Eh, Paesan!: Being Italian in Toronto by Nicholas De Maria Harney (review)

HUMANITIES 307 the adjective Iltalic' might cancel out any such ideological prejudgment, as Gadamer would put it, as 'Italic' was surely a term dear to Mussolini himself, recallIDg the glory that was Rome, one of Fascism's early goals. (2) Why would an up-and-coming ethnic (read, Italian) writer look to someone like Gay Talese as a model- someone not profoundly informed about rus ethnic print culture (see his 1993 New York Times essay) who now bemoans the Mafia image, and yet owes part of rus reputation to the very image of the Mafia with his Honor Thy Father? Or: (3) Who exactly are those ethnic writers who sold out? And are they only those who have published with other presses? As the Renaissance thinkers told us, intellegere and agere are two basic components to any sort of success in what seems to be at times a quagmire of ethnic contention, strife, and pugnacity, only to be cotmtered by accommodation, arrangement, and adjustment. This is something, unforttmately, only one of our conversationalists offers us; the other, instead, sees issues as J a legal matter/ only to end up in 'court.' (ANTHONY JULIAN TAMBURRI) Nicholas De Maria Harney. Eh,PaeSQl1!: Being Italian in Toronto University of Toronto Press. xii, 210. $55.00, $17.95 With the present publication, Nicholas De Maria Harney adds his name to the growing list of scholars studying the phenomenon of Italian-Canadian ethnicity within the Canadian cultural matrix and thereby joins the ranks of established figures such as Robert Harney, Franca Iacovetta, Franc Sturino, Cliiford Jensen, and John Zucchi, to name a few. The intensification of research in this area over the last two decades is a testament to the evolving complexity, sophistication, and importance of the Italian community in Canada. De Maria Harney brings a strong ethnographic methodology to bear on his study of the nearly one-half million citizens of Italian descent living in the metropolitan Toronto area, making it one of the largest such concentrations outside Italy itself. De Maria Harney's primary ethnocultural parameters arethe theories ofBenedictAndersen, Anthony Cohen, Clifford Geertz, and Michael Levin, who concern themselves with notions such as I imagined communities,' 'symbolic constructions,' and'ethnonationalism.' Through this theoretical framework and the empirical data collected on the history and social practices of Toronto's Italian Canadians, the author ,examines the concept of ethnicity and the ethnic community in a polyethnic state and in an increasingly global system of cultural, economic-, and technological change.' In a sense, his task is to identify the elements of uniqueness and complementarity of the 'village' in the 'village' inside the 308 LETTERS IN CANADA 1998 J global village.' De Maria Harney certainly is up to the challenge and succeeds in presenting an articulate, authoritative, and well-documented account of the emergence of a 'distinct society' that defines its distinctiveness as a function of the role it plays in its Canadian habitat. Amalgamating statistical analysis of data culled from Census Canada, the Institute for SocialResearch, the Istituto Centrale di Statistica (Rome), and field work conducted in Toronto as well as in severa] regions of Italy, the author provides an impressive diachronic and synchronic map of the Italian-Canadian phenomenon. In diachronic terms, De Maria Harney traces the immigration pattern of Italians to North America in general, to Canada and Toronto in particular, from the earliest arrivals but focusing on those of this century. With clear and concise expository lines, the author outlines the physical and conceptual construction of the Italian communities and the institutions that represent them both internally, relative to each other, and externally, in relation to the broader Canadian context- in social, economic, and political terms. In this endeavour, he considers many of the more than four hundred social, recreational, educational, and economic groups that Italian-Canadian society comprises. In synchronic terms, De Maria Harney effectivelyargues thefunctioning ofthese associations on the local, regional, and national levels. He also demonstrates the complementary tendencies on the part of these Iculturalloci' towards retaining the identity of the region of origin but also creating more extended 'imagined communities' in which the notion of 'italianita' or Italianness is shaped and given a voice. He notes: 'Within the social...