Evicted from Eternity: The Restructuring of Modern Rome

by Michael Herzfeld

Modern Rome is a city rife with contradictions. Once the seat of ancient glory, it is now often the object of national contempt. It plays a significant part on the world stage, but the concerns of its residents are often deeply parochial. And while they live in the seat of a world religion, Romans can be vehemently anticlerical. These tensions between the past and the present, the global and the local, make Rome fertile ground to study urban social life, the construction of the past, the role of religion in daily life, and how a capital city relates to the rest of the nation.

Michael Herzfeld focuses on Rome’s historic Monti district and the wrenching dislocation caused by rapid economical, political, and social change. Evicted from Eternity tells the story of the gentrification of Monti—once the architecturally stunning home of a community of artisans and shopkeepers now displaced by an invasion of rapacious real estate speculators, corrupt officials, dithering politicians, deceptive clerics, and shady thugs. As Herzfeld picks apart the messy story of Monti’s transformation, he ranges widely over many aspects of life there and in the rest of the city, richly depicting the uniquely local landscape of globalization in Rome.

Genres: Anthropology, Nonfiction, History, Ebooks, Italy

387 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

Michael Herzfeld was educated at the Universities of Cambridge (B.A. in Archaeology and Anthropology, 1969), Athens (non-degree program in Greek Folklore, 1969-70), Birmingham (M.A., Modern Greek Studies, 1972; D.Litt., 1989); and Oxford (Social Anthropology, D.Phil., 1976). Before moving to Harvard, he taught at Vassar College (1978-80) and Indiana University (1980-91) (where he served as Associate Chair of the Research Center for Language and Semiotic Studies, 1980-85, and as Chair of the Department of Anthropology, 1987-90). Lord Simon Visiting Professor at the University of Manchester in 1994, he has also taught at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (1995), Paris, at the Università di Padova (1992), the Università di Roma “La Sapienza” (1999-2000), and the University of Melbourne (intermittently since 2004), and has held a visiting research appointments at the Australian National University and the University of Sydney (1985), at the University of Adelaide, and at the Université de Paris-X (Nanterre) (1991).

Major lectures include the inaugural Distinguished Lecture in European Anthropology at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst (1996), the Munro Lecture at the University of Edinburgh (1997), the Journal of Anthropological Research Distinguished Lecture at the University of New Mexico (2001), the Einaudi Lecture at Cornell University (2004), the keynote address to the Association of Social Anthropologists of the British Commonwealth (2008), three lectures hosted by the Korea Research Foundation (2009), the Kimon Friar Lecture (Deree College, Athens, 2009), and the Eilert Sundt Lecture (University of Oslo, 2009).

His D.Litt. was awarded for a series of publications, including books and articles, that have set out his understanding of the processes at work in cultural identity construction in modern Greece.

A past president of both the Modern Greek Studies Association and the Society for the Anthropology of Europe, he was editor of American Ethnologist during 1994-98 and is now Editor at Large with specific responsibility for the feature "Polyglot Perspectives" in Anthropological Quarterly; he serves on numerous other editorial boards and is currently co-editor of “New Anthropologies of Europe” (Indiana University Press).

Reviews

[Floris Kersemakers · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was March 2020, and Rome was deserted. I had walked for so long from my apartment in Via Dell’Olmata that my search for a cappuccino and a cornetto con crema had transitioned to a search for ‘un bicchiere di vino rosso della casa’, preferably from a non-descript bottle with the dregs still found at the bottom. Everyone was inside, and no shop was open, for Rome was under COVID lockdown. I lived in Monti for a year, the same neighbourhood that Michael Herzfeld explored in this seminal work. The ethnographic study is set against the backdrop of a housing crisis in the city centre, but the crisis itself is not the point. It is the catalyst for the unravelling of the social relations Herzfeld wishes to study and document. At the core of Herzfeld’s study lies a series of dichotomies within Roman society that speaks to its uniqueness, such as vice and virtue, secularism and theocracy, and civil and civic. Above these dichotomies, ever-present, looms history. From the dominion of the Vatican to the memory of the old city gangs, Herzfeld shows that there is nothing in Roman society that cannot find its roots in the city’s history.

Herzfeld masterfully uses the technique of thick description to utterly immerse the reader into the local Monti culture, interweaving any point or argumentation with countless vignettes that give insight into the Roman people. This is enhanced through the use of Italian phrases. Whether Herzfeld is describing the Guardia di Finanza (tax police) (p. 115), the concept of riqualificazione (urban renewal) (p. 301), or the colourful phrase me ne frego (“couldn’t care a fuck”) (p. 93), he immerses the reader into the community he is dissecting. His participation in the Monti Social Network, a grassroots organisation made up of locals and intellectuals, gives him a unique insider perspective on the community's challenges. I want to highlight two of the most fascinating dichotomies he discusses: the secular vs the religious and the civic vs the civil.

Perhaps the most crucial dichotomy for understanding Rome is the relation between the secular and religious worlds. The concept of original sin (and the forgiveness thereof that only the Church can provide) historically gave the Vatican “a model of exploitation that various secular authorities have often been eager to follow” (p. 10). This is highly evident in regulations regarding construction within housing. While significant changes to the inside and especially the facade of buildings in the historic centre tend to be illegal, most residents ignore this. As an architect friend of Herzfeld put it: “In Rome, abuse of the building code is almost a historical tradition!” (p. 128). Rather than cracking down on it (which, due to the amount of illegal construction, would be practically impossible), the authorities demand an ‘oblation’ (a Catholic term for a gift to God) (p. 132). The oblation retroactively makes the illegal action legal and acts as a punishment. This is the “culture of sin": one may sin (illegally construct something) as long as they do penance (pay the fine). Herzfeld shows how daily life in Rome is defined both by the vice-virtue dynamic and the theocratic-secular dynamic, where theocratic institutions and history shape secular models. I noticed this contradiction as well. My landlady, an older woman who moved to Monti in her youth and who spent much of our casual stairway chats complaining about the Vatican-affiliated confraternity building next door, would refuse to talk to me about my hot water cutting off because “it was Sunday and this is the Pope’s city”. The idea that religious models are used in the secular world reminds me of Theodoros Rakopoulos' work 'The Social Life of Mafia Confessions' (2018), where he frames the phenomenon of the Pentiti (Mafia members who collaborate with the police) as a “secular confession (p. 2). This phenomenon is as intertwined with theocratic ideas as it is with Italian bureaucracy. Herzfeld applies this idea to Roman society as a whole.

The second central dichotomy is the one between the concepts of civic and civil. We will define civic simply as ‘governmental’. Monti in the early 20th century was distinctly un-civic, controlled by two Capi Rione - rival bosses (p. 21). While one might imagine the bringing of government-led governance to the area would improve the lives of the citizens, Herzfeld identifies “an almost nostalgic aura surrounding… the 'old bosses'” just as much as he identifies a “dislike and disrespect” for the law (p. 181). Many Romans believe that “civil honesty remains more of an ideal than an experienced reality” when it comes to civic administration (p. 83). The ‘western’ association of civil and civic being the same is absent from Rome. To the Romans, sometimes un-civic things (corruption, bribery, nepotism) can be considered civil. I am reminded of a conversation with my Monti-born Italian teacher. While complaining about the bureaucratic nightmare I went through to get a codice fiscale (a national insurance number), the conversation turned towards governance problems. I identified the prevalence of nepotism as a critical issue. To my surprise, she felt it was cruel that Northern Europeans could not help out their family members. What I saw as a sign of civic corruption, she rationalised as a moral action - a civil action. I believe this to be one of the most important observations in the book; understanding the Italian relationship to corruption is essential in any national and international actions against it. Political scholars are quick to point out the “relative alienation” that the average citizen feels from the state without explaining why (p. 387). As a political science student myself, I can say that many studies investigating corruption in Italy prioritise statistical analysis and discourse analysis over a detailed study of the people themselves. While political science scholars can establish what types of challenges the Italian political system faces, the insights raised in Herzfeld's work are required to understand the origin and prevalence of these challenges.

While an immensely impressive book, Herzfeld’s work is not beyond scrutiny. Sometimes, his wider points got lost in a sea of anecdotes and colourful vignettes. His colossal task of providing an accurate overview of Monti and its people comes at the cost of clarity and directness. But who can blame him? Rome is its people, and Herzfeld is intimately aware of this fact. This is a man whose love for Rome and its people shines through this work, imbuing it with a sincerity sometimes lacking in scientific works. While his strong personal connection may make him less objective (for example, Herzfeld is noticeably angry about the evictions (p. 24)), he clarifies later that it is “not a story of heroes and villains” (p. 26). He is aware of his bias. While occasionally he draws a conclusion from one of his vignettes that I believe feels undersupported, his main arguments are supported by various examples throughout the text.

I am reminded of the 1963 poem "You Search in Rome for Rome," by the American poet Robert Lowell: “Whatever once was firm has fled… What once / was fugitive maintains its permanence.” Rome is its dichotomies: its changing ways, alliances, and ideas. While its facades may look the same, Herzfeld points out that Rome is constantly in flux. Only the fact that it changes remains constant. He sums up this sentiment poetically with the line, “eternally, eternity continues to fracture and to coalesce, repeatedly and without rest” (p. 312). If Herzfeld has a message, it is the need to heed the “lived social experiences” (p. 312) of places like Monti. At select places in the book, he implores everyone, from anthropologists to policymakers alike, to realise that no model, system, or idea can be universally applied. Success can only be found through a “pragmatic assessment of socially embedded attitudes and need” (p. 307). Do not search in Rome for Rome; search for its people.

[Serena S. · Rating 2 out of 5]

I stuck it out for all 300 pages, but this read was quite painful. The language Herzfeld uses throughout the book is too verbose, didactic, and redundant for my taste (in fact, it was very good at putting me to sleep). I understood the crux of his argument by page 30, and from then on it was all just varying grandiloquent manifestations of the same monochrome concept.

Evicted from Eternity barely scrapes by with one extra star from me for some poignant observations on the nature of immigration in chapter eight.

[Trina · Rating 2 out of 5]

I love reading about Rome, but this was too specifically anthropological for me -- about economic changes and the way they affect a single neighborhood.

[Andrea Scordari · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ottima lettura! Fornisce una analisi sociologica,antropologica e urbanistica della città di Roma. Scritto in modo semplice e di facile lettura anche per chi non è abituato alle materie.