The Moral Basis of a Backward Society

by Edward C. Banfield

Looking at how nepotism and family-centric societies sacrifice the public good, Edward C. Banfield uses a study of the people of southern Italy to argue how self-interested families can lead to poverty.

Analyzing families in southern Italy in 1955, Moral Basis of a Backward Society discusses how poverty is a result of the inability to trust or associate strongly outside of immediate family.

Challenged and argued for years, Edward C. Banfield’s study has become accept by many people in the modern age.

Genres: Nonfiction, Sociology, Politics, History, Anthropology, Economics, Cultural

188 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 1958

Reviews

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

At first I wasn't sure about reading a book describing the problems challenging the democratic process of small towns in Southern Italy in the 1950s. But the more I delved in this book, the more similarities I could observe with the problems challenging the democratic process of my country: Malta. The cultural ethos can be described with the same phrase: amoral familism. A society which follows and votes solely according to one rule: "maximise the material short-run advantage of the nuclear family; assume that all others will do likewise". It's an ethos which holds society back from seeking the common good, which prevents politicians from seeking the common interest rather than short-term clientelism and nepotism. And reading the symptoms the author describes to be present in this village gave me a feeling of deja vu: people not concerning themselves of public accountability and ethical standards, people which seek only their material advantage, people which hold back from any public activism not to disrupt order or lose up in seeking favours, people which assume public officials are there to further their own interests and when someone is caught in corrupt practicies they just assume that its the norm and he was only unlucky to be caught, people which obey the law only when it's enforced and when it's not financially worth breaking, people which will favour a regime which keeps order with a strong hand.

I got the impression that Malta in 2013 is still in the cultural ethos of southern Italy in the 1950s. Unfortunately years of education have done little to change this: a lot of people including professionals have just learned how to earn money and not the morals and standards which should rule the behaviour of a liberal democratic state. And the worst thing is that we have ended up with a government in this same image.

Amoral familism ruined Italy - I just hope it will not end up ruining Malta.

[Ari · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an ethnography of a small town in Southern Italy in the 1950s by an American political scientist. In the book, the town is given the fictitious name of "Montegrano", but Wikipedia tells me that it's really Chiaromonte. The author spent a year living there interviewing the locals.

The society is shockingly poor -- most of the locals cannot read, people routinely go hungry, people lack adequate shoes and clothes. The unexpected death of a pig would be a calamity. When a rich person wants something carried, they can just wave down a peasant, who will do it without pay, just in the hopes of future gratuities (or to avoid reprisal). But the town is by no means a feudal holdover, disconnected from the wider world. Some of the locals served in the Italian army; the upper classes typically went to school elsewhere, and so forth. There are radios and a cinema. The locals do know they are poor and backward, even compared to other places in Italy.

The question the author is most interested in is why don't the locals do more to improve things. Many people, including the peasants and the layers above them, are idle a lot; there's considerable spare labor available. And even semi-skilled labor would be helpful in establishing schools, poor relief, and so forth. Likewise, the agriculture is quite inefficient; people have whatever plots they inherit, often widely scattered, and make no attempt to consolidate them for ease of working. There is a free school in the next town over, but the existing bus isn't timed in a way that would allow students to commute. There are cars around, but nobody attempted to organize a carpool to the school for the children.

As the author points out, comparably-small agricultural towns in the US are a lot more interested in self-improvement. Parallel towns (the author mentions one in Utah) would have newspapers, amateur theatricals, a chamber of commerce and so forth. They would be lobbying for government infrastructure projects and spending. So why not the Italians?

The author ascribes to them a culture of "amoral familism" -- everybody, regardless of class is chiefly preoccupied with preventing their children from falling down the social scale. Everybody, rich and poor, understands the world to be full of temptation and risk and so a parent's highest priority is keeping enough wealth to maintain one's position -- and lying, cheating, or stealing are all fine in that cause. Everybody understands their neighbors to have this attitude, and so everybody expects that the politicians are on the take, the doctor is lying to them, and so forth. In consequence, nobody has enough trust in their neighbors to commit to joint civic projects.

This is striking, given that Montegrasso isn't especially corrupt. There are officials sent there by the outside government who nobody thinks of as particularly misbehaving; there isn't a local mafia or anything like that.

The book closes on a pessimistic note; the author is skeptical that conditions can be significantly improved although he does mention that government spending, importing northerners and similar interventions would help. This seems to have been falsified by history since the book was written. Southern Italy is still quite poor, but not to the same extent it was in the 1950s. Apparently investment and splashing cash around was enough to get people somewhat out of their trap.

That is, if the trap even existed. The author is looking at one moment in time, and acknowledges that much of what he sees is a society in transition away from subsistence agriculture. Family sizes are dropping, literacy rates are rising, and people are quite consciously trying to leave their children better off. It's possible that the passivity that Banfield chronicles is a relatively brief phase at the end of the fascist and war era.

I thought the book was well worth reading for its portrait of a society quite different from what I am used to. And even if "amoral familism" isn't nearly the permanent equilibrium the author thinks it is, it's a useful concept to have that captures a significant dimension of human society.

[Charles Haywood · Rating 4 out of 5]

Most cultures throughout history have been terrible. The natural state of so-called civilized man is somewhere between today’s Venezuela and today’s Somalia. Large-scale success, exceptions to the general rule, offering long-term stability combined with some degree of flourishing, has been limited to a handful of cultures. If you add actual accomplishment that advances the whole human race, you are left with only three, the Greeks, the Romans, and Christendom—which three, no surprise, are closely linked in history and in attributes. None of this is news, although it is denied by the malicious clowns now temporarily in charge of public discourse.

But why are most cultures in history terrible? Asked this question, most people would point to a culture’s ruling class, painting it as extractive, oppressive, arbitrary, and so forth. Certainly this is often part of the problem, but what is lost in such an analysis is that the culture of a society is equally, or more, determined by the masses. True, the masses are irrelevant to the chosen history of a culture, which is determined only by the ruling classes, but they are not therefore irrelevant to its history. Bad culture at the bottom means, in most cases, no success at the top, and ultimate failure of a civilization. Even a superb ruling class cannot make a culture flourish if the raw material of the society is defective. This book, Edward Banfield’s "The Moral Basis of a Backward Society," illustrates this principle in microcosm in 1950s Italy.

Banfield was an American political scientist. He began his career as a New Deal functionary, but actual experience of government “helping” made him skeptical that funneling cash to the poor actually improved their lives, and he turned to academic analysis of the culture of poverty. In the past month, his most famous work, "The Unheavenly City: The Nature and the Future of Our Urban Crisis," has received new interest. That 1970 book attacked Great Society policies as failures, analyzed the differences between urban classes, and became part of the underpinning of “broken windows” policing. Banfield made his reputation earlier, however, with this 1958 book, studying not America, but the culture of a small southern Italian village.

"The Moral Basis of a Backward Society" is a social science analysis of a village Banfield calls Montegrano, but which is really Chiaromonte. Then as now, Montegrano was built on top of a modest mountain, surrounded by small plots of land. Most of the village’s residents, about seventy percent, earned their living by farming. Some were landless laborers; the majority worked tiny scattered plots of land (scattered in part because of inheritance and dowry, but also because the peasants liked it that way, since, for example, a hailstorm would probably not wipe out their entire crop). Yields were low, since the land was dry, artificial irrigation lacking, and fertilizer use rare. Most of the peasants, except those with outlying farms (who tended to have larger farms and be a little more well-off), lived in one-room or two-room homes in town, and walked to their plots every day they farmed. Sometimes they were able to supplement their income with wage work, either for a larger landowner or for the state, but this was only occasional and could not be relied upon. In other words, this was, for those who worked the land, a subsistence existence.

For the other thirty percent of the villagers, such as blacksmiths or merchants, existence was slightly above subsistence, but not comfortable. Even the handful of socially superior villagers, such as state bureaucrats, professionals such as the one doctor or the one lawyer, or the gentry who owned modest holdings, were far from wealthy. They were higher in social status because they did not work with their hands, but shared many of the economic concerns of the peasants, as well as, crucially, most of their social outlook.

Montegrano, although it lay within (long) walking distance of similar towns, was fundamentally isolated. No newspapers were published. More relevantly for Banfield’s analysis, no charitable endeavors of any kind existed, and no coordinated action for improvements ever occurred. In Banfield’s term, there was no public spirit and no “political capacity”—that is, no ability to organize to achieve any community goal of any kind, even a private but long-term business goal. There was no religious spirit, either; the peasants were mostly either indifferent or anti-clerical, and the few devout were superstitious and ignorant of basic religious doctrine. For example, they assumed that God had a relationship with the saints similar to theirs with their neighbors—one full of suspicion and dominated by the fear that the neighbors were getting one over on them. To the extent any benefit might accrue to the town, such as road improvements or an ambulance service, it could only be provided by the Italian state. No villager would ever lift a finger to even request such a thing as an individual, much less collectively. If some benefit arrived, it arrived in the same way as rain—unexpected and not tied to any effort of the villagers.

Banfield documented the perspectives of the villagers using a variety of social science tools, such as surveys and tests that asked villagers to make up a story when shown a picture card or a blank card (the “Thematic Apperception Test”). The results were pretty horrifying. In short, he discovered that with no exceptions, the villagers cared for nobody at all outside the nuclear family, and their time horizon was limited to the immediate future. Coupled with this was a constant bone-deep pessimism and fear, both of losing social status and of losing the necessities of life and thereby becoming a beggar. Banfield concluded the obvious—the villagers lacked political capacity because their culture made it impossible.

Why was it this way, given that the end result for the people was much worse than if some collective action could have been undertaken? Banfield attempted to answer this question, but first listed “usual explanations” for the incapacities that plagued Montegrano, rejecting them as inadequate, and only then offering, and supporting, his alternative explanation. Yes, the people were desperately poor—but they had plenty of time, vast amounts of time given the modest demands of their farming, that they could have devoted to collective action. Instead, they chose to loaf. Yes, the people were uneducated—but they were neither stupid nor ignorant, and usually gave thoughtful answers to any abstract question, and as Banfield pointed out, men and women on the American frontier were just as uneducated, yet their “capacity for self-government and mutual aid was nevertheless extraordinarily great.” Yes, the classes were divided—but there was no class antagonism to speak of, nor antagonism toward the state, so that could not explain political incapacity. Yes, the lower classes were fatalistic—but they were perfectly able to make decisions and take action when they deemed it necessary.

Banfield’s alternative explanation, rejecting the “usual explanations,” was that the culture of the villagers embodied what he called “amoral familism,” a term he invented. By this, he meant their social decision-making criterion was to maximize short-term benefit to the nuclear family, that included only mother, father, and children, while ignoring long-term benefits (and costs) and any impact outside the nuclear family, including to the extended family. The result was that all the peasants were, in Banfield’s account, existentially miserable. This was not merely because they were always on the edge of disaster; such precariousness is common in many cultures. It is because they were atomized, unable to rely in any way on others, so they always lived on the edge. Yet rather than forming social webs to provide a safety net, they constantly viewed their neighbors with suspicion, aware that their neighbors returned the favor. Thus, Montegrano was filled with a “melancholy,” largely based in envy. Villagers had much in common with the Russian peasant who, granted a magical wish with the sole condition that his neighbor would get double whatever he asked for, requested he be blinded in one eye.

How did such a defective culture, that today would be called totally lacking in social capital, arise? Banfield ascribes this debilitating set of attitudes, tentatively, to a historically high death rate combined with no extended families (although this does not explain why there were no extended families, which Banfield notes were common in other areas of Italy not far distant). He only occasionally adverts to the past of Montegrano, and there are clues that amoral familism, envy, and melancholy were a function of modernity. Villagers in past generations, Banfield says, had less yet were apparently happier. They were embedded in a wider tangle of responsibilities, rather than being atomized. That amoral familism was new is also suggested by Banfield’s point that it could not exist for long without the outside agency of the state, since it would end in violence as feuds built and no resources from the outside smoothed over rough patches. Thus, Montegrano is not a proxy for Italian society, or even southern Italian society, of its time—it is a snapshot of a particular defective culture in practice, one that if it were universal, would collapse an entire society in short order.

A substantial element of financial pressure on villagers was the need to provide dowries for daughters, if they were to have an “acceptable” marriage, meaning one not to a man lower in the social scale. I have long wondered why some cultures, including most or all European cultures, insist on dowries, while other cultures have the opposite practice, “bride price.” The usual explanation is that in cultures where agricultural labor by women is important, more important than portable property or capital, bride price is found. In other words, the husband is paying for the loss of the labor to the bride’s family. This capital-labor distinction is not entirely convincing, though, since bride price is also found in societies where agricultural labor by women is not important. Examined more closely, it’s evident that dowry is part of a larger complex of social rules in any society, tied to those governing inheritance and usually designed to protect members of the family from penury. Thus, although dowry is a burden for the bride’s family, and often seen as simply a matter of enriching the groom and his family, by those involved it is primarily seen as for the benefit of the bride, such that she can be certain to live an adequate lifestyle. This is reinforced by the often-related tradition of dower, money or property secured wholly to the bride, either by the groom or by the bride’s family, in order to protect her if the husband dies or abandons her. No doubt societies have other reasons, some not evident, why they pick a particular pattern. As with most social practices, on the principle of Chesterton’s Fence, we should initially presume that what is done in a particular area has coherent reasons behind it. Though, to be sure, as shown by amoral familism, this principle has its limits, and moreover, what is a coherent reason in primitive societies is often not acceptable to the moral standards of Christendom, the yardstick against which any dubious practice should be ultimately measured.

Most of the book is straight analysis. Only at the end does Banfield draw larger lessons, all pessimistic. He notes that “[e]xcept in Europe and America, the concerting of behavior in political associations and corporate organizations is a rare and recent thing.” By this he does not mean electoral politics or corporate business. Rather, he means intermediary institutions focused on achieving some benefit for the common good, often a longer-range benefit. He notes that coordinated action beyond the family or tribe is rare, and our assumption that it arises naturally when needed is false, and wholly dependent on culture. He directly ties such organizations to a society’s success, focusing on economic success. It is true enough that such organizations do not seem to exist outside of Europe and America (although they are not at all recent—they characterized the successful parts of Europe for a thousand years, and America until, ironically, just after Banfield wrote his book). I’m not so sure, however, that they are necessary for economic success—as far as I can tell, they are mostly lacking in China, where a strong state and a different culture appears to substitute. I suspect they are entirely necessary for true long-term civilizational success, as I somewhat narrowly define it, and there is much evidence that China will again, as it always has, fail to achieve such success, perhaps in part because of this lack. (Maybe James C. Scott is right, in his Against the Grain, that civilization itself is overrated, and we’d all be happier off as hunter-gatherers.)

Banfield wrote, though, when the success of the West seemed it might be achievable for the rest of the world (and there appeared no chance the West would fall from its pinnacle). He struck a pessimistic note at a time when others assumed the rest of the world was following the path blazed by the West, unemotionally concluding, “There is some reason to doubt that the non-Western cultures of the world will prove capable of creating and maintaining the high degree of organization without which a modern economy and a democratic political order are impossible.” Banfield was aware that Italy as a whole was fairly successful; his point was that in a society composed only of Montegranos, success was impossible. And so it has proved to be, by and large. True, some non-Western cultures have, since 1958, managed to maintain a modest degree of what appears to be civilizational success, at least in economic development. This has always been done only by adopting Western practices and technology, and it is not clear how sustainable this is, especially if a country also imports today’s Western corrosive and destructive cultural practices, we having left what made us successful far behind.

What of Montegrano, that is, Chiaromonte, today? . . . . [Review completes as first comment.]

[Петър Стойков · Rating 4 out of 5]

Много пъти съм говорил за недоволните. За вечните мрънкачи. За тия дето все държавата не им е наред, бедна е, има корупция, пропада, "закривай!", дето все ходят на протести, бистрят политиката, "никога няма да се оправим" и т.н.

Иронията е, че много често тия хора живеят значително по-добре от голямата част от народа и то в държава (да, нашата) в която се живее значително по-добре отколкото в голямата част от света. Просто са си мрънкачи и едновременно са болни от психиатричния синдром "В България е най-зле" за който трябва да се публикува академична статия в научните журнали и да се включи в следващото издание на DSM.

Това, че България не е най-зле и българите не са най-тъпите парчета във вселената лесно може да се види, ако човек попътува малко извън обичайните туристически дестинации, поприказва си с хората там и особено ако малко почете история и антропология. Мизерия има навсякъде и сравнително доскоро тя е била нормата във всички общества.

Пример за това е настоящата книга, в която авторът описва преживелиците си в провинциална Италия през 50те години на миналия век.

Италианските селяни, в период на всеобщ световен възход на икономиката, науката и образованието, за всеобщо учудване (даже донякъде мое) са доста по-бедни и по-прости, отколкото среден български селянин от същия период. И подозирам че това е така и до сега, при това не само за италианските селяни, ами и за френските, финландските и повечето други. Айде германските може би не.

И това е Западна Европа, представете си какво става в "развиващите се" държави... (тук щях да сложа линк към нашумелия тия дни "скандал" от един известен ютюбър който отишъл в индийската провинция и снимал тамошния традиционен уличен бой с пресни лайна и колко хора (вкл. индийци) са гневни как е "разкрил" тая особеност на индийската култура, но ме мързи. едит: добре де, не ме мързи)

Описаната от Едуард Банфийлд ситуация е потресаваща не само икономически - ясно е, че има бедни и необразовани хора навсякъде. Потресаващ е най-вече описаният от него светоглед, който е и основната идея на книгата. Светоглед затворен, като капаци на очите, провинциален и селски в най-лош смисъл, който е основната причина тия хора да не могат да мръднат от нивото на развитие, на което са заседнали от столетия.

Другата причина естествено (не се споменава в книгата, но ми е нещо като хоби да следя тоя клон от науката) е основно генетичните причини за интелигентността: ако поколение след поколение всеки по-умен и амбициозен човек напуска общността, кои остават в нея?

The Moral Basis of a Backward Society е леко скучна, но за сметка на това малка по обем - и дава доста храна за размисъл относно това къде сме, къде сме били и накъде отиваме. Както и с кого да се сравняваме.

[Sara · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first thing that struck me about the Southern Italian villagers who were the subject matter of this book was the similarity of their ethos to that of the village Iranians with whom I was reared. From experience, the authors' observation that "ancient" Indo-European people (as the book refers to them) are also amoral familists, just with extensive familial ties that are closer to the Northern Italian model, is a correct one.

From a sociological perspective, this book introduced some concepts to which I had not been exposed (amoral familism, stem families) and, importantly, tied the concepts into their effect on society at large, particularly governance and the economy.

For the latter reason, I would recommend this book to anyone interested in local governance and local economic development. Many observations made are helpful even in a heterogenous society. It is a worthwhile and easy read.

[Einzige · Rating 5 out of 5]

At its most simple it a fascinating look into the culture and people of a small remote Italian village. At its best its an engaging look into how cultural factors can exacerbate and ingrain poverty as well as what a socially disintegrated society looks like. Likewise it can be a bit chilling to see how eerily similar the outcomes of modern atomisation are when compared to the outcomes of particularly poor peasant life in Italy.

A fun quote on how self interests trumps class relations-
When a gentleman of Montegrano buys a melon or a basket of tomatoes in the public square, he hands it wordlessly to the nearest peasant boy, woman, or man, who carries it to his home as a matter of course. He hands his burden to any peasant with whom he is acquainted, and there is no thought on either side of payment for the specific service. The peasant wants to be polite and amiable (civile) and he knows that a time will come when the gentleman can give or withhold a favour or an injury. (Even those peasants who are not anti-clerical will not lift a finger to assist a nun carrying a heavy burden to the orphan age at the top of the mountain. The nuns are upper class women, but they have no capacity to do the peasant a favour or an injury. Priests, of course, can do favors and injuries, and their bundles are carried for them).

[Chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

Study of the poverty of 1950s southern Italy. Banfield attributes this to "amoral familialism" -- the inability of individuals to act for any purpose between the narrowly-defined self-interest of the family.

Convincing in parts, but spectacularly refuted by subsequent events. Banfield suggests this state of backwardness is near-permanent, and suggests that little progress can be expected for generations if not centuries. And yet, within a few decades, the standard of living in southern Italy soared to join that of the first world. I suspect Banfield underestimated the degree to which culture was a mere product of law -- peasants were trapped in small villages by vagrancy laws that prevented them migrating in search of work, and little scope had been afforded for the intrusion of modern business.

Nonetheless, an interesting read -- but, 60 years later, a work that holds up much less well than Banfield's other books.

[Sean · Rating 4 out of 5]

The ethos of amoral familism described in the book is one familiar to many outside the rural villages of the Italian south in the 50s. Banfield's observations, despite done from a sometimes overly capitalistic and industrial viewpoint, serve as great discussion of such a culture, and an interesting read in general.

[Batrakina Elyzaveta · Rating 5 out of 5]

Especially interesting for those who study Post-Soviet space. Peasants` general perception of the world described by Edward C. Banfield (except responsibility towards family) is typical worldview of the inhabitants there.

[Dimitar · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great mostly qualitative research on a small town in southern Italy in the 1950s. A lot of the matters discussed are universal and applicable to a lot of societies - even so-called forward ones - including nowadays. The last couple of chapters are quite educational. While the book tends to be boring and most of what I read I was already aware of, it is definitely enriching to most readers.

[Marisa]

This book was actually quite interesting. Seems to be that all of their problems were blamed on melancholy? I hope these Southern Italians are doing better now

[Laura Pergola]

Un libro molto strano

[Darnell · Rating 3 out of 5]

Such an odd case. I'm surprised there hasn't been any controversy around it (since the premise is basically that culture is partially to blame for poverty) but perhaps it's too obscure.

That said, it seems to be a good faith effort at anthropology that isn't as simplistic as the premise I described above. I think it has more descriptive power than explanatory power, especially given that its predictions have fared generally poorly. But the majority of the book is a description of a rural community and I found it unexpected fascinating.

[Vito · Rating 4 out of 5]

Vi ho riconosciuto diversi atteggiamenti cui ho assistito nella mia vita, e non solo in piccoli paesini sui monti, ma anche in alcune zone di grosse città del sud. Fa paura quanto sia ancora attuale.

[Ryan Murdock · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very useful for understanding Malta in 2017, and a great follow up for those who have read Jeremy Boissevain's Saints and Fireworks.

[Bernard English · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Moral Basis has been among the most cited books in my readings. I was unwittingly transported back in time to 1954 and 1955 Montenegro, the ficticious name of a village in southern Italy, of which Banfield says "the extreme poverty and backwardness of which is to be explained largely (but not entirely) by the inability of the villagers to act together for their common good or, indeed, for any end transcending the immediate, material interest of the nuclear family." He attributes it to an ethos of "amoral familism."

In roughly 160 pages, he paints a picture of a very depressing place indeed. Banfield examines lots of potential explanations, with some data and comparisons to other southern Italian villages and regions to make his point. I felt he really appreciates the difficulty of truly and fully explaining the poverty of the village as can be seen by his avoidance of any dogmatic pronouncements and very cautious suggestions for remedying the situation. All in all he is very pessimistic about ending the "grim melancholia--la miseria--which has been the fixed mood of the village for longer than anyone can remember,"as he writes on the last page. Even more depressingly he continues: "It will be a long time before the people of Montenegro have enough to eat."

[Giovanni · Rating 4 out of 5]

Banfield tells very precisely about the rural Basilicata of the 1955, and the picture that comes out of these pages is quite appalling.

The point of view of the author is a capitalistic one, as he sees the economy and the profit as the cornerstones of a good society; moreover, being an american in Italy just for about nine months, his grasp of the local ethos surely is limited - yet other studies support the evidence of his work, as well as Levi's account of Basilicata in his "Christ Stopped at Eboli", and his analysis is undeniably true.

Being lucano myself, I heard and knew about how society and economics changed in the last seventy years, but his work - in a sense of a detached scientist with its patient - striked me. It is still relevant in my opinion, as some of the concepts of the amoral familism can still be perceived in the whole italian culture, politics, economy; and I am glad that its projection on the future revealed partially false.

An uneasy but fundamental reading to better understand the past of Lucania - and, hopefully, to change its future.

[Bodies_upon_the_gears · Rating 2 out of 5]

Зря потраченный вечер. Довольно акынское (несколько таблиц всё-таки есть :) ) описание нищей, оправляющейся от войны итальянской коммуны, в которой люди по объективным причинам привыкли не доверять друг другу. Вообще говоря, уже со введения думал, что всё будет плохо, потому что: "Способность незападных культур достичь высокого уровня организации, без которого невозможны современная экономика и демократическое политическое устройство, вызывает определённые сомнения. Представляется, что лишь одна культура - японская - при полной непохожести на нашу способна к такому уровню организации". Самой большой ценностью книги будет, вангую, лютый эффект Барнума у "доколе?!"-настроенной либеральной аудитории :)

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book paints an interesting picture of the culture in a small town in southern Italy. The writing is very matter of fact, but it isn't dry and is easy to read. I liked that it is very different from most of the books I read today.

I highly suggest reading all the way through, including through the second appendix on answers to the TAT questions given by southern Italians, northern Italians, and a few people from Kansas. The contrast in diction between the Kansans and the Italians, the subject of the first 184 pages of the book, caught me completely off guard and made me burst out laughing. Despite being separated from me by 70 years and at least a thousand miles, my fellow Americans were unmistakeable.

[Becky · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a great read! I found this study so interesting, and am glad I read it after some other books on education and poverty. It is interesting to note that Tudor England treated their poor much better than 20th century post-war Italy. I loved how Banfield went about studying this tiny town, and I think his hypotheses have aged pretty well. His use of the thematic apperception tests was really neat to read about and emphasized the importance of political and cultural myths I've been reading about lately. I would love an update to this, if some social scientist could go back and re-do all this and let me know how it goes, I'd be grateful!

[Ed Iannuccilli · Rating 4 out of 5]

Remarkable bit of research into a most difficult topic. The book was written years ago and is more like a textbook these days as opinions differ as to the conclusions of Banfield.
However, it is a must read for anyone interested in the poverty and social constrictions in southern Italy.

[Steven · Rating 5 out of 5]

Interesting in unexpected ways. An ethnographic work that lines up neatly with what's seen in the US. The same group under two moral systems totally ends up differently. "Amoral familialism" isn't the best term, but it gets at the problem.

[Alexander Sakovich · Rating 3 out of 5]

A bit hard to read if you don’t have special interest in social science/ anthropology. But still a pretty unique dive into other culture and time window

[Alessandra · Rating 4 out of 5]

Scritto come un vero lavoro scientifico, lascia lo spazio a ampia narrazione
Mi ha dato spunto per riflessioni incredibili

[Mark Isaak · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have heard it said, If you can't be grateful for what you have, be grateful for what you escaped. Banfield shows us a 1958 southern Italian community in which immediate self-interest rules and cooperation outside the nuclear family is virtually nonexistent. As a result, it is economically backward and, most appallingly, seems doomed to stay that way. The book is nowhere close to a definitive treatment; it is a single case study, and Banfield treats its thesis more as hypothesis than conclusion. The book also suffers from lack of historical background explaining how the community came to be as it is. Nevertheless, it is an interesting look at an alternative society.

[Luca Gatto · Rating 4 out of 5]

Un interessante spaccato della società contadina del sud Italia degli anni ‘50. La ricerca di Banfield pone domande interessanti sulla società di allora che sotto certi aspetti possono essere riadoperati ai giorni nostri. Il familismo amorale è il filo conduttore della società italiana? Interrogarci su quesiti come questo possono portare ad un miglioramento della nostra comunità e magari eliminare alcuni delle cause incancrenite che la attanagliano.

[Sara Rocutto · Rating 4 out of 5]

È uno di quei testi che occorre leggere per capire la definizione di “familismo amorale” che periodicamente salta fuori. Fermarsi a questo però non basta.
Diciamo che ora si prosegue leggendo qualcosa di più sul tema “capitale sociale”.
(4 stelline giusto perché chi sono io a giudicare un testo dalla sì lunga vita?)

[Roman Skaskiw · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great comparison of society and the role of Trust in Southern Italy in the 1950s.

Video Book Review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vj3_B...