Faced with having to wait until they are the age of their grandparents to become senior, many of Italy’s best and brightest leave. Universities in America and Britain are full of Italian academics too ambitious to sit around for decades to get tenure in Italy. International bureaucracies such as the World Bank, IMF and OECD are replete with Italians wielding PhDs. Brussels is another escape hatch: Italy is a great provider of dedicated Eurocrats. Perhaps the single most damning indicator of Italy’s current economic health is that it is the only net exporter of graduates among rich European countries, something more commonly associated with developing countries than with developed ones…Many of Italy’s graduates leave to escape the system of raccomandazioni, or connections (often through families), that rules the labour market. Examples of such practices can be found in every country, but Italy is different for two reasons: raccomandazioni are ubiquitous and rarely questioned. It might be tempting to ascribe this preference for connections over qualifications to what Edward Banfield, an American sociologist, called “amoral familism”. In a book on poverty in southern Italy, “The Moral Basis of a Backward Society”, published in 1958 but still controversial today, Banfield argued that Italian family bonds are so tight that they prevent people from coming together to create outcomes that benefit a larger number. The thesis was intended as an analysis of a single village but has often been read as a condemnation of an entire nation. (Read more.)

More than 60 years after publication, the idea of amoral familism remains in intellectual currency. That is a rare thing in the social sciences.

Those with subscriptions to Publius and those at libraries that subscribe to JSTOR and Oxford journals can view it by clicking here.

Full citation: Kimberly Hendrickson, “Edward Banfield On the promise of Politics and the Limits of Federalism,” Publius, vol. 34, issue 4, Fall 2004, pp. 139-152.

Edward C. Banfield, “Policy Science as Metaphysical Madness,” in Robert C. Goldwin, ed., Statesmanship and Bureaucracy (Washington: American Enterprise Institute, 1977), pp. 1-35.

Edward C. Banfield, “The Zoning of Enterprise,” Cato Journal, vol. 2, no. 2, Aut. 1982, pp. 339-349.

“The Pursuit of Happiness: Then and Now: A Conversation with Edward Banfield, Allan Bloom, and Charles Murray,” Public Opinion, May/June 1988, pp. 41-44.

For a full list of Edward C. Banfield’s articles, see James Q. Wilson, “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court: A Biography,” Charles R. Kesler, ed., Edward C. Banfield: An Appreciation (Claremont, CA: Henry Salvatori Center for the Study of Individual Freedom in the Modern World, 2002), pp. 31-80.

Edward C. Banfield, “Growing Problem,” (Chicago, IL: American Foundation for Continuing Education, 1959).

Edward C. Banfield, “The Case of the Blighted City,” (Chicago, IL: American Foundation for Continuing Education, 1959).

Edward C. Banfield Collection, City Planning and Landscape Architecture Collection, University of Illinois, Champagne-Urbana. Repository of Edward C. Banfield, ed., Reports on American Cities, (Center for Urban Studies at MIT and Harvard: 1960-1963).

Anthony G. White, Edward C. Banfield: Bibliography of a Conservative Urbanologist (Monticello, Ill.: Council of Planning Librarians, 1975)

“Bibliography,” in Charles R. Kesler, ed., Edward C. Banfield: An Appreciation (Claremont, CA: Henry Salvatori Center for the Study of Individual Freedom in the Modern World, 2002), pp. 123-136.

Source: Christopher DeMuth

In late 1977, Stephen Smith, a journalist, interviewed Edward C. Banfield and many persons who knew him, for an article intended for Esquire magazine.  Smith kindly gave the tapes of his interviews to the Banfield family. Below are selections from these tapes. These audio files (MP3 format) are quite large and require a high speed Internet connection to access them.

Recording #1 (32+ minutes/35 megabytes): With the family dog, Sashi, at his side, ECB speaks of his farm, his childhood, neighbors, early employment, how he ended up attending U Chicago and studying planning and cities, Rexford G. Tugwell, Martin Meyerson, James Q. Wilson, and his first books.

Recording #27 (22+ minutes; 18 megabytes): Topics include Harvard colleagues, problems America may face (hedonism, loss of virtue, nihilism), liberalism as theory and policy, human nature, “Policy Science as Metaphysical Madness,” free markets, his desire to research new topics, his regrets, and U Penn and Bonnie Bluestein (a student who disrupted his classes at both Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania).