What's at Issue: Italian Social Classes

Social classes

What's 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 1960's - 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