Article,
Emerging Heterogeneities in Italian Customs and Comparison with Nearby Countries
PLOS ONE, 10 (12): e0144643+ (Dec 29, 2015)
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0144643
Abstract
Since its unification, more than a century ago, Italy has experienced strong
social and economical diversities between its southern and northern regions. In
the last decades, Italy has undergone a severe economical and political crisis
reflecting corruption at various levels of social stratification as well as a
poor involvement of its population in the number of elections that occurred.
This might be explained by a lack of confidence, or interest in the country as
a whole, as if the primary social and political focus of its citizens could
still lay at smaller regional scales, possibly evidencing the persistence of
different cultural heritages. In order to shed lights on the possible existence
of such heterogeneities, we perform a statistical-mechanics-driven analysis
focusing on key social quantifiers, namely the evolution of autochthonous
marriages (as family still plays as a fundamental brick in the edification of
social aggregates) and of mixed marriages, namely those involving a
foreign-born and a native (as migrant integration takes place at the collective
level of the host communities), in order to compare the Italian outcomes with
those of nearest EU nations as Spain, France and Germany. Our theoretical
framework, predicting a square-root growth for the number of marriages versus
the density of potential couples, nicely fits data for all considered
countries. However, we find a homogeneous outline in all cases but Italy, the
latter exhibiting two clearly detached square-roots, naturally pertaining to
northern and southern regions, respectively. These findings suggest the
existence of two culturally distinct communities, long-term lasting heritages
of different, well-established cultures.
