Evicted from Eternity

by Herzfeld, Michael

• ISBN13: 9780226329116
• ISBN10: 0226329119
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2009-04-15
• Publisher: Univ of Chicago Pr

Summary

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 Eternitytells the story of the gentrification of Montionce 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.

Author Biography

Michael Herzfeld is professor of anthropology at Harvard University and the author of nine previous books, including, most recently, The Body Impolitic: Artisans and Artifice in the Global Hierarchy of Value.

Table of Contents

Preface and Acknowledgments	p. xi
Overture: Encountering the Eternal City	p. I
Sin and the City
Genealogies of Imperfection	p. 8
Monti: Paradoxes of Poverty	p. 9
Sociable Spaces	p. 14
Meeting the People	p. 15
The Village in the City	p. 17
Agonies and Agonistics	p. 22
The Cadences of a Cultural Preserve	p. 27
Popolo and Population	p. 39
The Artisans	p. 39
The Shopkeepers	p. 47
Intellectuals and Politicians	p. 49
The Wages of Original Sin	p. 53
Accountability and Accommodation: The Pragmatics of Original Sin	p. 53
Original Sinners or Elder Brothers?	p. 57
The Dialectics of Casuistry and Tolerance	p. 61
A Passion for the Past	p. 67
Refractions of Social Life	p. 75
Segmentation and Subsidiarity	p. 76
The Civic and the Civil	p. 79
Association Life	p. 85
The Premises of Conflict	p. 89
Theaters of Piety and Peculation	p. 101
A Clergy Scorned	p. 110
Life and Law in a Flawed State	p. 115
Laws and Regulations	p. 115
The Limits of Law	p. 118
The (Disreputable) Origins of Legal Loopholes	p. 122
Indulgent Complicities	p. 128
Forgiveness and Calculation	p. 133
Sacred Images and Sinful Spaces	p. 140
Scandals of Sociability	p. 143
Friends Who Strangle	p. 143
The Cultivation of Fear	p. 147
Restitution and Redemption	p. 151
Friends Best Avoided	p. 159
A Family Friend?	p. 162
Local Narratives: Swaggering Victims	p. 165
Credit and Default	p. 167
Banking on Fear	p. 172
Tactful Silences	p. 175
Extortionate Civilities	p. 181
Accommodations Civil and Civic	p. 182
Discommoding Complicities	p. 183
Uncivil Pleasantries, Unpleasant Civilities	p. 187
Culture and Custom	p. 190
Peaceful Politics	p. 195
Condominial Civilities	p. 198
Lessons in Civic Civility	p. 212
Spatial and Stylistic Violence	p. 214
The Fine Art of Denunciation	p. 219
The Logic of Denunciation	p. 220
Performances of Policing	p. 227
Fractured Authority: The Multiplicity of Policing	p. 234
Extorting Coffee and Campari	p. 238
Tearing the Social Fabric	p. 253
Renters and Owners	p. 253
Lawyers and Illegalities	p. 257
Eviction and Evasion: The High Stakes of Time and Place	p. 263
Gentrification and the Last Frontier	p. 266
Endgame	p. 296
Coda: The Future of Eternity	p. 301
Notes	p. 313
References	p. 343
Index	p. 357
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