Cultural attitudes to understand Italian culture

Cultural attitudes to understand Italian culture

Cultural attitudes to understand Italian culture

Starting from a work by the Faro Foundation entitled “Dimmi Italia”, the main idea of cultural attitudes includes concepts for which we must refer to norms, rules and customs that are repeated in the Italian social space. These attitudes can be seen as a set of rules that harmonize our society. The words of understanding of the Italian context can be the local dimension, the family, the law, politics and spare time.

In observing the country there is a great discrepancy between the regions of North and South, between cities and the province. This situation has given rise to a strong propensity for “parochialism” which mean a form of great attachment to one's own city or town with the defense of one's own customs and habits often in rivalry with other neighboring centers.

Using the proverb "Wife and oxen from your own countries" we can underline the concept that "women" as well as "business" should ideally belong and adhere to the area in which you live. Unfortunately, this proverb gives a good idea of ​​the distrust that has always existed among Italians from different regions. Although it has become a united country, Italy is made up of many small countries between them, many “small Italy”. The characteristics of the Italian landscape and history have greatly influenced the populations of the various regions of the country.

For example, taking the case of the Italian way of cooking at the table, we see how many regional gastronomic cultures exist in the country. The same climate differences have often been a cause of social and cultural distance in the past between the inhabitants of the north, who live in the fog with a cold winter, while the inhabitants of the South are used to a mild climate almost all year round. However, this situation has changed a lot with the global warming, greatly reducing these temperature differences but on the symbolic level in term of collective imagination it has played an important role in shaping the identities of people from distant contexts.

In the linguistic field, we see very well how the Italian language cohabit very well as the many dialects and their accents that characterize the location in Italy.

In seeing the Italian family closely, we see how the family is the original nucleus of Italian society, in which the Italian spends much of his time, first usually protected by his parents and then with the greatest age he theoretically becomes an autonomous and independent subject. This Italian family until the 1950s was composed of many children, with parents and grandparents living under the same house. This situation has been archived for several decades but grandparents continue to be an irreplaceable presence in the daily life of millions of Italians. The main moment for the family remains dinner as a unique moment in everyday life to find everyone together to eat and talk. This dinner ritual represents the cement to maintain the unity of the family unit. In this way we can easily see how the bond between family and food is easily accomplished by linking the pleasure of being with other family members together with the practice of good food.

In this way one adheres to a "satisfied" cultural dimension to put it in the Hofstede words with the double presence of the united family and food.

During the day, the Italian family finds itself divided because their children have to go to school while their parents have to go to work. Unfortunately, in Italy, a substantial number of mother remains at home because of the lack of work opportunities. In other social situation, it is always the mother who takes care of the house and children during the time cuts of the day. Sometimes, this family hire an external person in order to receive some help: to look after your children or to clean the house.

Usually the father in the Italian family is often away from home all day and often the weekend becomes the only period for spending more time together going to grandparents or taking a trip out of town.

In today's context, many families have changed because of the high number of divorces and the presence of the so-called "partnership families", which mean married couples with children already separate and subsequently create new relationship with other companions. From these marriages children are born will be called children of de facto couples. Even if the marriage ends, the bond between children and parents remains very strong and every parent will try to spend as much time as possible with their child, especially during holidays like Christmas or Easter. In fact, Italians usually like to celebrate family holidays, especially religious holidays by eating the Christmas “Panettone” or the Easter “Colomba”.

If we talk about the Italian legal world, the idea of ​​the difficulty of understanding its laws in their abundance prevails and then often translates as complicated bureaucracy and often very long processes.

However, the Italian society in its complexity remains under the rule of the law: for example, if I want to get married, I will have to follow the indications provided by the law, to send a child to school there are laws to respect, to drive, to work, to vote, to became a deputy or to take the dog for a walk. Laws can appear as behavior regulations or as a legal text.

From the legal world it is easy to move into the world of politics in Italy, which can be experienced in a passionate, bored, engaging or rejecting way. This is a topic that unites or divides people, but if it is done with honesty and conviction, as many Italian would like to see, it creates the foundation for a strong State. Politics is made up of political parties that can be center-left or center-right. These parties all want to win or participate in elections. The center-left orientation should be sensitive to progressive positions linked to the principle of equality of persons, while the center-right orientation takes advantage of conservative positions.

The most felt political issues in Italy are related to the reduction or increase taxes. Furthermore, it often focuses on the alleged morality of the politician, how the city is managed, how to give work to young people and the unemployed, how to make the Italian economy go in the European and world context, how to guarantee medical care and justice. Also the corruption of the political class in its use of public money is much discussed. Processes towards politicians are often a source of discussion or atrocity among people with divergent political orientations.

On television, in bars, political topic are still widespread themes in the social life of the country despite the great disaffection of the last decades.

Unfortunately in Italy we have the habit of cheering for a party or a politician and this does not allow a serious confrontation in term of ideas. This behavior as a political fan has the consequence of having very loud tones during the discussions. In Italian social life we ​​find the same political currents present in television, radio or newspapers that call themselves left or right, televisions, and also the way of seeing and thinking about the world represent a big step between Italians. These divisions are found even within the same families where parents can vote in a very different way than their children.

In this very divided political framework inside the country, the President of the Republic is the guarantee and "super partes" figure with this spirit of independence from the parties and also is the “guarantee” of respect of the Constitution.

Another key dimension in Italy is to understand the dimensions of football with its national League called Serie A and B and with the final goal of the championship for the winner is the “Scudetto” or salvation for the teams that will avoid relegation. Many Italian men, even though now more and more women are interested in football, live a form of excess enthusiasm when talking about their soccer team. This passion was born when he was a child playing soccer in the soccer field near his home, at school, at the oratory or at the sports field.

Football matches have now started since Saturday until Monday evening.  Sunday remain the queen day of football ideally and historically speaking in terms of the collective Italian imagination. Sunday is punctuated in the afternoon with matches at the stadium and in the evening with various sports programs focused on post-match comments and interviews. On Monday mornings, many men talk about the weekend games, all showing they are great football experts, they are all coaches and can tell you what needs to be done and what their favorite team needs. In some bars in your city or town it is always possible to watch the games on live on television for those who do not have a season ticket or a satellite TV.

The concept of "team of the heart" is very strong in Italy, where you support your team uncritically and remain committed to your team beyond its results and performance on the field. When there are international matches and national team matches, many people prefer not to make other commitments during the games. Football as a cultural phenomenon has represented for many men the dream of becoming a soccer champion and this dream continues to exist during soccer games between friends or when you continue to play football despite the years.


The soccer game between friends exemplifies the importance of friendship in the Italian context as an example. Every moment is good to be in friend’s company; it is often possible to see groups of friends at the bar who only see each other to have a coffee. With friends you go out, talk and have fun. Sometimes friends can help in times of need. In the Italian cultural context, we often speak of "making friends" and the word “friend” is also widely used to define simple acquaintances.

To communicate with their friends, Italians tend to call or chat with them as a way to maintain contact. Today social networks are the main road for many people to maintain these bonds of friendship. However, the whole social network has decreased the physical presence between friends, making people all more alone despite the many virtual friends on social networks.

In other Italians the need for physical contact remains very strong guarding an old habit in which it is important to touch oneself, to embrace when one meets.

Making friends in Italy for a person with a minimum propensity to human contact will not be difficult because many people are accustomed to getting to know new people and have the practice of conversing with strangers especially in places like bars, train stations, gyms, trains, shopping malls, doctors or workplaces. From a simple knowledge a friendship can be born. The concept of "friend of the heart" is reserved only for a particular person and is the person with whom one trusts in everything and tells about every little problem or what happened to us during the day.

In friendship relations, people often ask for "favors" from a friend. In fact, Italians often use friendship also to ask the people inside institutions for pleasures to solve a folder, for example. Certainly this practice is not good, but many Italians, faced with the slowness of bureaucracy, use these means to speed up the folders.

Even the Italian literary and musical tradition has highlighted the concept of friendship as an important element in the life of each of us. The betrayal of a friend is experienced as an almost unpardonable offense and it hurts a great deal. The betrayal of a friend's friendship can hurt almost like the feeling of non-gratitude on the part of the children towards their parents. We need to keep in mind that the most intense love in Italy remains that for the children. In fact, Italians are willing to sacrifice themselves for their children, make sacrifices and give everything for their happiness.

In very briefly, these are some cultural attitudes factors useful for understanding the culture of Italians without any intention to offer prescriptive view in this huge phenomena which is the Italian culture.

Bibliography

Dimmi l'Italia. Fondazione Il Faro di Susanna Agnelli. Roma, gen