Gino Moliterno. Encyclopedia of Contemporary Italian Culture

Подождите немного. Документ загружается.

governments nor employers had foreseen. In countries of migration settlement,

assimilationism was gradually ousted by integrationism; the melting pot then

transmogrified into the ‘salad bowl’. By the late 1960s and early 1970s, integrationism

was in turn being replaced by ‘multiculturalism’, a somewhat ambiguous concept which

nonetheless did entail the acceptance that immigrants were likely to maintain some

version of their ‘culture’ or ‘heritage’. A good index of this change, certainly in

nomenclature and perhaps in practice, was the Roman Catholic Church. Exsul Familia,

an allocution of Pope Pius XII in 1952, urged host societies to show charity to migrants

but had little doubt that Italians had to go and that, having gone, there was no special

reason for them not to assimilate. By contrast, in the encyclical Cura pastoralis

migrantorum of Pope Paul VI in 1969, the Church favoured the retention of an

emigrant’s ‘roots’ and spelled out the emigrants’ right to retain their own language,

culture and spiritual patrimony, both religious and national. Certain Catholic orders, and

especially the Scalabrinians, had fought for the cause of religione e patria (religion and

homeland) from the beginning of the century and the Scalabrinians’ Centro Studi

Emigrazione (Centre for Emigration Studies) in Rome became the most active and

effective scholarly centre for the study both of Italian emigration and of immigration into

Italy.

How the culture or spiritual patrimony of emigrants might be defined has remained a

difficult and debated issue. The institutions of the Republic have found it too complex to

resolve and have never worked out a serious way to bring emigrants, especially those

gone outside Europe, within the national political process. The Republic saved face by a

network of consulates and by the half-hearted subsidizing of the teaching of an official

national culture, notably Dante studies, in Saturday schools, through ‘Institutes of

Culture’ (see Istituti italiani de culture) and branches of the Dante Alighieri Society.

The consulates do offer information about welfare, but the ‘culture’ of this side of the

diplomatic service is a world away from the emigrants themselves and a comprehension

gap frequently exists.

Emigrant ‘Italians’ of course vary in many ways, even if today host societies, in their

multiculturalism, will usually be proud of possessing an Italian ‘community’. Once

‘Italian’ signified poor peasants and the odour of garlic; now it implies Benetton,

Ferrari and the guaranteed health of a ‘Mediterranean diet’. The idea of a community,

however, remains a slippery one. Emigrants typically vary by class, gender and age and

by their individual history, as reflected in the precise moment and circumstance of their

departure. Often they better reflect the ‘Italics’ than Italy, and Italians in emigration are

much more likely to assemble in regional associations (the Tuscan club, the Trinacria

society, Club Vastese and so on) than in national bodies. Anthropologists have similarly

observed that, in emigration, intermarriage will occur most frequently with spouses from

the same original region or paese (town) and least frequently with Italians from other

parts of the peninsula.

Host societies will nonetheless emphasize the existence of an ‘Italian community’, and

such a community is likely to have certain features. Italian language newspapers exist in

many foreign cities. They will usually be socially and culturally conservative in tone and

often politically conservative as well (even while claiming to have ‘no politics’). They

will work in close harness with the local institutions of the Catholic church, which, by the

1990s, will have forgotten the old quarrels between Italian Catholics and earlier

Entries A–Z 281



immigrant ones (typically Irish or Polish). They will preach the cause of the ‘Italian

family’, with ideas about gender relations, the treatment of the old and many other

aspects of human behaviour which may well not be identical with what is presently

occurring in Italy itself. These papers are likely to sponsor, or even be owned by, a

community ‘leader’, who will not have been elected but may act as a ‘padrone figure’,

that is, a patron with certain rights and responsibilities. Whether or not bolstered by a

newspaper, a ‘community leadership’ will seek good ties with both the government of

Italy and that of the host society and will, to some extent, act as a conduit between

humbler migrants and the local authorities.

These practicalities of emigrant life will sometimes enhance the italianità (Italian-

ness) of emigrants who may gradually replace regional or local identifications with a

version of a national Italian one, just as, in their daily speech, they can move from use of

dialect to standard Italian (see dialects). By the 1990s Italians abroad are usually

members of a second, third, fourth or even fifth generation. Though some of them will

have lost all contact with Italy, many will retain, refurbish or reinvent an Italian-ness. A

typical ritual is the return visit in which the children of emigrant families go back to

‘Italy’, by which is meant the paese and the surviving family, and the international tourist

beat of Rome, Florence and Venice. Cases can even be found in which an italianità

survives after the loss of the Italian language, and thus where it is possible to be an Italian

in English, for example. All these matters indicate what a fluid concept identity is and,

indeed, how multiple and flexible are the possibilities of any individual’s culture. In their

diaspora, Italians, like other emigrants, demonstrate that nationality is only one of the

factors which constitutes humankind.

Further reading

Bosworth, R.J.B. (1996) Italy and the Wider World 1860–1960, London: Routledge (a general

survey of Italy’s place in the world, see especially chapters 6 and 7).

Rosoli, G. (1978) Un secolo di emigrazione italiana: 1876–1976, Rome: Centre Studi Emigrazione

(a thorough factual introduction to the subject).

R.J.B. BOSWORTH

ENEL

Established in 1962, in the wake of the nationalization of electrical energy (see

privatization and nationalization), ENEL (Ente Nazionale Energia Elettrica, or

National Electrical Energy Agency) came to effectively exercise a monopoly over the

production and distribution of electricity throughout Italy (it accounted for 75 per cent of

production and 93 per cent of distribution at the end of the 1990s), although marginal

quotas were retained for large industrial groups which produced electricity for their own

use and for a large number of municipal companies which served local markets. In the

Encyclopedia of contemporary italian culture 282

two decades following its inception, ENEL achieved some remarkable successes

including the creation of an integrated national grid (until then fragmented into a number

of inefficient regional systems), a shift from hydropower to thermopower, the elimination

of the North—South electricity gap and unified tariffs which reduced large disparities

between users. However—and at the same time—it also suffered from consistently poor

economic performance and heavy financial imbalances as well as slow growth of tariffs

in comparison with inflation.

ENEL also failed to develop nuclear power. Although a number of plans, all stressing

the need to diversify energy sources, were proposed by successive governments and

passed by the Parliament, by the mid-1980s Italy had only four nuclear plants which

contributed no more than 4 per cent to the total national production. The nuclear option

was definitively abandoned in the wake of the Chernobyl disaster of 1986, and the

strongly supported referendum organized by environmentalist associations against

nuclear energy in 1987.

Italy’s heavy dependence on thermopower turned out to be a serious disadvantage

after the 1973–4 and 1979–80 oil shocks and the consequent steep increase in oil prices.

In spite of this, research on projects utilizing renewable energy sources remained

underdeveloped and Italy continued to depend largely on foreign sources for its energy

needs.

In 1992 ENEL was transformed into a limited company with the Italian Treasury as its

sole shareholder and was also considered eligible for privatization, although any decision

was postponed after the enforcement of the liberalization of the electricity market

required by European authorities. In view of this, an independent Authority for Electricity

and Gas was established in 1995 and, after much debate, at the beginning of 1999 the

ruling centre-left government took another major step by setting production, import and

export and purchase and sale of electricity totally free. A state monopoly on transmission

and distribution was maintained under a concession regime which enables the

government to appoint a single operator of both the national transmission grid (which

continued being owned by ENEL) and the wholesale market, and a multiplicity of

regional distributors. ENEL was also required to sell out a substantial share of its

generating plants in four years’ time and to split into specialized operating companies to

perform separate activities (from production and transmission to sale and distribution).

This is likely to ease both its partial privatization (launched in 1999) and the

establishment of joint ventures with private partners, and is expected to lead in the near

future to a liberalization of 40 per cent of the market.

STEFANO BATTILOSSI

ENI

Founded by Enrico Mattei in 1953 as a stateowned agency for research, refinery and

distribution of petroleum and gas, ENI (Ente Nazionale Idrocarburi) became the world’s

seventh largest publicly traded oil group. Its history is emblematic of the way the DC

used state power. At first ENI was completely under Mattei’s control, as he built up first

Entries A–Z 283



its gas and then petroleum and petrochemical interests and then diversified (into textiles,

engineering, financial sectors and the Milanese daily Il Giorno). Mattei ably manipulated

the DC and other parties into supporting a massive growth of the power and influence of

the agency, and after his death in a plane crash in 1962 the agency became part of the

process of lottizzazione (spoilsharing) in internal politics and also strongly influenced

Italian foreign policy towards oilproducing countries. ENI eventually absorbed AGIP,

SNAM (natural gas distribution company) and ANIC (chemical and petrochemicals).

Privatization of the agency began in 1995, and by 1999 the state share was down to 36.3

per cent although the Treasury retained a so-called golden share with special voting

rights, thus maintaining a strong influence in the appointment of directors and the

orientation of strategy (see also privatization and nationalization).

JAMES WALSTON

environmental movement

The development of the Italian environmental movement in the postwar period was

determined, at least in part, by characteristics peculiar to Italian society and politics. First,

the relative backwardness of the country until the late 1950s and the extreme speed and

depth of the subsequent economic transformation militated against a shift in value

priorities—from issues of personal security and material wealth to self-realization and

quality of life—which are usually regarded as the most conducive to environmental

action. Second, the dominant political culture in the country did not help such a move

either. The persistence of a division between the Left and the Right slowed down the

spread of environmental ideas and associations in at least three ways: it reduced

opportunities for forms of collective action like the environmental one, which did not

align with the major division but rather cut across it; it left little room for cultural

perspectives which were not founded on the anthropocentric worldview shared by both

Marxist and Catholic ideologies and, by assigning priority to collective identities based

on social classes and/or ideological groups, rather than on membership of the national

community, it reproduced the traditional shortage of civic values in the country.

Admittedly, it may be unfair to blame the major postwar political actors for a state of

affairs which long pre-dated them, since one could argue that class and religious

ideologies simply occupied a ground which had been left void by the inept and corrupted

political elites of the recently unified Italian state. Whatever the case, the pervasive

presence of these factors slowed the spread of any collective action targeting public

goods, and environmentalist action proved no exception to this general pattern. Even the

radical social movements which developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s were in the

beginning quite indifferent to environmental perspectives, being as they were closely tied

to a Marxist-Leninist model of political organization, and largely untouched—despite

significant minorities—by the countercultural styles influential elsewhere, particularly in

the USA. For all these reasons, the time for a breakthrough of environmental

organizations came only in the early 1980s, when the significance of the Left—Right

Encyclopedia of contemporary italian culture 284

divide drastically decreased. Even by the mid-1990s the overall strength of the movement

remained relatively low compared to its northern European and American counterparts.

It is important to recall these peculiarities because otherwise, in its broad lines at least,

the history of the Italian environmental movement does not differ significantly from that

in other countries. Associations with an interest in the preservation of natural and

historical heritage were founded between 1894 (Touring Club Italiano) and 1914 (the

National League for the Protection of Natural Monuments). Their impact did not usually

go beyond the most enlightened sectors of the elites, and this also applies to the early

conservation groups established several decades later, such as Italia Nostra (1955) and

Pro Natura (1959).

In the 1960s and early 1970s, opportunities for environmental action increased.

Scientific publications denouncing environmental risks (in particular the celebrated,

albeit controversial, MIT-Club of Rome report on the ‘Limits to Growth’) fuelled

environmental concerns among the elites and the educated public. The costs to the natural

and urban environment of the unprecedented economic growth experienced by the

country since the late 1950s also became increasingly evident. These developments were

reflected in the creation of new associations which would play a major role in the

following decades: the League for the Protection of Birds (1964) and the Italian branch of

WWF (1966).

From a different perspective, the radicalization of political life and the participatory

attitudes spurred by 1968 created a globally favourable climate for collective action.

Some left-wing groups, in particular radical working class organizations (see

extraparliamentary Left), started to address issues related to the environmental

question, such as industrial pollution inside and outside the factory. Cooperations

developed on this ground between working-class activists and radical scientists; radical

journals were founded (Sapere, Ecologia) and new organizations were created

(Democratic Geology in 1973, Democratic Medicine in 1976). Mobilizations were

promoted by left-wing groups in response to the Seveso accident in 1976. The

foundations for the development of a political ecology perspective, and for regarding

environmental problems as a byproduct of mechanisms of capitalist domination, were

thus laid.

The crisis of the post-1968, class-oriented left-wing movements liberated a significant

mobilization potential which partially turned to the environment when the Italian

government announced its nuclear energy plan in 1975. Opposition to the proposed plants

spread across the country and peaked in Montalto di Castro, North of Rome, between

1977 and 1978. However, the anti-nuclear coalitions were inherently unstable, consisting

as they did of local—and often conservative—residents, extreme left autonomous groups,

action committees set up by concerned members of the scientific community (for

example, the Committee for Popular Control over Energy Policies) and new

environmental groups like the Italian branch of Friends of Earth (created in 1977 under

the auspices—but not the control—of leading figures of the Radical Party).

While the anti-nuclear campaigns were instrumental in setting the conditions for the

growth of an environmental movement, they did not result directly in the emergence of a

network of organizations capable of sustained, coordinated action at the national level.

Barriers created by ideological differences and disagreements regarding strategies proved

still too strong to overcome. Nevertheless, the late 1970s left some permanent legacies in

Entries A–Z 285



that some new organizations were created in addition to those mentioned above. These

included leading animal rights groups LAV (Anti-Vivisection League, established 1977)

and LAC (Anti-Hunting League, 1978), what was to become the most influential political

ecology group in the country, Legambiente (1980), and the right-wing organization

Gruppi di Ricerca Ecologica (Ecological Research Groups, or GRE, 1978). Although

some regarded it, especially in its early years, as a covert attempt by the Communist

Party to hegemonize environmental activism, Legambiente played an important role in

linking local groups all over the country. It also brought together early political ecology

campaigners, mostly from the new Left but also from the traditional Left. As for GRE,

they played no significant role in the environmental movement, mainly due to their links

to the neo-fascist party (MSI), although it remains to be seen whether the momentous

changes in the Italian political system of the early 1990s may not have increased

opportunities for collaboration between right-wing and mainstream environmentalists.

Interest in environmental issues grew dramatically during the 1980s, affecting both

lifestyles (outdoor activities, natural food and interest in the body all boomed) and

political choices (Green lists became a significant presence in the mid-1980s).

Membership of the major environmental groups rose by about 250 per cent between 1983

and 1991, and the number of independent local groups active on small projects was

estimated at 2,000. That Greenpeace opened its Italian branch in 1986 also testifies to the

growing visibility of environmental activism in that period. Many political ecology

groups were also involved in the peace movement which mobilized in 1983 and 1984

against plans to install cruise missiles in the country. Organizational growth and the

declining salience of the Left—Right cleavage rendered the emergence of a national

environmental movement easier during this time, and an occasion for action was

provided by the Chernobyl accident in 1986. Major organizations in the conservationist

and political ecology tradition joined forces and acted as the backbone of a heterogeneous

coalition which eventually obtained consent to a referendum. Held in November, 1987,

the referendum sanctioned the virtual demise of the nuclear energy programme in the

country. Mobilization spread in the following years to invoke the closure of other types

of high-risk factories, including the Montedison-controlled Farmoplant in Tuscany and

Acna in Piedmont.

By contrast, the 1990s started rather inauspiciously as in May 1990 two new

referenda, targeting hunting and the use of pesticides in agriculture, were not validated

due to the low turnout. Later, a number of important campaigns were launched on issues

ranging from high-speed trains and urban traffic to the impact of affluent economies over

the environment in the Third World. Despite securing some media coverage, however,

none of them matched the emotional and political impact of the anti-nuclear

mobilizations of the 1980s.

Nevertheless, it would be wrong to interpret this as a complete withering of

environmental political action. On the one hand, the network of co-operation between

environmental groups stayed in place, and they remained an established presence in

Italian society. If still small by international standards, they represented nonetheless the

largest component of the voluntary sector in Italy (although estimates of their actual size

varied considerably, from 350,000 to 550,000 in the mid-1990s, and up to 1,500,000 if

organizations promoting environment-friendly leisure-time activities, like the Touring

Club or the Alpine Club, are included). The major difference from the previous phases

Encyclopedia of contemporary italian culture 286

was that environmental associations in the 1990s relied overwhelmingly on traditional

pressure group tactics rather than on confrontational protest. They frequently operated as

watchdogs on behalf of the public, regularly monitoring the state of natural resources like

air and water. Their status as a routine source of information and commentary for the

media also facilitated their gradual abandonment of direct action.

One the other hand, the 1990s also witnessed the spread of protest activities, promoted

at neighbourhood or city level by small, independent residents’ action groups. These

targeted any project perceived as threatening the quality of life of the local communities,

from garbage incinerators to new roads, railways, car parks and so on. Protests were

conducted for the most part independently of major organizations, even though the latter

were frequently involved in them. Local actions also sometimes took a distinctive ‘not-

in-my-backyard’ flavour, or linked up with other non-environmental protest activities on

sensitive urban issues such as immigration or law and order. How the established

environmental organizations and these new forms of local action might be able to

develop some systematic co-operation remained a complicated problem with no

immediate solution.

An evaluation of the results of the environmental movement is similarly complex,

even leaving aside its indirect impact on the party system. In terms of formal recognition,

there were undeniably positive results. Environmental organizations came to have a

formal consultative status at the Environment Ministry, and former environmental leaders

were appointed—albeit still occasionally—to senior positions in the government or in

public agencies. However, concrete policy outcomes were only partially achieved.

Important innovations were implemented in several municipalities on matters ranging

from recycling to experiments of time management meant to reduce air pollution.

Similarly significant policy measures in areas such as energy savings were passed, and

the complex of laws regulating environmental matters in Italy became comparable to that

of other Western countries. However, even if one attributed most of the credit for such

innovations to the environmentalists—in all likelihood an overstatement of their effective

impact—their actual implementation has been far less systematic. The well-known

weakness of Italian public administration and the strong influence of vested interests over

policy makers have inevitably contributed to limiting this success.

Further reading

Biorcio, R. and Lodi, G. (eds) (1988) La sfida verde (The Green Challenge), Padua:

Liviana.

Diani, M. (1995) Green Networks: A Structural Analysis of the Italian Environmental

Movement, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Farro, A. (1991) La Lente verde (The Green Frame), Milan: Angeli.

Poggio, A. (1996) Ambientalismo (Environmentalism), Milan: Editrice Bibliografica.

MARIO DIANI

Entries A–Z 287



environmental policy

It took almost thirty years for an autonomous environmental policy to develop in Italy.

Three distinct phases in the evolution of environmental policies can actually be

identified. The first phase lasted approximately from 1966 to 1975, its most important

result being the passing of the air pollution act in 1966, the so called ‘legge anti-smog’.

The second phase started in the mid-1970s and ended about ten years later. In that

decade, systematic regulations were passed providing adequate legal instruments to cope

with major environmental problems. The water pollution act (319/76), also known as

‘legge Merli’, was passed in 1976, while in 1985 the so called ‘legge Galasso’ (431/85)

set new and stricter limitations on the possibility of building in environmentally sensitive

areas. The third phase of environmental policy started with the creation of the Ministry

for the Environment in 1986. The new ministry gave further stimulus to legislative action

and attempted to better co-ordinate activities which had been previously fragmented

between a number of other departments and public agencies. The act which established

the Environmental Ministry also formalized a consultative role for major environmental

organizations.

During the 1980s, policy and institutional innovation also spread at the local level.

Environmental departments (assessorati) were created in most local administrations, and

local issues became a major area of consideration for the formation of environmental

policy. In the late 1990s, the Environmental Agency was established to promote

environmental research, to better circulate relevant information to policy makers and the

public and to monitor high risk plants and other potential sources of environmental

damage.

The timing of the active development of environmental policy in Italy was slow in

comparison to other West European countries, where, for example, environmental

ministries had, in some cases, already been established in the early 1970s. By the late

1990s, however, the Italian legislative and administrative apparatus did not differ

substantially from that of other countries. What still differed was the capacity to

implement environmental policy decisions. On the whole, Italy has failed to anticipate

problems of environmental degradation and has done no more than react to them. Even

the implementation of EEC and, later, EU directives on environmental issues has been

quite slow, even reluctant (by December 1991, Italy had implemented only 59 per cent of

European regulations, although the picture improved over the 1990s). Italian

environmental legislation was also criticized for its lack of unifying principles, for the

enormous number of laws and regulations dealing with environmental problems (over

1,400 according to some 1992 estimates) and for its uneven emphasis, with some areas

(such as waste disposal) being overregulated and others (such as acoustic pollution) still

not properly controlled. These shortcomings have increased the difficulties of the public

administration to mediate between divergent interests and to set clear guidelines for

action.

Further reading

Alexander, D. (1991) ‘Pollution, Policies and Politics: The Italian Environment’, in F. Sabetti and

R. Catanzaro (eds), Italian Politics: A Review, vol. 5, London: Pinter (an analysis of the state of

the Italian environment in the early 1990s and of governmental response to the growing

pollution).

Bulsei, G.L. (1990) Le politiche ambientali (Environmental Policies), Turin: Rosenberg & Sellier.

Lewanski, R. (1997) Governare l’ambiente (Regulating the Environment), Bologna: il Mulino.

MARIO DIANI

Epoca

Modelled closely on the American magazine Life and the French Paris Match, Epoca

began publication in October 1950, edited by Alberto Mondadori. After an initial

lacklustre performance, in 1953 editorship passed to Enzo Biagi, a talented journalist

who was able to assemble an impressive team of collaborators including Cesare

Zavattini, Luigi Barzini Jr, Indro Montanelli and Oreste del Buono. With an elegant,

glossy format featuring spectacular photographs and consciously presented as ‘the

magazine for the Italian family’, by 1955 it had established itself firmly and reached sales

of 500,000. While continuing to focus on current affairs and changing social attitudes, the

magazine also introduced a television column among other novel features and thus soon

overtook all its rivals. For political reasons, Biagi was forced to leave the magazine in

1960 and from then emphasis shifted to travel reportage and well photographed nature

and scientific features. This divulgative role was inevitably undermined by television and

from the mid-1970s sales began to fall. In spite of several attempts to change the format,

the magazine’s fate was sealed and it closed in January 1997.

GINO MOLITERNO

Erba, Luciano

b. 18 September 1922, Milan

University professor, poet and translator

Erba received a degree in letters from the Catholic University of Milan in 1947, where he

later taught French literature while also contributing to various Italian and foreign literary

magazines, among them il verri, Officina, La Fiera letteraria, Botteghe oscure, Poetry

and The Western Review. He began to write in the years following the end of the Second

World War, and is usually situated in the so-called Linea lombarda (Lombard Line), a

group of poets who, borrowing from the tradition Pascoli—Gozzano—Montale, write a

Entries A–Z 289



kind of poetry characterized by concrete images and moral tension but also, as in Erba’s

case, by a subtle allusivity and a balanced irony.

Further reading

Luzzi, G. (1978) ‘La poesia di Luciano Erba da “Il male minore” a “Il Prato più verde”’ (The

Poetry of Luciano Erba from ‘The Lesser Evil’ to The Greenest Field’), Paragone 29 (340):83–

96 (an informative essay covering twenty years of Erba’s earlier poetry).

ENRICO CESARETTI

L’Espresso

One of Italy’s foremost newsmagazines, L’Espresso was founded in October 1955 by

Arrigo Benedetti and Eugenio Scalfari. Originally in large newspaper format but

restyled in 1974 to a small, glossy magazine, it was characterized from the beginning by

an aggressive investigative journalism strongly focussed on DC (and later Socialist Party)

corruption and clientelism. In the 1950s it uncovered major scandals in the health and

housing industries, in 1964 it revealed the attempted coup d’état by General Di Lorenzo

and in 1976 it conducted a strong campaign against the then President of the Republic,

Giovanni Leone, for his alleged involvement in the Lockheed scandal. During the 1970s

and 1980s it critically confronted all the major current issues including terrorism and

strongly supported the campaigns for divorce and abortion. However, from the mid-

1970s onwards it became engaged in fierce competition with Italy’s other major news

magazine, Panorama, a rivalry that increased dramatically in the early 1990s when

Berlusconi, having already taken control of Panorama, attempted to also absorb

L’Espresso but narrowly failed. Since then the two magazines, ever more similar in

format and coverage, are distinguished by and large by their consistent stance pro or

contra Berlusconi.

GINO MOLITERNO

European Union

The European dimension of Italian government is a long-standing factor in the evolution

of the Republic. At critical junctures, European integration has shaped economic and

political dynamics in Italy. By contrast, the Italian contribution to the dynamics of

European integration, although hardly negligible, has been overshadowed by the pivotal

role of other countries, most notably by the Franco—German axis in European affairs.

Encyclopedia of contemporary italian culture 290