Paper short abstract:

One segment of the Roman bourgeoisie (of several) uses country estates to establish their status, but uniquely, in a community of moral values that runs parallel to State-sanctioned dynamics of power.

Paper long abstract:

I examine the dynamics of bourgeois identities in Rome, concentrating on the manner (and reasons why) in which country estates are used to establish status among the so-called "Black" bourgeoisie (composed of descendents of bureaucrats and professionals under the regime of the Papal States, before national unification in 1870). In particular, I argue that their attachment to the "fatherland" (la patria) and their exclusion from conventional power prevents them from playing the status game by deploying standard markers of political or economic power in a highly urbanised context, and so rootedness to a bucolic place becomes a powerful marker of status and identity in post-Unification Rome, largely because country estates and their lifestyles are considered "timeless" in a context where technologies of governance establish official histories and official timelines that exclude this bourgeoisie. This paper is based on several years' research and residence in Rome.