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Using a natural experiment, we find that in provinces where Turkey’s Islamic Justice and Development Party (AKP) just won the election in 2004, women, including those who are weakly religious or non-religious, now veil far more than in provinces in which AKP just lost, the more so the poorer they are. This effect, as we predict, does not occur for praying regularly which is more costly and harder to observe practice. We argue that veiling is higher in AKP provinces not only because of a generic aim to conform to the stricter mores fostered by the victorious party. We find that those who veil, particularly those in AKP provinces who are not pious, are more politically active than those who do not veil. This may be an indication that veiling could partly be a strategic response to policies, which favour those who are or appear pious. Our study suggests that observable religious practices may have their independent dynamics driven by the pursuit of instrumental goals. Our results also suggest that parties with a religious ideology have an advantage over their secular counterparts in solving the clientelistic information problem, for they can rely on religious symbols for screening and signalling.

The basic theoretical question – which will provide a regulative idea around which the analysis presented in this book will be organized – can be stated as follows: to what extent can educational behaviour be represented as a product of intentional choice or, conversely, to what extent is it the result of processes which, in one way or another, minimize the scope for a socially meaningful choice at the individual level? In this chapter I shall outline three major views of the individual agent, which will help in elaborating this question. According to two views, the individual agents are essentially inactive, since they are seen either as constrained by a lack of relevant alternatives or as pushed from behind by causal factors that escape their awareness; whereas in the third view they are regarded as capable of purposive action and of weighing the available alternatives with respect to some future reward. The two former views pertain to the realm of causality, the latter to intentionality. These three approaches have all been applied, often in mutual disregard or opposition, to educational choices as well as to many other choices of social relevance. They raise a great number of problems and are discussed in an equally wide field of literature. In the exposition that follows, therefore, I shall have to be selective and rely partially on the work of others who have already simplified the terms of a complex debate.

The article assesses the effects, direct and indirect, intended and unintended, of the 1993 national electoral reform and the results of the 1994 general elections in Italy. It shows that the new system is not an eccentric compromise, and that those who forecast either its unworkability or its evil consequences were mistaken. However, in evaluating the success of the reform with respect to the ambitions which were held for it, it concludes that the reform was a predictable failure. The article then explores the role played by the electoral reform in the unexpected electoral success of the Polo della Liberta, the emergence of Forza Italia, and the ability of Berlusconi to strike a compromise with two such different parties as La Lega and the AN.

There is anecdotal evidence that since the late 20th century young, educated, and urban Muslim women veil more frequently and strictly. Does this imply that the classical sociological theories of religion, which predict that modernization should cause a decrease in religious behaviours, do not apply to Islam? We investigate this question using structural equation modelling to analyse three datasets, one from Turkey, one covering 25 Muslim countries, and one from Belgium where Muslims are a minority. We find that averagely religious women conform to the classical theories’ predictions. But among highly religious women the modernizing forces—education, occupation and higher income, urban living, and contacts with non-Muslims—increase veiling. We conjecture that for highly religious women modernizing factors raise the risk and temptation in women's environments that imperil their reputation for modesty: veiling would then be a strategic response, a form either of commitment to prevent the breach of religious norms or of signalling women’s piety to their communities. Our findings have implications for cultural policy and Muslim integration in Europe.

My attention to gossip as a notion worthy of reflection was attracted by a trivial detail: the English etymology of gossip isgod-sib, godfather, or, generally, god parent, ‘denoting—says the English Oxford Dictionary—the spiritual affinity of the baptized and their sponsor’. This intriguing origin alludes to gossip as the performing of an initiation ritual, the creation of an exclusive bond; above all, it bears an uncanny association with the mafia which happens to have been the topic of my research for sometime. I suppose I could have interpretedgod-sibthrough the obvious gender bias as deriving from godmother rather than from godfather; this tallies with the Italiancomareor the Frenchcommèrewhich can also denote a gossip. But I did not think of this possibility at first. Instead, carried away by linguistic speculation, I went to check the etymology of the main Italian word for gossip,pettegolezzo. I was not a little surprised to find that the word comes from a rather less inspiring source. It comes frompeto, to fart. In some northern Italian dialects, venetian, piedmontese and emilian, a common expression, ‘contar tutti i peti’, ‘to tell every fart’, refers to the habit of reporting and speculating about trivial events.

My course, which comprised 4 lectures, was an introduction to the principles of signalling theory, its history, and its common misconceptions. I also presented two applications: to trust decisions and to interpersonal violence. Herewith, I give a brief overview of the theory and of the range of its applications, without going into the details of the two particular applications which I presented in my lectures. Signalling theory (ST) tackles a fundamental problem of communication: how can an a...

We know much and understand little about the Italian mafia. The amount of factual information surrounding it—whatever that ‘it’ may be—is disproportionately and dramatically greater than our theoretical understanding of this elusive entity. We do not know everything it might be interesting to know, of course, yet in the monumental quantity of scholarly and judicial sources devoted to the mafia, we can find far more information than scholars have been able to make good, cogent sense of. Facts and anecdotes are not only numerous, but of the most diverse and seemingly irreconcilable kinds, and theoretical and analytical shortcomings have made it impossible to accomplish two fundamental and related operations: first, to discriminate between relevant information and contingent ethnographical detail, and between reliable and distorted evidence; second, to find a coherent thread linking whatever disparate pieces of information remain after the first screening operation.