Search

This article concerns the dynamics of domestic space `appropriation' in Italian middle-class working families. The article starts from a background in multidisciplinary literature, mostly in the area of ethnographical and psychological studies, where the concepts of both `ownership' and `territoriality' prove to be inadequate. A dynamic view of space appropriations is chosen instead: starting from `outside appropriations', the presence of marked thresholds is then considered. Secondly, domestic space appropriations within the house are analysed in a purely qualitative way. There are selective and `predominant' appropriations by a single family member and by the whole household; questions of sovereignty and painful `proscriptions' (kingdoms and exiles) arise when specific parts of the house pertain to a given individual. But there are also unstable appropriations which reveal that there are negotiations in progress according to the family's power dynamics. Thus defined, the categories of domestic space also provide a key to understanding the families' relationships.

The paper addresses the issue of cultural descriptions as they are perceived and used within mundane conversation. We analyze a discussion of an Italian family about a future formal occasion (a party) in a foreign country (Austria), with foreign participants, in which they shall produce a typically Italian meal. The analysis shows how cultural descriptions are both a resource and a constraint when they must orient a practical activity which must be publicly acknowledged for its cultural typicality. Discrepancies are highlighted between cultural descriptions and ordinary practices, but it is also shown how culture (or ‘cultural preferences’) gets produced, at a less explicit level, within discursive practices, through turn-taking filtering, sequential architecture and selection of differentiated addressees. The socializing import of the discursive situation for the younger participants is also discussed, with reference to the relevant conversational devices.

Research on children's social cognition has dealt mainly with face to face relations; only a few studies have considered how children understand impersonal aspects of society such as economics. This study involves an investigation of teaching the concepts of work and profit to third-graders. Five instruction units were created and during a one-month period these were presented to five classes at different schools in Rome. A sample of 80 pupils was interviewed before and after teaching aimed at ascertaining their ideas on prices, profit and product distribution. Children's responses were scored on several scales, on which separate ANOVAs (class x sex x repeated measures or class x repeated measures) were carried out. The results show an overall improvement in children's knowledge, with differences that may be related not only to the complexity of the different concept but also to children's initial levels of competence.