Social classesWhats at Issue: Italian Social Classes Do social classes in Italy exist? You bet they do. Just like in most developed countries, social classes exist whether they perceive so or not. Many people in different countries might believe that there is no separation of people, or that everybody lives equally and together. But those people are fooling themselves. If a person sees someone with less than they do, that person notices that, and inside that person knows that he or she is higher up on the chart if you will.
Although it seems that most all, if not all, countries have social classes, there are arguments as to how these classes are divided and as to who falls under what category. People also argue as to how these classes came about or why nobody puts a stop to them. I hope that after more reading and knowing what others think about the situation, I could hopefully understand the basis of the system of classes in Italy. One view of the situation is that the only real classes in Italy are immigrants and Italians themselves. There is the distinctive status of race in marking others as outsiders. It seems that even people who are nice and easy-going have started formulating boundaries and lines that mark off who belongs with them and who does not.
Examples of these boundaries are class, religion, nationality, ethnicity, and last but certainly not least, race. “http://www. louisville. edu/~mcbell03/annotatedbib. html”Basically, according to this, there are only two classes in Italy: Italians and anybody who is not Italian. Prejudice is the root of the social classes in Italy.
Since many people have different definitions of prejudice, they go on to define what they think prejudice is. Prejudice is stereotyping, thinking ill of others without justification, and rigidity. “http://www. louisville. edu/~mcbell03/annotatedbib. html” We do this everyday.
Everybody in this world can look at somebody not like himself or herself, and think either that you are better or just that that person is different so they do not deserve as much as us. Whatever increases the likelihood of categorizing others as belonging to a group other than ones own increases the likelihood of hostility toward them. “http://www. louisville. edu/~mcbell03/annotatedbib. html” Others view that the situation in Italy concerning their social classes is a crisis and needs to be tended to immediately.
A lot of time and effort had been put in to this reasoning and it definitely shows. They believe that this crisis in Italy is linked with at least five ranges of phenomena: 1) The dualism of a society split in two parts roughly corresponding to the geographical divisions of the country in to North and South this is true for several points of view; 2) Certain features of the power system and social stratification that derive from the very early days of a united Italy, which took for granted the social structures underdevelopment; 3) The nature and pace of development in the twenty year period that ended with the early 1960s this was fairly slow at first but soon became a stampede; 4) The prevailing value systems and their evolution; 5) The actual structure of the capitalist system and the way in which capital accumulates. “http://www. louisville. edu/~mcbell03/annotatedbib. html”All of those factors or phenomena helped to mold the social structure in to what it is now.
They have developed a model that tries to depict what the social structure of Italy actually is. They say there are two parts to this. There is the horizontal structure and the vertical structure. Horizontal structures are general divisions of society in to different strata, identified primarily in terms of their relationship to the means of production and certain other factors. Basically that means it is determined by what you do for a living.
Vertical structures are the way the country belongs or fails to belong to the different productive sectors of Italian society: agriculture, industrial, services, inactive or marginally active. “http://www. louisville. edu/~mcbell03/annotatedbib. html” Vertical structures lead to imbalances in distribution of income.
Which obviously is what cause people to be upset and makes this a crisis. But they state that Italian society was split in two from the outset and was never able to free itself from this dualism. It seems that this society no longer shows any interest in its own future. There are no more concerns for values, work, or social life.
Another view is that there are basically just two classes in Italy: the working class and the non-working class. You have the workers and the people that have the workers do the work for them. However, this person believes that the working class should have much more power than they do. Actually he seems to think they do have a lot of power, they just do not know they do. And if they did know, they would not know how to use it.
They do use this power every time that there is a workers strike. If they o on strike, there is nobody to do the work. If no work is being done, then nobody makes any money. By going on strike, the workers could basically shut everything down if they wanted to. Throughout the years the working class has changed.
It has grown in to a gigantic system. A long time ago, there were not as many jobs and there were not as many people. Now, with technology like it is, we are always coming up with new things and everybody is expanding. So as the non-workers seem to stay the same, the workers are growing in numbers. “http://www. louisville.
edu/~mcbell03/annotatedbib. html” The only conclusion that I can come up with is that there is no conclusion. Everybody has there own idea of the basis for the Italian social system. They have similarities but they also have major differences.
I do not know if there will ever be one distinct social structure in Italy. Society is still very much divided into the three traditional estates: those who pray (the church), those who fight (the nobility), and those who work (everyone else). The first estate, the church, is the most powerful institution in France after the monarchy. It owns a third of the property and probably collects about 40% of the revenue. Resentment toward the church for its wealth and corruption should come as no surprise, especially as is legally exempt from taxes — although this does not mean that the clergy were not sometimes persuaded to make a “gift” to the crown during wartime or other fiscal crisis.
(Eventually these “gifts” came to be quite customary. ) consumption habitsParmigiano Reggiano, one of the most famous traditional Italian cheeses in the world, has seen its exports raise also in year 2000: in the past ten years the volume has almost tripled, and in the last year the increase was also significant, especially in Japan, Spain, Denmark, Greece, Austria and United States. In Italy Parmigiano Reggiano continues to be the ‘king of cheeses’, the most sold in the so-called ‘hard cheese market’, with a share of more than 40% on the volume total. The results of the so-called ‘punte pellicolate’ are indicative of Italians’ consumption habits. These are the pieces of cheese which are cut and wrapped in a plastic film and placed on the gastronomy sector of supermarkets.
They represent almost half of total sales. This type has taken on, in time, a strategic position, with the ease and speed of the self-service formula and at the same time the experience of greater freshness, an image of genuineness that come from its position in the ‘fresh bench’, and which the consumer takes on almost a s a justification for ‘not wanting to queue up’ and therefore saving time. On the other hand the price of the product thus packaged is actually cheaper than the price of the product sliced there and then, during ‘assisted sales’. Even the segment of the grated Parmigiano Reggiano, despite a price which is decidedly above higher than average, shows a constantly increasing trend. The Parmigiano Reggiano, in any case, remains a market leader both in assisted sales than in the packaged segment.
