Full Description
Since the extensive floods of 1966, inhabitants of Venice's laguna areas have come to share in, and reflect upon, concerns over pressing environmental problems. Evidence of damage caused by industrial pollution has contributed to the need to recover a common culture and establish a sense of continuity with "truly Venetian traditions."
Based on ethnographic and archival data, this in-depth study of the Venetian island of Burano shows how its inhabitants develop their sense of a distinct identity on the basis of their notions of gender, honor and kinship relations, their common memories, their knowledge and love of their environment and their special skills in fishing and lace making.
Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Foreword
Chapter 1. Burano, Venice and The Lagoon
Burano
The Fieldwork
Burano's Population and the Politics of Housing
Proposals for Restoration
Chapter 2. A Sense of History
Burano's Fishermen as Comic Stereotypes in Renaissance Drama
Vincenzo Coronelli's Isolario and Flaminio Corner's Ecclesiastical History
The O-Tai-Tans of the Lagoons
From Foreign Occupation to Internal Colonialism
Three Government Reports
Chapter 3. Religion and Social Change
Chapter 4. Kinship and Residence
Residence Kinship Terminology
Ritual Kinship
The Physical Bases of Kinship
Socialization, Gender and Change
A Concern with Endogamy
Names, Surnames and Nicknames
Chapter 5. Stratification
Chapter 6. Honour and Shame in Mediterranean Anthropology
Some British Anthropological views of Mediterranean Honour
The Notion of Shame: History and Translation
Uses of Vergogna in Contemporary Italian
Chapter 7. Burano's Lace-Making: an Honourable Craft
The Making Present Conditions
The History
Lacemaking from the Sixteenth to the Eighteenth Century
Social Structure and Poverty in Eighteenth Century Burano
From the Nineteenth Century to the Present
The Beginnings of Lace
Social Change and Fathers' Authority
Chapter 8. Devolution from the Grass-roots: Local Interest against Ideology
The Chironomidi
The May 1990 Administrative Elections
Consigli di Quartiere
A Doctor's Duties
Conclusions
Appendix 1: The Venetian Territory and its Population
Appendix 2: Law 16 April 1973. Interventions for the safeguard of Venice
Appendix 3: Census
Bibliography
Index
