| With the acceleration of European integration the changing effect on European identities has been the focus of numerous investigations concentrating on nation-states. What has been overlooked is the effect of this acceleration on those ethnic minorities of Europe that had neither the political nor the economic power to represent a threat to national integrities, and that mediated group identity and cohesion, through time, against national and international political, cultural and economic agendas. The present research focuses on the Arbereshe of Southern Italy. It describes the conditions under which this group retained its identity, and the impact that policies and initiatives for cultural preservation or promotion had on the future trajectories of cultural production and re-production. The discussion focuses on the decades from the late 1950s to the time fieldwork was conducted in 2003-04. This group underwent profound transformations. Migration, education, the abandonment of rural jobs for the advantage of jobs in the service sector changed the way people dwelled in the village and related to the surrounding environment. The persistence of the group's identity and its cohesion in these years represented a symbolic capital with both social and material value used to respond to change. The central position the rural world has had as a source of subsistence was displaced by demographic, economic, and social changes. It has been replaced with immaterial capital in the forms of uniqueness and originality of culture, history and ethnicity. Place, localities, "ruralities," and ethnic groups are central foci in the contemporary definition of European identity in contraposition to the normalizing global context. |
