The South Italian Family Revisited

Abstract

Piecing together evidence from the historian, the archivist, the political scientist, and the ethnographer, Dr. Moss, in the C.S.A.S. Distinguished Lecture, describes the changing southern Italian family. In this brief essay he describes the traditional family as one adapted to a medieval feudal society that must now face the task of adjusting to an urban and industrialized society. The question of the survival of the unit is left unaswered but the reader is left with a real understanding of the dynamics of family life in South Italy; both yesterday and today.