Volume 25, Issue 1

The expansion process of a Western multinational corporation in India is investigated using ethnographic tools. In particular the paper deals with the processes of knowledge appropriation enacted by the Indian workforce employed at the Research & Development Center in Bangalore. Young Indian professionals in the early stages of their scientific or corporate careers seem to take advantage of the investments that the corporation makes in the competitive Indian industrial district, by frequently changing job and finding new positions. The underlying strategy is that of subtracting competences and applied knowledge from the corporation in order to appropriate them and then reinvest them locally and more profitably. Working for a multinational corporation is investigated in its material and metaphorical dimensions, demonstrating the methodological shift required to analyze a very large productive organization through the eyes of its employees. One consequence of scaling down in the ethnographic analysis is that the family is introduced as an economic actor contributing to shaping decisions and public policies.

The dowry system originated in South Asia and the new patterns of household formation among Indian migrant minorities have been debated in the international literature, particularly in the UK. However, less attention has been paid to the pre-marital bargaining strategies used in the most recent Punjabi immigration to Italy (to date the largest Indian Diaspora in Europe) and to how a certain idea of kinship and a cultural code of spousal/parental relations are enacted through gift, exchange and favor. This article explores the “marriage market” among youth of Punjabi descent in Italy (between first and second immigrant generations), investigating the bride-groom selection procedures and the economic transactions which endorse a wedding agreement. Reports of ethnographic research just concluded in the northern rural districts of Bergamo and Brescia indicate that dissonant subjective narratives give voice to family and community conflicts across genders and ages in setting up new domestic groups, capturing the shifting local milieu after the economic crisis. Using an intersectional perspective, which highlights diversity in the Italian Punjabi community (with regard to class, caste and faith), we ascertain how categories of social difference are reproduced, contested and transformed throughout wedlock, and see how a traditional tempered endogamy has long become transnational and partly disrupted. Analyzing how young Indian Italians selectively resort to discourses about love/convenience, right/duty, control/autonomy, we will consider whether and how personal agencies may navigate hierarchical structures such as patriarchy, social inequality and capitalist development.

The article looks at an analysis of trust issues among Soka Gakkai members in Italy. The organization is made up of official members and neophytes, who interact on a daily basis in an informal environment, with a high degree of intimacy and familiarity. Trust among members can be considered a core issue, and is seen as being composed of an instrumental element. This paper deals with how this component influences relationships between members in terms of economic practices and mutual assistance. Starting from the assumption that Soka Gakkai affiliates are able to manipulate interactions in order to achieve goals which may not strictly comply with the aims of the organization itself, the article makes clear how the confidence created by the shared religious experience fosters frequent economic transactions, work affiliations and general economic support.

Beginning with an outline of internal migration in Italy between the 1950s and the 1970s, the article aims to articulate a critical reflection on the role played by social capital in the development of Italian small firms. These issues are explored through an ethno-historical analysis of the experiences of a group of migrants from Tramonti, a little town in Southern Italy, whose success in the restaurant business provides the case study at the core of the paper. Since the 1950s, thousands of people have moved from Tramonti to Northern Italy, and many of them have joined the business of pizza restaurants. Although migration from this little town is just a small part of the substantial internal migration which took place in Italy in the second half of the 20th century, this case study allows us to explore some interesting questions pertaining to the study of both migration and small firms. After providing a brief historical description of the migration from Tramonti, the article attempts to explain and understand the success of this group of migrants by focusing on the key factor represented by social capital, while also offering a critical approach to the concept of social capital itself. This historical analysis shows how migratory chains consisting of family, kin and community ties have been transformed into strong social capital of prime importance to the business strategies of the Tramonti pizza-makers. This particular social capital was marked by strong family ties and values and worked through a “segmentary” logic of solidarity and fission. Indeed, this “entrepreneurial familism” was the main factor behind the success of the pizza makers (pizzaioli). The case study suggests, then, that familism is not necessarily an obstacle to economic improvement; instead, it is an essential component of the social capital, it can propel business success if it operates within the right social-economic context, like that of Northern Italy between the 1950s and 1970s.

It would appear that the two simple dichotomies concerning the topics discussed in this article have been rejected in the last thirty years. The first is the assumption that preindustrial households were units of production, while industrial (urbanized and nuclear) households are mainly units of consumption. The second is the idea that the family enterprise, wrongly assumed to be an anachronistic form of the organization of production, should have played a marginal role in modern capitalism. The first dichotomy is briefly discussed by considering Parsonian and Weberian approaches that supported this view and its critique; the second is analyzed by looking at the shifting notion of industrial capitalism, from mass production to a less standardized and more flexible way of producing commodities in small firms. It will be argued that familism can still be regarded as a useful concept if deprived of its ideological connotation that can be traced back to Banfield’s questionable definition dating from the 1950s. Familism is the “missing link” between entrepreneurship and family enterprise. A case study in support of this view is presented by drawing on fieldwork research carried out in the Italian region of Lombardy.

In this article I will pursue two goals: the first is to outline how the family works as a metaphor in public discourses on corruption; the second is to consider some aspects in social anthropology that have influenced the creation of theoretical paradigms on corruption through the analytical filter of kinship. The final idea of this article is that the metaphor of the family, although not new in the context of corruption, serves to create cognitive schemas of reference that simplify and banalise the debate on corruption, by diverting attention from its true nature. The persistence of the importance of the metaphor of “I have a family” may imply new forms and meanings of corruption in Italy, including the importance of the mechanisms of social exchange, the practice of building symbolic relationships and the change in social roles and power within these dynamics and transactions.

This article ethnographically explores the consumption practices and strategies of Sarajevan households, framing them in the economic and socio-cultural dynamics that affected family life following the war and post socialist transformation. Displacement and the collapse of the socialist economic system led to Sarajevans suffering downward socio-economic mobility and widespread mistrust of the world outside. Despite the material issues that could be moral justification for the consumption strategies driven by strict necessity and familism, this article will consider how (humanitarian and interpersonal) donations and credits are used to convey a sort of symbolic reappropriation of the home and to strive to reposition the household’s socio-economic status. Ultimately the article takes into account how these consumption strategies reshape social relations within and outside the family in the peculiar conjuncture of post-war neoliberalism

Sport in the modern age is both politics and business. In a combined world of politics, business, hatred, jealousy and boastfulness, in which each person aims to achieve his objective while “disregarding all the rules,” as Orwell describes, public relations are a valuable strategic and tactical weapon. Success is not measured on the sports field alone, but in the newspaper headlines, on the television and the computer screens and in the bank account. The motto once proposed by Baron Pierre de Coubertin-“Citius, Altius, Fortius” (faster, higher, stronger)-is slowly clearing the way for a new, more updated motto: “Faster, higher, stronger, bigger (business) and especially-more PR.”

The paper submits a criticism of the standard formulation of Wittgenstein’s rule-following paradox. According to the standard formulation, influenced by Kripke, the paradox invites us to consider what mental or behavioral items could constitute meaning. The author proposes instead an enactivist understanding of the paradox. On this account there is no essential gap between mental items and behavioral patterns such that the paradox enforces a choice between meaning being constituted either internally ‘in mind,’ or externally ‘in behavior.’ The paper begins with an introduction to the paradox and then presents arguments against standard solutions. It ends with the enactivist proposal, admitting that although much more needs to be said before it can be established as a full-fledged alternative, it nonetheless holds some promise both for revising our understanding of the paradox and for the formulation of a novel solution.