Jane Schneider

Modernization and Development: the Role of Regional Elites and Noncorporate Groups in the European Mediterranean

This paper is about social change in underdeveloped areas. It is based on field work in the European Mediterranean between 1965 and 1967. Hansen worked in the wine and champagne district of Villafranca del Panades, roughly 30 miles from Barcelona, in Catalonia. The Schneiders were in the wheat and pastoral latifundium zone of Western Sicily. The two regions exhibit quite different patterns of land use and tenure, social stratification and settlement. We were struck, however, by two characteristics which they shared. First, we found a plethora of noncorporate social structures (for the most part coalitions) which organized fundamental economic and political activities of a quite modern sort. In rural Catalonia, coalitions of businessmen, skilled workers and government functionaries are formed within the context of an emergent bar culture, centered in major towns like Villafranca. In Western Sicily, until quite recently, the locus of similar coalitions was the latifundium. As yet, no clearly defined urban tradition has replaced this predominantly rural one

Articulating Hidden Histories Exploring The Influence Of Eric R Wolf

CONTRIBUTORS: Michael Adas, Philippe Bourgois, Richard G. Fox, Ashraf Ghani, James Greenberg, Edward C. Hansen, Josiah Heyman, David Hunt, Orvar Lofgren, Blanca M. Muratorio, David Nugent, Rayna Rapp, Hermann Rebel, Gustavo Lins Ribeiro, William Roseberry, Harriet Rosenberg, Jane Schneider, Katherine Verdery, Joan Vincent, Edwin N. Wilmsen, and Pamela Wright

Demographic Transitions in a Sicilian Rural Town

Combining archival, ethnographic, vital, and oral historical data, this paper compares the experiences of population growth and demographic transi tion among different social classes of a Sicilian rural town from 1850 to the pres ent. Four locally named groups have dominated this towns social life during most of the period in question—gentry, artisans, landed, and landless peasants. Of particular concern are the contrasting patterns of demographic transition be tween the gentry and artisanry, and a consideration of why, in both cases, fertility decline occurred earlier than among landless peasants. Comparison underscores the theoretical advantage of disaggregating population change in relation to historical context and social class.

Sex and respectability in an age of fertility decline: A Sicilian case study

The paper examines two aspects of coitus interruptus as a sexual practice: (1) how, in the age of fertility decline in Western Europe, its meaning was reinterpreted from an earlier theological view that condemned it as licentious to a nineteenth century view that emphasized restraint, and (2) how it was actually experienced by a socially stratified birth-controlling population in rural Sicily, ca 1900-1970. The sequential experiences of gentry, artisans, and peasants in the Sicilian case study of transition from high to low fertility are consistent with late twentieth-century interpretations of coitus interruptus by Foucault and others as sexually restraining yet empowering. In each group, adoption of the practice enhanced access to respectability in a context of cultural and economic change. Moreover, those who adopted the practice increasingly stigmatized married couples with high birth parities as overly dominated by their sexual instincts and unworthy of respect.

The Enron Scandal

From the 1990s until the fall of 2001, Enron was famous throughout the business world and was known as an innovator, technology powerhouse, and a corporation with no fear. The sudden fall of Enron in the end of 2001 shattered not just the business world but also the lives of their employees and the people who believed that their soar to greatness was genuine. Their collapse was followed by a series of revelations on how they manipulated their success.

Sicily: reflections on forty years of change 1

Abstract Substantial changes have transformed Sicily over the forty years that we have known it as anthropological fieldworkers. This essay draws particular attention to the appearance of industrial age technologies and related modernizing trends; to a dramatic decline in fertility with effects on family life and civic culture; and to the emergence of an antimafia social movement demanding effective police and juridical restraint of organized crime. It further considers what in retrospect were blind spots in our research, in particular our earlier understandings of the long-term viability of the Sicilian Left and of the organization and regional coherence of the Mafia. The passage of time raises new questions and produces new frameworks for analysis. Based on our recent research in Palermo, we attempt to assess the prospects for the Mafia and antimafia process in Sicily.

Civil society versus organized crime: Local and global perspectives

Based on fieldwork in Palermo, this article analyzes the city’s antimafia movement in which the words ‘civil society’ have ample resonance. On the one hand, they convey an ecumenical meaning, suited to overcoming the otherwise polarized Communist and Christian Democratic political identities that anti-mafia activists inherited from the Cold War era. On the other hand, they evoke cultural hegemony, exemplified by antimafia initiatives in the public schools. To understand the contemporary currency of ‘civil society’, the article argues, requires revisiting the Cold War years when the overt and covert exercise of political violence not only impeded the formation of democratic institutions, but made a mockery of such institutions where they existed. Social movements emerging from that era often make rhetorical use of the civil society concept as an umbrella under which to demand transparency, democracy, and human rights. Coincidentally, civil society discourse has acquired enormous currency with the United Nations, the IMF and World Bank, and a vast array of nongovernmental organizations. At this level, the issue is the marginalization of new global enemies, no less threatening than the (Soviet) ‘evil empire’ - specifically, the uncivil forces of crime and corruption that, under the post-Cold War conditions of triumphant neo-liberal capitalism, can only grow and thrive if not held in check.

The Enron Scandal: Global Corporatism against Society

From the 1990s until the fall of 2001, Enron was famous throughout the business world and was known as an innovator, technology powerhouse, and a corporation with no fear. The sudden fall of Enron in the end of 2001 shattered not just the business world but also the lives of their employees and the people who believed that their soar to greatness was genuine. Their collapse was followed by a series of revelations on how they manipulated their success.

The Mafia and Capitalism. An Emerging Paradigm

The authors describe their experience as anthropological field researchers in Sicily – first, during the 1960s and 1970s in a rural town of the interior, and subsequently during the 1980s and 1990s in Palermo. Focusing initially on the intersection of political economy and cultural practices in the social history of a peasant society, they found their attention drawn to the issue of mafia influence. Subsequently they became interested in the dynamics of the antimafia process. Over time, the research itself as well as the work of Sicilian scholars and activists led the authors to change their minds about the organization of the Sicilian mafia and its historical role in the development of Italian capitalism.

Trade and sorcery accusations in East Africa

Gerald W. Hartwig. The Art of Survival in East Africa: The Kerebe and Long‐Distance Trade 1800–1895. New York: Holmes & Meier Publishers, Inc. Africana Publishing Company, 1976. Maps, appendix, references, and index.