Managing Existence in Naples Morality, Action and Structure [Hardcover]

A thoughtful account of life in Naples, and how moral questions are addressed in everyday choices.This original account of moral life in Naples reveals how different ethical systems are accommodated within everyday life, while success is measured by satisfying spiritual obligations as well as material gain. It questions traditional assumptions and raises new issues in urban studies.This original account of moral life in Naples reveals how different ethical systems are accommodated within everyday life, while success is measured by satisfying spiritual obligations as well as material gain. It questions traditional assumptions and raises new issues in urban studies.Neapolitan scholar Italo Pardo has produced a thoughtful and original account of the moral life of Naples, where the ethics of family and neighborhood exist in tension with the constraints of church and government. Dr. Pardo shows how different ethical systems are accommodated in the choices of everyday life, while success is measured by satisfying spiritual obligations as well as by material gain. This is one of the very few ethnographic studies of a European city; it questions old assumptions and raises fresh issues in the field of urban studies.1. Issues of anthropological research in urban Europe; 2. Beyond unemployment: work, morality and entrepreneurship; 3. Entrepreneurial morality and ethics among the young: changing social and cultural relations; 4. Acceptance vs discernment: the morals of family, kinship and neighbourhood as resource options; 5. Transgression, control and exchange: the rationality of the ambiguous and the liminal in life and death; 6. The mass diffusion of contacts: redefined power relations, values of representation; 7. The relation of agency to organisation and structure: deconstructed polarizations at the grass roots of democracy. Managing Existence in Naples is a commendable book....a useful text to use in upper level undergraduate and graduate courses. Harley Schreck, Hl³‹