Sociology in Italy

Abstract

SOCIAL scientists who are seeking new research areas should look to Italy, for there lie virtually virgin areas in which to conduct investigation and explication of phenomena having local, international and universal application. The cultural setting of Italy presents the social scientist a wide range of problems with both theoretical and practical significance. Within the framework of western industrialized civilization, one can find problems typical of urbanized European and American settings. Yet, in the underdeveloped rural regions, one can find conditions that are, in many ways, more common to non-Western societies. Italy does not offer the cultural range that one finds in India, but it also is an ethnological paradise. The cultural and linguistic variation in adjacent geographic areas is widely known, but its intensity must be seen first hand to be appreciated. In one of the villages in which two of the writers did field work, there are two distinct dialects and other cultural distinctions. Although each of the two dialect areas has its own parish, it cannot be called campanilismo in the strictest sense, for the residents of one parish can clearly hear the bells of the other. Italy is an excellent place for extending the studies in the little community that have been done in Mexico and India.1 Some mountain-top villages have maintained an almost incredible degree of cultural isolation. Others have had extensive contact with Italian cities, largely through emigration and the returnees. The combination of over-population and under-development has also sent many villagers to the Americas and to western Europe. The American social scientist working in a village must take especial care to avoid identification with the American Department of State because young Italians hope to emigrate to the U.S.A. and fear that any American may be gathering information on past political behavior which might prohibit such emigration. With one to two million Communists in Italy, and wide-spread understanding of America's view of Communism, this is hardly an unreasonable fear. However, the people of the country are friendly, especially to one who has a modest knowledge of the language, and the warmth and friendliness of the Italian social scientist give a guarantee of ready acceptance of the American sociologist who ventures into this land. In order to understand the background of the present status of sociology a preliminary explanation must be given. Italy has only one professor of sociology, Professor Camillo Pellizzi, who holds the chair at the University of Florence, and is presently on leave as Counciller on Education and Applied Social Sciences to the European Productivity Agency at the Organization for European Economic Cooperation. One other young man, Professor Filippo Barbano has been certified as a professor of sociology, but he has not yet been appointed to a post. How did such a situation arise? Despite Croce and Gentile, respect for sociology in Italy has never been strong, and most people teaching what is purveyed as sociology lack both respect for and esteem in the field. Almost all that passes for sociology in Italy today roots in Pareto and has extended its branches not far beyond the thinking of Croce. The coming of Mussolini wrote finis to sociology in Italy, and since his departure from the scene in 1945, progress has been exceedingly slow and difficult. Immediately after the era of Mussolini, the state universities of Italy were required to file lists of courses they would teach in the future. This was interpreted at that time as a potential democratic reorganization of the ideas that they had been required to teach under fascist domination. The net result, however, was a stranglehold on the freedom I See e.g. 0. Lewis, Life in a Mexican Village: Tepotztlan Restudied, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1951; Village India, edited by McKim Marriott, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1956; and, R. Redfield, The Little Community, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1955.