Managing Existence in Naples

Neapolitan scholar Italo Pardo has produced a thoughtful and original account of the moral life of Naples where the ethics of family and neighborhood exist in tension with the constraints of church and government. Dr. Pardo shows how different ethical systems are accommodated in the choices of everyday life while success is measured by satisfying spiritual obligations as well as by material gain. This is one of the very few ethnographic studies of a European city; it questions old assumptions and raises fresh issues in the field of urban studies.