A Review By Professor Emeritus James Mancuso as it apears on Amazon.com.

Useful Exploration of the Cultures of Pre-immigration Italy

Every Italian-American would profit greatly if he/she were to read this book. The contents of this book can give Italian-Americans great insight into the cultural background of their immigrant forebears.

When he published the book, Pino Arlacchi was a professor of sociology at University of Calabria. He analyzes the society of Calabria in terms of three different societal organizations, as they appeared (from the time of the unification of the new state of Italy, in 1860, up to about 1950) in three different regions of Calabria -

The Cosentina (around Cosenza and the Crati Valley),
the area of Gioia Tauro (on the Tyrrhenian side of the "toe"), and
the area of the Crotonese (around Crotone, on the "sole" of the "boot.").

Each area, mainly owing to the nature of the agricultural possibilities in the area, developed very different societal styles.

In the Cosentina area the land was suitable to very diversified agriculture. Thus, a society of "traditional peasantry" grew up. This society emphasized the family as the center of a coalition of paesani/compari. Paternal authority, exchanges of visit and gifts, and self sufficiency guided this culture. The unification did not severely disrupt this society, because small-holders and leasers were not severely disturbed by the laws of the new state. Most of the people of this type of society became skilled in agricultural technology, for such skill was the basis of self sufficiency.

In the Gioia Tauro area, the land was very suitable to olives and citrus fruits, which were in demand on the European market, after the unification. As a result, the fortunes of the agricultural economy were subject to the vagaries of the competitive market, closed markets, tariffs, etc. Yet, if the olive product prices collapsed, the farmers could not easily switch to citrus crops, and vice versa.

The society that grew up in this area was a society of envious competition. People scrambled to assert their worth by playing whatever games could be played in order to remain competitive in the wildly fluctuating market economy that replaced the almost feudal economy of the pre-unification days. The traditional peasant economy collapsed. Arlacchi promotes the hypothesis that this kind of society, for a variety of reasons, developed the "mafia ideology."

The area of the Crotone Plain produced the most miserable population imaginable. Following the unification, immense areas of land were acquired by absentee landlords who asked only that their paid overseer/managers produced the most lucrative returns on the land. None of the profits remained in the area. And surprisingly, there was a good return on the production of cereal crops.

The reason for the economic success - a mobile, suppressed corps of laborers who competed for whatever work was available during the times of peak demand for laborers. These people lived in appalling conditions - malaria, other illness, extremely hard work, and malnutrition led to early death among young adults (particularly males). The labor force was augmented by the closure of the forests of the Calabrian mountains, which also were acquired as property of the great landowners. The forest dwellers immigrated to the lowlands to join the miserable "braccianti."

And, here's the kicker.... Arlacchi documents the hypothesis that the most "stable" immigrants to The USA came from the communities like those of the Cosentina. The people of the Gioia Tauro immigrated only to pick up some capital so that they could go back and buy some land that would allow them to become more competetive.

The people of the Crotonese could not gather enough money to pay for passage, etc.

On the other hand, the people of the Cosentina, on account of their culture of greater communal integration and their relative prosperity, could gather the resources to finance the emigration.

Often the finances were regarded as the dowry of the wife. (An interesting point - many couples married to collect the dowry. They would not consummate the marriage before the husband returned from The USA with enough money to take his wife back to their new home.)
Unfortunately, at times the language gets a bit dense. The book was translated by a British Scholar, and I am sure that he had some problems with the technical terminology used by an Italian sociologist.

Amazon.com: Books: Mafia, Peasants and Great Estates
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/052127219X/002-0068667-7608877