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THE EMP in pre-industrial Italy: some notes
Italy has proved to have been the biggest death-knell to any grand theories about thedevelopment of the EMP.Initially (over 40 years ago), pre-industrial Italy was deemed to have been a placeexhibiting high levels of extended and complex households, even if the data was atthat time very poor. In fact, this pattern of extended households apparently may haveexisted right across the ‘Mediterranean’. Spurred on by these kinds of findings for Languedoc by Le Roy Ladurie (1969), the famous
Household and family in past time
by Laslett and Wall (1972) had a series of essays which suggested the prevalence of the extended family across Southern Europe.This came to be backed up by new data showing high levels of extended families inLiguria (Levi 1973), and supported by work highlighting a difference between‘nuclear’ Northern France and ‘extended’ Southern France (Collomp 1977; Flandrin1979; Fauve-Chamoux 1988).One of the most important additions to our knowledge of household patterns in Italywas the databases worked on by Herlihy and Klapisch-Zuber resulting in their greatwork,
Les Toscans
(1978). Again they confirmed that for Tuscany, around 45 percentof the households in the fifteenth century were extended or multiple. Furthermore,women were young when they married, few women remained celibate, and the agegap between spouses was considered (often between 8-10 years).This was the point when scholars started to say that there was a distinctive‘Mediterranean’ household and marriage pattern – different to that found innorthwestern Europe (Smith 1981). This was supported by both Hajnal (1982) andLaslett (1983).The ‘mediterranean model’ of marriage/household structure had been born.It was not until the 1990s that criticism of this basic model for Southern Europe cameforward. Some strange combinations going against the principles of the EMP hademerged – mainly because scholars had stopped treating Italy as a homogenous wholeand realised that it was probably false to describe the whole of Italy as part of the‘Mediterranean’.In fact complex households dominated in the northern and central parts of Italy, but inthe South, nuclear households dominated (silverman 1968; 1975). However, incontrast to the principles of the EMP (equating nuclear households with later marriage), in southern Italy the nuclear households were combined with earlymarriage. Meanwhile, data on the complex households of the north and central italyhad shown that women’s age of marriage was around the same as that found in NWeurope. Much of this revisionist data was compiled by Kertzer (in combination withother authors) (1987; 1991), with other important studies by Benigno (1989) andBarbagli (1991). These new challenges to the Laslett et al. hypothesis, were also made by the important work of Reher (1991) and Rowland (1987; 1988) for the IberianPeninsula. Kertzer in particular stated that the time of the ‘big theories’ abouthousehold structure for large parts of Europe was dead (1991).However out of this new data – a new theory now popped up. Rather than taking Italyas a whole, the new question was why did Southern Italy have this ‘strange’
combination of nuclear households and early marriage? The same question has beenaddressed by for Spain and the island of Mykonos in Greece (Reher 1998; Hionidou1995).This question became all the more important in light of the controversial (and noweaily dismissed work) of Banfield with his idea of ‘amoral familism’ (1958) – whereapparently southern italian loyalties were to the nuclear family, but had no kind of collective consciousness above that. Putnam later reused this kind of idea to presentSouthern Italy a place devoid of municipal institutions and civic consciousness in his(again controversial) book (1993).Although many scholars did not necessarily agree with the notion of ‘backwardness’that Banfield presented, many top ethnologists such as Silverman (1968) and Davis(1973), concluded that the nuclear family was the predominant form in Southern Italy,along with early ages of marriage for women and large gaps in the spousal ages.However, once again a big theory (nuclear households for southern italy) came under attack by work showing much more regional diversity. Douglass in 1980 was verycritical of these assumptions and showed that in the Molise region, patrilineal jointfamilies were common both in the past and present.Back in 1972 when scholars such as Laslett were proposing a ‘mediterranean model’for italy which consisted of complex households with early marriage had proved to beentirely incorrect.In fact three main types were found in italy – all different from this mediterraneanmodel.
1.
in the north and centre, there were complex patrilocal households with latemarriage – thanks to the predominance and demands of the sharecroppingsystem it seems (Barbagli 1991; Della Pina ?; Rettraroli 1993; Bianco 1988).2.in the south, there were (mainly) nuclear neolocal households with earlymarriage3.on sardinia there was a pattern strangely the same as that seen in NW Europe – nuclear households and late marriage. (for a better description see PaoloViazzo 2003).Even these more regional ‘models’ have been proved to have been too broad however. Now it seems that scholars working on Italy have rejected almost entirely the grandtheories connected with the EMP and the Hajnal hypothesis.Diversity is the order of the day now, whether that be on a mix of nuclear andcomplex households in the Alpine north (Paolo Viazzo 1989), or the diversity presented by Douglass for the south (already mentioned.In recent times two more general theories about southern european householdsstructures have been offered.The first debate concerns the number of live-in servants that Italy exhibited incomparison to the NW Europe.Reher has been the most strongest in arguing for a fundamental difference betweenSouthern Europe and the North – apparently life-cycle service was less predominantin southern europe (Reher 1998). This has been disputed by Arru (1997), thoughmany scholars still side with Reher (e.g. Paolo Viazzo 2004; 2003).
Work on southern italy in particular has confirmed the lack of life-cycle servants – some work by Da Molin (1990; 1990b) who even claimed that to go into service insouthern italy was ‘humiliating and a disgrace’.[my own thoughts are that this lack of servants taken into the households is linked insome way with the perpetuation of inequal distribution of land in the south – wheremost families had lost the means of production at least by the eighteenth century, and probably earlier.]The second debate concerns the care for the elderly – a basic argument has been that ahigh proportion of the elderly lived together with complex or extended households inthe south.This argument has been advanced for the sharecropping central and northern italy – asone would expect (kertzer, 1984), and similar arguments have been made for parts of northern spain and southern france (Bourdelais ?; Fauve-Chamoux 1996; PerezFuentes & Parejo Alonso 1997).However, also unexpectedly the same thesis has been posed for the nuclear-dominatedsouthern italy – Da Molin (1990) has shown that despite the proliferation of smallhouseholds with neolocality, many elderly people did live in complex householdswith their married children. This has fostered a view that in the South – the familywas much more the predominant welfare agency than in the north (reher 1998) – andthis kind of theory has given ammunition to conservative right-wing scholars such asPutnam to present the South as a place without a civic consciousness/municipalinsitutions (1993).However – even this assumption of neo-locality of nuclear households in southernitaly has been challenged – mainly by work in apulia (colclough 2003; galt 1991),showing that even thought the nuclear household was predominant, many newhouseholds were located in the same contrada as the daughter’s parents. Elsewhere inthe Salernitano and Beneventano, it was a patrilineal neighbourhood organisation(Delille 1988).Diversity in households structure even diverged according to social status – elitefamilies used restrictive heirship strategies, repeat marriage in close circles, andmultiple family households in southern Italy – in order to preserve landed estates(Visceglia 1988; Colclough 2006).It seems that any grand theory for Italy with regard to marriage patterns andhouseholds, falls apart under the weight of more detailed evidence – the death knell totheories on the EMP. This might be a good thing, because moving away from thisnorth-south paradigm has allowed a new group of scholars to show that southern italywas far from being a traditional, conservative and ‘backward’ place devoid of civicconsciousness – but actually was characterised by some diverse institutional andeconomic structures, and in the late 19
th
century, was not really that far behindnorthern italy in terms of economic development (Malanima 2006; Felice 2011;Fenoaltea 2001, 2006; federico, 2007; Galassi & Cohen 1994; Curtis 2013).
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