth and History: Tradition and Change in
European Age Relations 1770 - Present
D. E. H. Russell. Rebellion, Revolution, and Armed Force: A
Comparative Study of Fifteen Countries with Special Em
phasis on Cuba and South Africa
Kristian Hvidt. Flight to America: The Social Background of
300,000 Danish Emigrants
James Lang. Conquest and Commerce: Spain and England in
the Americas
Stanley H. Brandes. Migration, Kinship, and Community: Tra
dition and Transition in a Spanish Village
Daniel Chirot. Social Change in a Peripheral Society: The
Creation of a Balkan Colony
Jane Schneider and Peter Schneider. Culture and Political
Economy in Western Sicily
In preparation
Michael Schwartz. Radical Protest and Social Structure: The
Southern Farmers' Alliance and Cotton Tenancy, 1880-1890
Dirk Hoerder. Crowd Action in Revolutionary Massachusetts,
1765-1780
Culture and
Political Economy
in Western Sicily
Jane Schneider
City University of New York
New York, New York
Peter Schneider
Fordham University
New York, New York
ACADEMIC PRESS New York San Francisco London
A Subsidiary of Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Publishers
For Ben and Julia
COPYRIGHT © 1976, BY ACADEMIC PRESS, INC.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
NO PART OF THIS PUBLICATION MAY BE REPRODUCED OR
TRANSMITTED IN ANY FORM OR BY ANY MEANS, ELECTRONIC
OR MECHANICAL, INCLUDING PHOTOCOPY, RECORDING, OR ANY
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ACADEMIC PRESS, INC.
Ill Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10003
United Kingdom Edition published by
ACADEMIC PRESS, INC. (LONDON) LTD.
24/28 Oval Road, London NW1
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Schneider, Jane.
Culture and political economy in western Sicily.
(Studies in social discontinuity series)
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
1. Sicily-Economic conditions. 2. Sicily-Social
conditions. 3. Sicily-Social life and customs.
I. Schneider, Peter, Date joint author. II. Ti
tle. HI. Series: Studies in social discontinuity.
HC307.S5S33 1975 309.ΐ'45δ'209 76-18286
ISBN 0-12-627850-4
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
For Ben and Julia
COPYRIGHT © 1976, BY ACADEMIC PRESS, INC.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
NO PART OF THIS PUBLICATION MAY BE REPRODUCED OR
TRANSMITTED IN ANY FORM OR BY ANY MEANS, ELECTRONIC
OR MECHANICAL, INCLUDING PHOTOCOPY, RECORDING, OR ANY
INFORMATION STORAGE AND RETRIEVAL SYSTEM, WITHOUT
PERMISSION IN WRITING FROM THE PUBLISHER.
ACADEMIC PRESS, INC.
Ill Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10003
United Kingdom Edition published by
ACADEMIC PRESS, INC. (LONDON) LTD.
24/28 Oval Road, London NW1
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Schneider, Jane.
Culture and political economy in western Sicily.
(Studies in social discontinuity series)
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
1. Sicily-Economic conditions. 2. Sicily-Social
conditions. 3. Sicily-Social life and customs.
I. Schneider, Peter, Date joint author. II. Ti
tle. HI. Series: Studies in social discontinuity.
HC307.S5S33 1975 309.ΐ'45δ'209 76-18286
ISBN 0-12-627850-4
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Preface
For many centuries Sicily, particularly western Sicily,
exported wheat to foreign cities and imported manufactured goods; it
served as a bread basket for expanding metropolies in Italy and Spain.
In the nineteenth century, however, on the great plains of the United
States and elsewhere, technological change revolutionized wheat
production with the result that Sicilian wheat ceased to be competi
tive in foreign markets. Since 1900, in place of wheat Sicily has
exported people—millions of migrants in search of work in foreign
economies. The nineteenth century, 1860, also marked the unification
of Italy, and Sicily's incorporation into a national state. Partly in
response to the imminent presence of state institutions and partly in
response to the decline of wheat, local cliques—or mafias—formed to
protect the interests of those who controlled the large estates on
which wheat was produced in rotation with pasturage: principally
rentiers, brokers, and those who owned livestock.
This book is about the relationship between the early colonial
period (during which Sicily exported wheat and animal products) and
IX
X PREFACE
a later neocolonial period (during which manpower is the principal
energy loss). It traces the rise and development of mafia to these con
ditions. In addition, it analyzes cultural codes which are especially
salient to contemporary social organization—codes which celebrate
honor, cleverness, and friendship. We seek the origins of these codes
in early adaptations of the Sicilian people to externally generated
political and economic forces, and suggest that similar codes may have
played similar roles in other pre-nineteenth-century colonial regions.
In other words, like emigration and mafia, culture is held to be the
product of determinant historical processes—processes of dominance,
subordination, and local reactions to dominance in relations between
Sicily and more powerful populations, going back hundreds of years.
The emphasis that we place on Sicily's early and continuing
dependency vis à vis outsiders will be familiar to those who have
already encountered Immanuel Wallerstein's The Modern World-
System (1974). Wallerstein uses the concepts "core" and "periphery"
to describe relationships between the various regions of Europe as
they developed from the mid-fifteenth century. In particular, his
analysis of Poland—which was also a wheat-exporting peripheral
region—helped us to clarify our own understanding of western Sicily.
Yet we did not have the benefit of his work until 1974, and were led to
a similar "world-system" perspective by a somewhat different route,
namely as a consequence of anthropological field work conducted in
western Sicily from 1965 to 1967 and again during the summers of 1968
and 1971.
We did not begin our field work with that perspective. Our initial
intent was to examine the structures through which peasant commu
nities are articulated with the nation-state. Yet we soon discovered
the importance of labor migration and the ways in which it connected
our field site not only to the state, but to an international labor market
as well. Almost everyone we met told us of their emigrant relatives in
Australia, Argentina, Venezuela, Canada, Chicago, Brooklyn, and in all
the countries of western Europe. For many, ties to Brookolino were as
significant as ties to Rome.
We also soon discovered the importance of the past. The history
of western Sicily is etched in the eroded and deforested mountains, in
the architecture of the hillside towns, in the barren quality of unin
habited valleys once dominated by large estates, and in the proverbs
and parables of the people. Above all, it was the people who
impressed upon us their poignant sense of their own place in space
and time, and the forces of history which had brought them there.
This was manifest in the parish priest who talked about "our late no-
PREFACE XI
blemen and their charitable works"; in the reminiscence of a contem
porary baron who traced the vicissitudes of his family's vast holdings;
and in the Communist peasant who explained at length the conse
quences of such holdings for peasant land tenure. Indeed, the people
themselves insisted that we put the island's predicament in a world
geopolitical and historical perspective. They were truly our collabora
tors and not our subjects.
Acknowledgments
We are grateful for the support of several institutions and
many individuals. We received financial assistance from the University
of Michigan Project for the Study of Social Networks in the Mediter
ranean Area; the Ford Foundation Foreign Area Fellowship Program (a
grant to Jane Schneider); the City University of New York Urban
Studies Program; the Fordham University Faculty Research Council (a
grant to Peter Schneider); and the City University of New York Faculty
Research Award Program (a grant to Jane Schneider).
Eric Wolf's early encouragement, his visit to us in the field, his
own work, and his criticism of ours were indispensable to the project
from beginning to end. Wolf must also be counted among those
teachers at the University of Michigan in the early 1960s who effec
tively resisted the narrowing of intellectual horizons which accom
panied the growing disciplinary specialization in social science. Pursu
ing degrees outside of anthropology (Jane Schneider in political
theory, Peter Schneider in social psychology), yet drawn to the
research strategy of ethnography and the study of peasant society, we
Xlll
XIV ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
were the beneficiaries of this resistance. Others who contributed
breadth to our intellectual perspective were James Meisel in political
science, Amos Hawley and Morris Janowitz in sociology, Daniel Katz
in social psychology, and Marshall Sahlins in anthropology.
People whose good advice and guidance helped prepare us for
field work and for Sicily were Jeremy Boissevain, Constance Cronin,
Leonard Moss, William Schorger, and Tullio Tentori. Annabella Rossi
was especially kind to us on several occasions in Rome. In Sicily, first
and foremost there was Pasquale Marchese, publisher, connoisseur
and collector of books, and a cherished friend to many students of the
island. He was an invaluable source of knowledge, introductions,
good fellowship, and level-headed advice and his contribution to our
work has been enormous, We are grateful to Professor Gabrielo
Morello of ISIDA, and Professors Carmelo Schifani and Antonino
Simetti of the Faculty of Agriculture of the University of Palermo, who
put the libraries and other resources of their institutions at our dis
posal. We also remember with pleasure our visits with Professor
Giuseppe Montalbano of the University of Palermo, and Danilo Dolci
and his co-workers at the Centro Studi in Trapetto.
Anton Blok of the University of Nijmegen, The Netherlands, was
already engaged in field work in Sicily when we arrived there in 1965.
We met him during our first days in Palermo (at Marchese's of
course), and shortly afterward settled to do our work in a town not far
from his. We were often together during the succeeding year and a
half, talking about our mutual interests. It is difficult to express our
gratitude and respect for his collégial friendship. Blok also read and
carefully criticized an early manuscript of this book.
As consulting editor for the "Studies in Social Discontinuity
Series," Charles Tilly provided a detailed analysis of the manuscript
which was the inspiration and guide for its final revision. Rod Aya and
F. G. Bailey also read it and made many useful comments. Colleagues
who read our work and contributed many suggestions were Jeremy
Beckett, Ernestine Friedl, Edward Hansen, Shirley Lindenbaum,
Mervyn Meggitt, Joyce Riegelhaupt, Roger Sanjek, and Sydel Sil-
verman. Laura Nicolosi accompanied us to Sicily during the summer of
1971 as a research assistant. Nicola Scafidi of Palermo offered several
of his excellent photographs as illustrations, including the photo that
appears on the book jacket. Robert Glasse also helped reproduce
photographs and taught us an effective method of notation for
transcribing geneaologies. And, although we have never met them,
we wish to acknowledge our debt to Denis Mack Smith for his valua
ble two-volume history of Sicily (1968a; 1968b), and to E .J. Hobsbawm
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS XV
whose book, Primitive Rebels (1959), first stimulated our interest in the
region.
To protect the privacy of the many Sicilians who let us participate
in their lives we have used pseudonyms for the towns and people of
the immediate region in which we worked. We have also altered some
details of the illustrative examples to make it difficult to identify the
individuals involved. Everywhere in Sicily we were struck by the
generosity, warmth, and hospitality of the good people who live
there. Were it not for our respect for their privacy, we would thank
them by name.
