22 WORKSHOP H DOMINATING CULTURE, PERIPHERAL CULTURES AND THE CULTURAL IDENTITY OF REGIONAL SUBSYSTEMS y AMALIA SIGNORELLI A. The theme As far as their cultural characteristics are concerned, regional subsystems very often seem not to be “homogeneous” with the broader economic, institutional and political system in which they are encapsulated; nor do they seem to be homogeneous with each other. But at the same time they are not entirely different from each other, nor from the general system. The nature of these similarities and differences is the central subject of our workshop. Analyses of different kinds can be made: morphological analysis functional analysis genetic analysis structural analysis situational analysis materialistic dialectic analysis mo eooR To have all these approaches represented in our workshop would make it unusually interesting both from a theoretical and from a methodo- logical point of view. In the meanwhile the chairwoman takes it as her duty to ae her own hypothesis, in order to provide a reference point and a framework for the discussion. B. The hypothesis As the title for the workshop already suggests, in the hypothesis I propose that cultural similarities and differences between each regional subsystem and the broader encapsulating system are the by-products of a relationship in which the “core” of the broader system dominates the peripheral areas. By core I mean the classes and groups who have the necessary power to control resources and make decisions. In other words it is this dominance with the connected submission which ptoduce and reproduce differences and similarities. These can by no means be explained as survivals or progressive steps of linear develop- ment.23 Cultures in peripheral areas (or subcultures) today seem to be composed of; a some myths, rites, practices, values and tules, which belong to the traditional culture. But even when purposely renewed, these materials very often seem to have been reduced to folklore (in the worst sense) because they are torn away from their previous context which no longer exists. some, perhaps much, cultural material which comes from urban, central, dominating areas. It seems interesting to point out that knowledge, values, rules, patterns that we meet in peripheral areas, are “homologous” but not “homogeneous” to the central ones, in that they are the same in shape but not in size (e.g. consumption patterns of career patterns or welfare patterns) nor in functional effects (¢,g. the reproduction of clientelism by the use of represen- tative democratic institutions or the reproduction of a kind of caste system bred within the school system). some new and innovative cultural traits which seem to come out both as a reaction against what is described in a. and b., and as the result of efforts to catch and reshape what we described in a. and b. It seems that we have to consider at least four points in order to explain these cultural features of peripheral areas: ae The kind of integration in the general encapsulating system that each regional area experiences at the economic and political level; and how, how far and why this kind of integration affects cultural process. . Cultural policy and cultural politics of what we have called the core of the central system, as far as they are intended to build up or to reshape local cultures. . The role (innovative and/or conservative) of local élites. The history of each peripheral area, whose contacts with the centre began years or even centuries ago. As these contacts affected the rise of culture in the past, it is necessary to know them if we are to understand what culture is today.Copyright © 2003 EBSCO Publishing