These two studies published here as Volumes 2 and 3 of the CSAC Monograph Series, derive from fieldwork carried out in the late sixties and early seventies: an earlier version of the first, `Land Politics and Power in a southern Italian Community', was originally submitted as a doctoral thesis in the University of London; the second, `The Political and Social Context of Industrialisation - the case of Manfredonia', is based on a research report written for ISVET ( Istituto per gli studi sullo sviluppo economico e il progresso tecnico in 1974. Although both were independently researched, there is close continuity of themes and argument between them. Both seek to evaluate post-war southern Italian development against the background of a troubled history of acute social change and rural turbulence traced back to the fall of the ancien régime both examine the way in which major changes in agricultural practice, land use and tenurial systems transformed patterns of stratification and the distribution of power in local communities; both are concerned with continuities and disjunctions in political forms and the role of patronage in impeding social and economic change. Somewhat fortuitously, they are neatly paired.
A major problem in assessing the consequences of post-war development policies, is how to disentangle the effects of specific, state-sponsored, development programmes from far less visible and dramatic changes brought about by migrant remittances, transfer payments, Common Market subsidies and a whole range of near universal social and welfare provisions gradually established throughout Italy since 1946. With their clear-cut objectives and statements of intent, land reform programmes and development pole policy are much more amenable to straightforward cost-benefit analysis, and it is only too easy to fall into the trap of believing that they are the font of all change, and that the systematic transformation of the South only begins with the advent of the large scale development programmes of the post-war years. In this context my two case studies provide an instructive contrast. As a relatively isolated hill-top village of the interior, Pertosa has been virtually excluded from the `benefits' of direct intervention programmes; on the other hand, with two land reform and land improvement schemes and an important industrial complex, Manfredonia has been a major `beneficiary'. Nevertheless, on completion of fieldwork in 1971, I was left with the overwhelming impression that in terms of those things which mattered most to their respective inhabitants - general standards of living, housing, job prospects, access to welfare, medical and educational services, there was little to choose between the two. Manfredonia undoubtedly enjoyed a much larger and expanding resource base, but the potential advantages accruing from land reform and industrialisation were being rapidly eroded by an influx of migrants who swamped the job market and put increasing, often intolerable, pressures on local services. In these circumstances, my evaluation of Manfredonia's economic prospects was inevitably somewhat dismal.
Without further fieldwork it is impossible to offer a detailed assessment of social and economic changes in these two communities after 1975. Brief visits made to both in 1990 (whilst engaged in subsequent research in Ascoli Satriano, one of the `methane' communes of the south-west Tavoliere) would not incline me to revise my original, pessimistic, judgment. Although both have shared in a general improvement in prosperity and living standards common to much of the South throughout the eighties, in different ways both face an uncertain future. Despite a modest increase in tourists and tourist facilities, Pertosa's economy and population (now below 3,000) have slowly declined over the last fifteen years, and the well-being of its demographically skewed population is increasingly dependent on transfer payments, migrant remittances and the windfall profits of earthquake relief. Manfredonia has fared little better, and many of the criticisms of the opponents of the industrial project in 1969 have been proved fully justified. Physically hemmed in by the concrete wilderness of its industrial infra-structure and subject to periodic pollution from industrial effluent, it has been largely excluded from the tourist expansion of the Gargano. A steadily increasing population, which has now made it the second largest town in the province, has continued to exert pressure on jobs and services. A modest expansion of the Macchia industrial complex in the late seventies was partially offset by the collapse of the Ajinomoto-Insud plant. A decade later the ENI industrial complex itself was under threat of closure. Perhaps the most telling comment came from a local school teacher (who had himself worked for many years in Manfredonia) during the 1990 summer festival in Ascoli Satriano. `At the end of the methane campaign', he said, `we were bitter in Ascoli when we found that the only reward for our efforts was the consolation prize of two tiny industrial plants. Perhaps we were wrong. In retrospect, even token industrialisation is better than the industrial involution which has been Manfredonia's lot.'
Although some of the ideas, themes and citations in these studies are now somewhat dated, overall, perhaps, they do not greatly affect the balance and direction of argument in what are essentially descriptive analyses. Nevertheless, in the light of more recent research, three themes at least require further brief comment. The first concerns the historical background to these studies.
Like many other ethnographers of southern Italy and Sicily in this period (Bell, Blok, Davis, Douglass, Jane and Peter Schneider, White)1, I sought to offer more than mere sketch-map history, and argued that many contemporary institutions, rituals and cultural values could only be understood by setting them in the context of series of dramatic changes which had occurred in the nineteenth century, and particularly processes of state formation and the introduction of capitalism into the countryside which followed the feudal and ecclesiastical land settlements of the early nineteenth century. This perspective, if not wrong in itself, is certainly too simple. Recent research by social and economic historians and, above all, by historical demographers suggests that it grossly over-privileges the nineteenth century, and offers a far too unilineal and foreshortened view of Italian history2. It is now clear that by the end of the eighteenth century Manfredonia (and probably Pertosa, too) was a far more `open' society than I had envisaged and that, as a result of the supervisory role of the Regia Dogana Tavoliere towns in general had had an intense and intricate relationship with the state throughout the early modern period. Similarly, many of the changes classically associated with the land settlements of the nineteenth century are now shown to have been foreshadowed in previous centuries.
A second point of uncertainty is the cultural obstacles to change thesis which was an important theme in the Manfredonia study. This line of enquiry was suggested by ENI itself who believed that a failure in the host community to understand the logic of industrial development and technological innovation was a serious impediment to change. From the outset I was cautiously sceptical of the value of this approach if only because, already by the late sixties, both the cultural obstacles thesis and related sociological arguments about convergence and the logic of industrialism had been substantially discredited. In the event I found little supporting evidence for either argument. Somewhat surprisingly this style of argument (albeit in an inverted form) was resuscitated by Italian sociologists in the late seventies with the claim that key factors in the social structure and value system of central Italian society - extended families, mezzadria patterns of rural urban cooperation, had greatly facilitated the development of small industrial enterprise and was largely responsible for the economic 3>pansion of the Terza Italia. Although some of these elements (for example, three generational family cooperation amongst fishermen) can be discovered in some sub-sections of Manfredonia's population, their effect, if any, was very slight, neither impeding nor stimulating industrial growth or a positive evaluation of the opportunities offered by the introduction into the community of new industrial technologies.
A third and final set of comments is required concerning the role of patronage in local politics and in processes of development. A major theme in both studies was that, despite changes in form and content, throughout the period under review, patronage had continued to shape the structure of political competition and party affiliation, that it was an important determinant of voting behavior and that, overall, it had tended to impede economic and social development. Despite subsequent anthropological discussion about the `myth' of patronage and the well rehearsed argument that patronage is little more than a landowner ideology masking class exploitation,4 I am not inclined to change my original view substantially. Especially in the Manfredonia study, I sought to specify some of the limits to patronage, and suggested that with increasing prosperity it was losing some of its force. I also sought to explain why, earlier in this century, Manfredonia, unlike other towns in the south Tavoliere,5 had been relatively impervious to class-based politics. In both studies I tried to show the differential impact of patronage in local as opposed to regional and national elections. At worst, and especially in my account of electoral behaviour in Pertosa, I perhaps exaggerated the significance of patronage by playing down other sources of political commitment and, also, political apathy.
Although I do not wish to imply patronage is the only or even the dominant force in southern Italian politics, it is certainly not insignificant. Even the most cursory examination of local election results in Pertosa and Manfredonia after 1975 shows that Salvemini's theory of alternating factions still holds broadly true, and that political competitions and outcomes are still predominantly shaped by patronage interest. Interestingly, the struggle for mastery of patronage resources which followed the introduction of large-scale earthquake relief programmes in Pertosa and the communes of the Sub-Appennino Dauno in the eighties was not very different from the political turmoil occasioned by land reform and industrial development schemes a generation earlier. Overall, patronage remains the single most important source of blockage in the Italian political system.
Blok, A., 1974, The Mafia of a Sicilian Village 1860-1960.
Davis J., 1973, Land and family in Pisticci.
Douglass, W.A., Emigration in a South Italian town: an anthropological history.
Schneider, J. and P., 1976, Culture and political economy in Western Sicily.
White, C., 1980, Patrons and Partisans: a study of politics in two southern comuni.
My debts in Manfredonia and in the 'methane' communes are too widespread to be easily acknowledged. I am especially grateful to Sig. D.O. Balta, Manfredonia's librarian, who introduced me to Manfredonian politics and who was an unfailing source of information and help throughout the research. My thanks are also due to Sig. Potito Coluccelli who played a very similar role in Ascoli Satriano. I wish to acknowledge the important contribution made to this study by David Moss who, as my research assistant in the later stages of the project, was largely responsible for the collection and analysis of data on the fishing and montanari ommunities and on the history of the town. I wish to express my gratitude to my team of local interviewers: D.O. Balta, R. Borgia, R. Conti, A. Roberto and C. Granatiero. Above all, I wish to thank my wife Ripalta who not only played a full and active role in the research itself, but who offered constant encouragement and support throughout.