Venetian Island

Lidia D. Sciama (1932-2024) was a former Director of the Centre for Cross-Cultural Research on Women, University of Oxford, where she was a Research Associate.

“…an absorbing study…[that] opens up fascinating potential for comparative analysis.”  ·  JRAI"…a significant contribution to the anthropology of the lagoon, previously not studied in English-language anthropology. The careful and fascinating account of lace-making is also an important contribution to the study of craft and skill, particularly gendered skill that remains underdeveloped in the English-language anthropology of Italy and indeed of Europe. More broadly, this book successfully offers a poignant portrait of a tiny community that is at once proud of its unique skills and achievements, and dismayed and humiliated by its continuing exclusion from the wealth and power of the city, with "a deep-rooted sense of [its] own marginality"   ·  H-Environment"The work has qualities that could make it a model for anthropologists dissatisfied with the attempt to create an 'urban anthropology' but unwilling to continue the traditional obsession with remote communities."   ·  Michael Herzfeld, Harvard University

• List of IllustrationsAcknowledgementsForewordChapter 1. Burano, Venice and The LagoonBuranoThe FieldworkBurano’s Population and the Politics of HousingProposals for RestorationChapter 2. A Sense of HistoryBurano’s Fishermen as Comic Stereotypes in Renaissance DramaVincenzo Coronelli’s Isolario and Flaminio Corner’s Ecclesiastical HistoryThe O-Tai-Tans of the LagoonsFrom Foreign Occupation to Internal ColonialismThree Government ReportsChapter 3. Religion and Social ChangeChapter 4. Kinship and ResidenceResidence Kinship TerminologyRitual KinshipThe Physical Bases of KinshipSocialization, Gender and ChangeA Concern with EndogamyNames, Surnames and NicknamesChapter 5. StratificationChapter 6. Honour and Shame in Mediterranean AnthropologySome British Anthropological views of Mediterranean HonourThe Notion of Shame: History and TranslationUses of Vergogna in Contemporary ItalianChapter 7. Burano’s Lace-Making: an Honourable CraftThe Making Present ConditionsThe HistoryLacemaking from the Sixteenth to the Eighteenth CenturySocial Structure and Poverty in Eighteenth Century BuranoFrom the Nineteenth Century to the PresentThe Beginnings of LaceSocial Change and Fathers’ AuthorityChapter 8. Devolution from the Grass-roots: Local Interest against IdeologyThe ChironomidiThe May 1990 Administrative ElectionsConsigli di QuartiereA Doctor’s DutiesConclusionsAppendix 1: The Venetian Territory and its PopulationAppendix 2: Law 16 April 1973. Interventions for the safeguard of VeniceAppendix 3: CensusBibliographyIndex