Italy Today Research Articles

Revenue sharing and local public spending: The Italian experience

Revenue sharing and local public spending: The Italian experience

Sociological Criminology in Italy Today

Sociological Criminology in Italy Today

Wild and Cultivated Plants: a Note on the Peasant Economy of Roman Italy

It has long been surmised that the Italian peasant in the Roman period could not have subsisted entirely upon his heredium, even when it was considerably more than two iugera. Juvenal was speaking for many of those before him, as well as for his own contemporaries, when he said of the traditional allocation:‘Nunc modus hic agri nostro non sufficit horto’.(Satires XIV, 172)Yet amid much speculation upon this point one aspect of the countryman's livelihood seems to have attracted little attention. In addition to any other resources he had the use of the wild plants of the extensive forests, the mountains, pastures and fallow fields. In general, food obtained from wild plants did not in Roman times, any more than it does in Italy today, take the place of grain, the staple article of diet. This may account for Pliny's statement in the Natural History XXI, 50 (86) where, after mentioning the large number of ‘herbae sponte nascentes’ used for food by other peoples, he writes: ‘In Italia paucissimas novimus, fraga, tamnum (wild vine), ruscum (butcher's broom), batim marinam (samphire), batim hortensiam, quam aliqui asparagum Gallicum vocant. …’ Such a remark seems astonishing in view of the numerous other examples Pliny himself has previously given, but its interpretation depends on the meaning to be assigned to the word cibus, as well as on the limiting effect of the phrase ‘herbae sponte nascentes’, which may not include all the plants we call ‘wild’. It is clear from the conclusion of the paragraph cited above, where ‘oblectamenta’ are compared with ‘cibos’, that cibi is being used here to mean ‘staple foods’.

Immigration Policies of Western European Countries

Western Europe is referred to here in the traditional geographical sense rather than the political sense. This needs to be stressed because countries such as Spain, Italy and Greece today experience a significant, if not large-scale, immigration (ILO, 1974: esp. Ch. IV), and are likely to continue to do so in the future. However, I intend to focus on countries north of the Alps. Here there are nowadays about 7.5 million immigrant workers (ILO, 1974:83 and 130), plus a slightly lower number of dependants. This enormous influx is essentially a socio-economic phenomenon. Though France's long-standing political and demographic reasons for immigration are still occasionally evoked, its intake of foreign workers has always been geared to the economic capacity to absorb them. In recent years the socio-economic factors have been the main determining ones (see Sixth French Plan). The same can be said of Belgium, where demographic reasons were once rooted in the Walloon part. But these were never effectively pursued and completely pushed into the background since the finalisation of the European Economic Community's free movement system in 1968 (Braeckman, 1973; Bohning, 1972b:78). In both countries, in France particularly, political factors are still prevalent as regards the incidence of family immigration and settlement;1 but the same holds true to varying degrees for other West European countries. At this point of time, immigration everywhere originates in socio-economic structures but is controlled by overriding political considerations ? laisser faire is a matter of the past. The one significant exception to this, the free immigration of Dutch West Indians from Surinam and the Netherland Antilles into the Netherlands (Bagley, 1973), also appears to be coming to an end with the envisaged independence of Surinam and the Netherland Antilles currently under negotiation.

Teaching Standard Italian to Dialect Speakers: A Pedagogical Perspective of Linguistic Systems in Contact

In the period since World War II, the position of the Italian dialects in respect to the standard language has altered significantly. The awareness that a dialect reflects the ethos of a particular social group and that school Italian is an artificial standard has created an anti-puristic linguistic atmosphere in Italy.1 In the past, the association between dialect speakers and lower-class status had been frequently made. Quite predictably, some vestiges of this sociological stigma still exist, particularly in rural schools where, as Beninca et al. have recently demonstrated, instances of hypercorrection based on an archaic pseudo-norm are still found to persist.2 However, as De Mauro points out, one finds a new sociolinguistic climate in Italy today which permits the acceptance of a pluralita di registri linguistici: l'italiano comune, l'italiano regionale, il dialetto italianizzante, il dialetto nelle sue forme piu arcaiche e lontane dallitaliano. 3 This pluralita has even infiltrated the literary output. In fact, it has become normal to find in writers such as De Filippo, Moravia, Pasolini, Gadda, and Mastronardi il coesistere nella stessa pagina di registri linguistici diversi come nuovo e suggestivo mezzo per individuare e obiettivare il variare degli stati d'animo e dei punti di vista dei personaggi o del narratore. 4 In teaching standard Italian to dialect speakers in Italy or abroad, one must take into account the fact that there is, in effect, no national standard (only regional standards). Furthermore, it would be pedagogically counteractive to equate dialectal (or regional) speech with linguistic deprivation. The whole situation, from a pedagogical standpoint, must be put into a socioand psycholinguistic perspective. Since the regional varieties, as De Mauro observes,

Marketing in Italy Today

Marketing in Italy Today

Marketing in Italy Today

Italy embodies all stages of economic development in its marketing structure and operations, ranging from regional differences hoary with age … to regulations of distribution based upon the guild system of the Middle Ages … to huge, quasi - independent, state -owned enterprises unusual for a non-Communist state. Here is the most concise and accurate report yet written on marketing in Italy, yesterday and today.

Italy Today

Italy Today

PARLIAMENTARY GOVERNMENT IN ITALY TODAY

PARLIAMENTARY GOVERNMENT IN ITALY TODAY Get access ROY PRYCE ROY PRYCE Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Parliamentary Affairs, Volume VIII, Issue 2, 1954, Pages 183–191, https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordjournals.pa.a053038 Published: 01 April 1954

ITALY

<h3>Allergy to Foods and Drugs.</h3> —The problem of allergies in Italy today has become alarming, whereas 20 years ago there were not many persons with allergy. There were those with hereditary allergy (such as bronchial asthma and psoriasis), but persons with acquired allergy were rare. At present, the number of persons with acquired hypersensitivity is constantly increasing, partly because of the hazards of the recent war and partly because life today in Italy is more complex. For this reason the most important report of the National Society of Medicine in Venice last October was on allergies. The speakers were Prof. G. Dominici, director of the University of Siena Institute of Medical Clinics, Prof. P. Di Mattel, director of the University of Rome Institute of Pharmacology and Medical Therapy, and Prof. U. Serafini, who teaches at the University of Rome. <h3>Crossed Allergies.</h3> —All the reports and papers on crossed allergies (thousands

Music in Italy To-Day

Even, a lightning visit to Italy reveals the almost overwhelming musical activity in that country. Italy used to be one of the most conservative musical domains in Europe. A peculiar organization of concert and operatic life did not allow for a great influx of foreign works, particularly of a type to which the public taste would be unlikely to respond easily. As the Fascist regime fell more and more under the influence of national-socialist ideas of ‘cultural bolshevism’ the country became increasingly excluded from developments outside the totalitarian sphere and the war years cut what ties still remained. Now, as in Germany, a young generation is at work trying frantically to make up for the loss and to gain contact, aided by a general feeling that Italy, as the cradle of European music, must regain its place in the front ranks of musical developments.

Political Issues and Alignments in Italy Today

The efforts of the Italian people to create the basis of a new political life are proceeding amidst the most serious difficulties, but not without well-founded hopes for the future. There is hunger in Italy today—and insecurity, unemployment, lack of transportation and of some of the bare necessities of civilized human life. Worst of all, there is inflation on a fearful scale, with its destruction of economic and moral values, with its sudden impoverishment of whole classes. No wonder that some foreign observers have reported apathy among the people with regard to political problems. It is difficult to imagine any other attitude under conditions which make life a nightmare. Nevertheless, the outlines of things to come are taking shape.

Music in Italy To-Day: Reflections from Rome

Music in Italy To-Day: Reflections from Rome

The Conditions and Tendencies of Historical Writing in Italy Today

Previous articleNext article No AccessThe Conditions and Tendencies of Historical Writing in Italy TodayCoraddo BarbagalloCoraddo Barbagallo Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Journal of Modern History Volume 1, Number 2Jun., 1929 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/235453 Citations: 1Citations are reported from Crossref Copyright 1929 The University of Chicago PressPDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article: Kent Roberts Greenfield The Historiography of the Risorgimento since 1920, The Journal of Modern History 7, no.11 (Oct 2015): 49–67.https://doi.org/10.1086/236199

Political Developments in Italy

“Italian unification” is an old phrase, today acquiring new meaning. Whatever Garibaldi would have thought of D'Annunzian and Fascist squadrism, however Cavour would have viewed the modern cult of Machiavelli, avowed by Mussolini, one may be sure that Mazzini would have been shocked at the chauvinist absolutism now proudly boasted by the Fascist régime: absolutism in the sense of an executive guided by its own intuitions and conscience, free from political criticism or parliamentary control; absolutism also in a sense for which English words are wanting, except as we boldly transliterate, and hope that “intransigence,” “totalitarianism,” will be understood to mean an all-inclusive hundredpercentedness. Italy is called by Mussolini “monolithic,” all of one piece, tolerating anti-Fascist criticism no more than other states tolerate treason; all in and for Fascism, nothing against Fascism. Indeed, Fascism, without ceasing to be a party, has become the state. For parties in Edmund Burke's sense there is supposed to be no more need than for the factions Washington abhorred. Opposition such as is normal in the Cavourian scheme of parliamentary government—responsible critics, loyal and ready to take their turn in governing—is superfluous, a mere obstacle or obstruction to efficiency. None is permitted—in parliament, in press, in platform, or even in theory.What has just been said is presented, not by way of judging, but only of summarizing, the attitude firmly (courageously or arrogantly, according to the observer's prejudices) maintained by the powers that be in Italy today. The recent months have seen several important steps taken in the direction of institutional realization of this view.