The Napoli Way: An Interview with Dario Ciccarelli, Urban Biocultural Diversity Activist

A city of resilient “tribes” offers a lesson on how to preserve urban biocultural diversity.

WORDS Stephen Houston │ IMAGES Stephen Houston, Dario Ciccarelli, and Luca Casagrande

In previous issues of Terralingua’s Langscape Magazine, you may have come across these two engaging writers. Though they hail from two very different places at the opposite ends of the globe, both are driven by a keen desire to preserve the world’s urban biocultural diversity. And perhaps they were fated to meet — not just anywhere, but in one of the world’s great cities, Napoli, where urban authenticity is the local lifeblood.

In this wide-ranging interview with Dario Ciccarelli, Stephen Houston pays homage to Napoli and its feisty language and culture, the struggle of Indigenous Peoples everywhere to overcome colonialism, and the authenticity of Place.

— Ed.

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From the Ochre and Fire of “Australia” to the Urban Kiln of Napoli, Italy

When I had the opportunity to travel to Italy in mid-2024, it occurred to me that Terralingua’s co-founder, Luisa Maffi, who is originally from Rome, might have some contacts there. This was my first travel outside Australia in thirty years, and I hoped to make it meaningful!

Why Rome? I wanted to see the colossal ancient architecture of the Greco-Roman republican and imperial urban landscape. You see, I’m fascinated by the vital role of Rome’s legendary River Tiber, its seven hills, all of it. Rome was built cumulatively across millennia. As such, it is overlain with the legacy of successive civic institutions, each bringing its own urban biocultural regime.

Of course, the contrast between ancient Rome and the country where I was born, Australia, is enormously hard to comprehend. During the centuries that Rome grew, what was daily life like for the people living in the place we now call “Australia”?

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Storytelling and a Superior Spiritual Order

No slaves. No emperors. Lots of ochre, fire, plants, dance, food, and singing and storytelling, but no metal nor cut marble temples. A lot of song and ceremony. And, as South Australian Kaurna Elder Uncle Lewis Yerloburka O’Brien puts it, precolonial “Australia” was home to a “superior spiritual order.”

Certainly, the international community is waking up to the fact that “Australia” is, in truth, the ancestral home of hundreds of ancient clans. Here, since time immemorial (by conservative estimates, at least 40,000 years), the First Peoples have excelled at living with the land. Mostly, they have lived in peace, each clan in its sovereign realm, each with a distinct cultural identity. Their names are too many to list here.

For some perspective, I live on the land of the Gadigal People, in what is today a suburb of Sydney. Here, the Gadigal culture has evolved complex knowledge systems and a local language dedicated to preserving and transmitting this knowledge. Importantly, each local language expresses a unique spiritual vision of the universe.

No slaves. No emperors. Lots of ochre, fire, plants, dance, food, and singing and storytelling.

Although such a way of life is still a possibility for many First Peoples in “Australia,” it is greatly undermined by the often willfully ignorant and colonialist attitude of mainstream Australian society. Indeed, even today, the Australian state still seeks to buy and sell Indigenous land.

So, what biocultural differences would I find in Italy’s ancient landscapes, which lie on the opposite side of the world to the Australian ones I have known all my life? Though I could predict some challenging differences, in truth I was completely unprepared, linguistically and culturally.

A wonderful surprise awaited when I approached Luisa for some help meeting people in Italy. But it wasn’t to be in Rome. Instead, Luisa sent me to Napoli (Naples)!

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Defying Colonizers and Globalization . . . With Soup

Luisa’s contact in Napoli was Dario Ciccarelli, a senior public servant who, like me, had written for Langscape Magazine: “It Takes Millennia to Make Ciccimmaretati: Cilento, Italy, as a Master of Biocultural Wisdom.”

In his beautifully written story, Dario described the devastating impact of globalization. In 1995, the World Trade Organization began dismantling the barriers to globalized trade. Since then, the impact on local biocultural diversity across the world has been profound. Dario’s central argument was that for our planet to nourish all its life forms, we must recognize and respect “Place as teacher.”

For our planet to nourish all its life forms, we must recognize and respect “Place as teacher.”

In his appetite-whetting story, Dario told how the people of the Cilento region in Southern Italy are keeping alive an ancient soup recipe, ciccimmaretati. In so doing, they are not just savoring their ancestral delicacy. Critically, they are also stopping the juggernaut of globalized trade and preserving the biocultural integrity of Place — their own region.

Naturally, I devoured Dario’s tale!

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Napoli: Keeping Alive the Intellectual and Cultural “South”

In fact, Dario argues that tourism operators and other place-sensitive businesses can thrive without globalization. Instead of erasing the specificity of a place, they can uphold and even enhance the integrity of its cultural genius.

Hungering for more, I delved into Dario’s two books in Italian. First, I savored Bioarchitettura istituzionale: La Via del tradere (Institutional Bioarchitecture: The Way of Trade, 2002). Then, I dove into Il bandolo dell’Euromatassa (Unravelling the Eurotangle, 2014). 

I started getting excited at the prospect of being greeted in Napoli by such a knowledgeable guide. Yet little did I realize that Dario’s welcome in Napoli would open such a world to me.

For, as Dario explains in our interview below, Napoli has always kept alive the intellectual and cultural “South.” And by that, Dario means not just the South of Italy, but the philosophical ”South.” That is, the people of the world who resist homogenization by preserving their own local ways, despite the reach of invaders, colonizers, and foreign experts.

Slowly, something dawned on me. In Dario’s company, I might begin to understand a phrase by Pier Paolo Pasolini, the great Italian poet, film director, writer, actor, and playwright. Pasolini compared a community that defies modernity to a herd of animals, stampeding toward a cliff but defying extinction!

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Zero Kilometers Tourism: Authenticity as Biocultural Survival

As we will see, Dario’s credentials as a Neapolitan host are impeccable. He orchestrated a day-long itinerary of fascinating visits around Napoli, punctuated by a delightful lunch at a restaurant, il Seggio del Popolo, with friends.

Guiding me along Napoli’s vibrant streets, he explained his concept of “zero kilometers tourism,” or ZKT. This model underpins Dario’s vision of biocultural survival in the face of a tsunami of globalized tourism. Clearly, unregulated tourism has flooded countless places like Napoli and threatens to dissolve the memory of their streets.

Figuring that I needed some basics to understand Napoli, Dario brought me first to the presepi-makers’ botteghe (boutiques) of the San Gregorio Armeno district. And this is where, as he and I chat and wander the lively streets of Napoli, I will let Dario take over in his inimitable way.

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Stephen Houston (SH): Welcome, Dario! Would you please introduce yourself?

Dario Ciccarelli (DC): I’m Dario Ciccarelli. I am 55 years old, and I am a Northern Neapolitan. That is, I now live in Napoli but spent my first 20 years a few kilometers north of the city. Additionally, I lived four years in Switzerland and worked for many years in Rome.

Why do I define myself in this way? To describe my aptitude for interpreting the culture of Napoli as a link between the Global South and Global North. Alternatively, we can see Napoli as a link between East and West, between poetry and analysis, between organizing and improvising.

Thanks to personal experience, I have developed insights about pluralism (legal, cultural, religious, institutional, etc.) and urban biocultural diversity. In particular, I believe it is important to invest in “Places.” These are collective and inter-generational entities that make an invaluable contribution to balancing the destructive tendencies of individualism and statism. (Statism is the belief that modern states are the best, even the only, way to organize ourselves.)

Napoli, my city, can, in my opinion, provide an important contribution in this direction. It has its own theatre, music, culture, language, humor, and understanding of life. In short it is an “anthropological place” par excellence, to quote Marc Augé. To rediscover a Place, I try to engage in its various environments, in every way that is open to me. And one of these ways led me to Terralingua and now, to you, my interviewer, Stephen.

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SH: Do you think that protecting and conserving “Places,” as you put it, can counter the homogenizing effect of globalization?

DC: Yes. I believe that the strength of Places will emerge, and is emerging, spontaneously. Why? Because Places are vital to our well-being. We humans are gradually becoming aware of their importance, but we must learn to see further and better.

In fact, globalization has existed for a relatively short number of years — since around 1995, if we date it from the entry into force of the World Trade Organization’s legally binding rules. So, we have experienced a mere 30 years of the global market. And we have behaved more or less like children who enter a fantastic games room and push all the colored buttons they can find.

Gradually, we are learning that pushing some of these buttons destroys values ​​we collectively hold dear. Indeed, we are learning that we must live differently, in a way that globalization would never allow. We are learning this slowly, even painfully.

Ultimately, the conflicts between South and North, between East and West, express the dramatic tension between different ways of being in the world. One way of life is more tied to Place and tradition; the other leans more to individual and scientific progress. But science also has the responsibility to mediate between these ways of life and promote peace, harmony, and balance.

After all, we — those among us who are not just led by materialism — are trying to contribute, even in a small way, to a better balance between these diverse forces.

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SH: Among the wonderfully gracious people you introduced to me, there is Vincenzo Capuano. Can you explain a bit about what he does and how it matters to your vision?

DC: Vincenzo Capuano is a master craftsman. For generations, in their atelier on the world-famous street of Via San Gregorio Armeno, the Capuano family has been creating presepi. These are Nativity scenes featuring shepherds and other figures of extremely fine workmanship.

But Vincenzo Capuano is more than a craftsman. He presides over the association of artisans of San Gregorio Armeno and, in this capacity, interacts with other local, national, and international associations. In fact, his goal is to actively defend and enhance, along with many other people, the uniqueness of Napoli. He expresses this through the presepe, which show how the small and the large, the humble and the divine, East and West, can coexist in harmony.

A few days ago, in one of of Napoli’s main squares, the scene of the birth of the Christ Child was installed. In this Nativity scene, characters are adorned with clothes, amphorae and other objects made by Neapolitan tailors, ceramists and goldsmiths. Vincenzo Capuano and others prove that when art, passion, and commitment coexist, one can create the extraordinary. And this mirrors developments in Napoli in recent years.

For me, it is an honor to be Vincenzo’s friend. Thanks to the international rules that protect Geographical Indications*, these virtues will also be able to assert themselves through market dynamics, not in spite of them.

*A Geographical Indication is a name or sign used on a product which corresponds to a specific geographical location or origin and certifies the product’s provenance. — Ed.

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SH: When we visited Davide Brandi’s I Lazzari school, which offers classes in Neapolitan language, I thought of Terralingua’s decades of research on biocultural diversity. How does Davide’s language school play a part in protecting urban biocultural diversity?

DC: Although I am unable to estimate the precise extent to which Davide Brandi’s effort has preserved the Neapolitan language, it is certainly of high value. And I feel optimistic because there has been a clear reversal of the prior trend of language erosion. Ten years ago, if a child spoke Neapolitan, he or she was invited to “speak well.” That is, to use the only language deemed to be correct — Italian.

This expression — “speaking well” — sums up the hierarchies that have been imposed on cultures, languages, ​​and ways of life. Today, in Napoli and perhaps in adjacent regions, we speak more and more in Neapolitan, with pride. The Italian Song Festival, one of Italy’s great national rites, has recently opened up its program to songs “in dialect.” After having resisted for decades, the festival organizers gave in to pressure from musicians, listeners, and radio stations. In the end, they gave in to life itself!

 

Davide Brandi and others combine the rigor of a knowledge system, the practicalities of dissemination, and the courage to defy global homogenization. And it is a winning mix, which the academic world should also adopt.

Once the tendency to dissolve local identities into national or international entities ends (for example, the USSR, the EU, Yugoslavia), the natural desire for autonomy and an identity rooted in the land will reassert itself everywhere. Quite simply, schools and universities will not be able to forever oppose these trends.

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SH: Do you think Neapolitans, in general, experience a greater sense of rootedness than in other cities? How do they inhabit and care for their unique places?

DC: I believe that Napoli, with its tenacity, has always displayed an ability to grow “in place.” That is, Neapolitans have always resisted the many attempts at homogenization.

In fact, I believe resistance is key to the vitality of Neapolitanism. “O napulitan s’ fà sicc ma nu mor,” goes the ancient Neapolitan saying. It tells us that Neapolitans, even in the most difficult moments, never succumb. Instead, they adapt to circumstances.

“O napulitan s’ fà sicc ma nu mor” (old Neapolitan saying: “The Neapolitan suffers but does not collapse“)

How do we do this? Perhaps we lose a bit of weight in the struggle! But we do not die. Like an old tree in a storm, we may fall, but our branches can root anew in the soil. In Napoli, the strength of tradition translates as “tenacious lightness.” This means to act however we can — through music, language, theater, art, or football — to avoid defeat. To co-opt a symbol of Imperial Rome, Napoli is the true city of Sol Invictus, the god of infinite light.

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SH: Many can’t imagine cities as enduringly liveable, especially inner-urban spaces. We see cycles of demolition, rebuilding, community evictions, influxes, and departures. For Napoli and other cities, what biocultural lessons can we draw from urban history?

DC: I am unable to answer this question as regards other cities, because I’m not well informed enough. But regarding Napoli, the lessons are clear. From the Greek phratry (ancient brotherhoods made up of citizens), through the medieval confraternite, and up to today, Neapolitans have always known how to build and defend organizations that work as brotherhoods.

Now, these social structures have proven capable of resisting the destructive, homogenizing forces of modernity. Importantly, they were not explicitly created to protect cultural diversity. Yet, at the core of Neapolitan life, the protection of identity remains a central goal and value.

Clearly, identity is worth spending a lifetime to defend! Even today, many young Neapolitan men call each other by the nickname “brother.” That is wonderful to me, and a powerful shield against homogenization.

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SH: Could you explain your Neapolitan vision for Zero Kilometers Tourism (ZKT)?

DC: First of all, I believe that it is necessary to re-think the word “tourism.” Why? Because we must acknowledge the changing nature of how people move around the world. These days, people want to experience originality. So, someone must accept the responsibility to communicate this originality.

But who is the rightful bearer of this responsibility? According to ZKT, it is the native population who should narrate and present their culture and land to visitors, with awareness. Over time, this narrative becomes a training exercise that preserves and enhances a place’s originality.

In Napoli, the “Rione Sanità model” epitomizes this beautiful process of local narration, which started about 20 years ago. Here, the young people of Napoli’s Rione Sanità neighborhood tell visitors about their territory, cultural sites, and traditions. These young people have rediscovered the beauty of their origins, so they enthusiastically base their work and lives on this model. I believe that this type of approach should be applied everywhere in the world.

 

SH: Dario, “Grazie mille” for granting me and Terralingua this eye-opening interview! Thank you too for making my journey to Napoli unforgettable in every way. You give us all tangible hope for urban biocultural diversity. May the people of Napoli forever resist the bland homogeneity of globalization!

Dario Ciccarelli’s Acknowledgement:

I owe heartfelt thanks to Luisa Maffi, co-founder and director of Terralingua, Stephen Houston, and all my Neapolitan friends: Gigi Lista, Emilio Caserta, Vincenzo Capuano, Damiano Annunziato, Davide Brandi, and others. Without them, this exchange of views would not have happened. Lastly, I wish to honor the memory of the great photographer Giuseppe Cucco, who passed away in 2020 and whose image of a town in Italy’s Cilento region graces this interview.

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For a More Filling Read:

To find out how a timeless local soup recipe can fend off globalization, read “It Takes Millennia to Make Ciccimmaretati: Cilento, Italy, as a Master of Biocultural Wisdom,” by Dario Ciccarelli.

To learn how the First Peoples’ revival in “Australia” is shining “emotional intelligence” onto a colonial-based education system and the public understanding of place, read “Educational Intelligence: Learning about Place and Country through Aboriginal Art and Activism in Sydney, Australia,” by Stephen Houston.