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 Eternity tells the story of the gentrification of Monti—once 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.

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.

“A wonderful book—very exciting to read. Herzfeld has selected the extraordinary historic city of Rome to portray a riveting drama of eviction, class identity, neighborhood solidarity, and place attachment in the face of escalating gentrification. Housing shortages and the allure of neoliberal market logic have corrupted city officials and owners alike, resulting in a politics of fear of newcomers, the church, and the state. This ethnographer’s acute grasp of language use and Roman forms of civility produces a rarely seen glimpse of how cultural heritage, real estate interests, and nationalism collide to destroy local residents’ lives and homes. Both scholars in the social sciences and practitioners in historic preservation and urban planning will enjoy this look into the consequences of neoliberal land use practices.”

“Evicted from Eternity demonstrates the distinctive promise of Europeanist anthropology and its relevance for the discipline more generally. Herzfeld’s resolute commitment to a refined local ethnographic purview yields a text that is decisively about ‘Europe.’ It is not merely a superb analysis of the famous Monti district of Rome or a contribution to the ethnographic literature on Italy, but the finest ethnography I know of to examine rigorously how the abstract processes of European integration are manifest in the daily lives of its citizens and, in this particular case, discernible in the transformation of virtually every aspect of their emblematic urban landscape. The text succeeds as a documentary account of contemporary human predicaments, as a moral inquiry into the nature of justice and injustice, and as a passionate narrative imbued with feeling and pathos. Herzfeld has drawn on his formidable scholarly acumen and his vast ethnographic experience to craft an analysis that is truly distinguished. Evicted from Eternity deserves to be acknowledged for what it is: a masterpiece.”