BREADS AND SAINTS: RITUAL PRACTICES OF RECIPROCITY AMONG SICILIAN MIGRANTS IN GERMANY
Emanuel VALENTIN1
COBISS 1.01
ABSTRACT
Breads and Saints: Ritual Practices of Reciprocity among Sicilian Migrants in Germany
Using the example of Sicilian migrants in Germany I point out the relationship between ritual revitalisation in the migrant community, the movement and the reproduction of objects respectively. A case in point is the reactivation of a local type of festival of St Joseph, which Sicilian migrants from one particular town began to celebrate in Germany in the 1970s. It shows close connections to the Sicilian hometown on both the material and symbolic level, hence anchoring identity and reproducing memory. I will show how personal touch becomes tradition within the range of individual play and the framework of descent and how the saint's cult becomes translocative through its revitalisation in the migrant community. KEY WORDS: migration, ritual change, social change, Sicilian migrants, reciprocity
IZVLEČEK
Kruh in svetniki: obredne prakse vzajemnosti med sicilijanskim i migranti v Nemčiji
Na podlagi primera sicilijanskih migrantov v Nemčiji prikažem odnos med oživljanjem obreda v migraciji, to je med premikanjem in reprodukcijo predmetov. Natančneje, gre za ponovno oživitev festivala sv. Jožefa, festivala lokalnega tipa, ki ga migranti iz specifičnega sicili-janskega kraja praznujejo v Nemčiji od 70. let dalje. Ta tako na materialnem kot simbolnem nivoju kaže tesne povezave z njihovim sicilijanskim domačim krajem in torej utrjuje identiteto in reproducira spomin. Pokazal bom, kako osebne variacije postanejo tradicija znotraj obsega individualnega razpona in v okviru rodu, in kako kult svetnika postane translociran skozi njegovo revitalizacijo v migraciji.
KLJUČNE BESEDE: migracija, sprememba obredov, družbena sprememba, sicilijanski migranti, vzajemnost
introduction2
In the landscape around Sindelfingen, an industrial city in southwest Germany which is well known as the main production site of one of the biggest German car producers,
1	M.A. in social/cultural anthropology and religious studies; Arbeitskreis Ethnologie und Migration e. V., Bachgasse 9, D-72070 Tübingen; e-mail: emanuel-valentin@gmx.net.
2	Parts of this article stem from articles which have been published elsewhere (Valentin 2009a, 2009b forthcoming).
we can find the rare case of a strong agglomeration of chain migrants of Sicilian descent. These emigrants originally all came from Mirabella Imbaccari, an "agrotown" (Schneider & Schneider 1976: 32ff.; Gabaccia 1984: 13f.) located between Caltagirone and Piazza Armerina in the eastern part of Sicily.3 In my research4 I focussed especially on a Mac-carisian saint cult, which was revitalised by Maccarisian migrants in Germany in the early 1970s, namely the festa di San Giuseppe (festival of St Joseph), the putative father of Jesus and elected husband of Mary, who is the secondary patron saint and protector of Mirabella, after Maria SS. Delle Grazie (Holy Mary of the Graces).
In Mirabella the "neo-colonial period" (Schneider & Schneider 1976: 115), in which the export of manpower was the primary energy loss, set in relatively early. The first migration wave began around 1850 and was directed towards Latin America, i.e. to Argentina, Uruguay and Venezuela. The size of this migration becomes clear when we look at the fact that in 1983 90% of the people older than 80 had re-migrated from Argentina (Horn 1986: 137). The second big migration took place in the early 20th century and was directed towards the USA (Giordano 1984: 448f.).5
The Italian South didn't have any profits of the Italian period of economic development after the Second World War and didn't participate in the ongoing process of industrialization. This situation led to the third big migration wave in Mirabella. Due to the bilateral agreement of 1955 between Germany and Italy, which regulated the German recruitment of Italian workers (Rieker 2003), there was a growing flood of Maccarisi who emigrated as so-called Gastarbeiter (guest workers) to Germany. These emigrants concentrated especially in two neighbouring towns in the surroundings of Stuttgart, namely Sindelfingen and Calw and other smaller settlements around these centres (Giordano 1984: 448f.; Horn 1986: 139ff.; Lauer & Wilhelmi 1986: 164; Di Seri 2001: 128; Valentin 2009a; 2009b forthcoming). Due to this initial labour migration in the mid-1950s and the rapidly increasing chain migration in the following decades, almost one third of Mi-rabella's population (approximately 3,000 people out of 9,000 inhabitants) was living in Sindelfingen and its close environs in the mid-1980s. To these, around 1,000 people have to be added who emigrated to north-Italian industrial centres (Giordano 1984: 449; Horn 1986: 139). Today the phenomena of migration concerns approximately 60% of Mirabella's population (Di Seri 2001: 10).
Because of the geographical proximity - which is not comparable with the distance between Sicily and the Americas - the migration between Mirabella and Sindelfingen shows a clear "pendular character" (Giordano 1984), i.e. the emigrants move periodically between hometown and host society. As a logical consequence close transnational contacts
3	They call themselves Maccarisi, a term which stems from the second part of the name of the town, namely Imbaccari, and which I also have adopted when I refer to them in this paper.
4	During different periods between July 2003 and March 2006 I conducted non-stationary fieldwork among Sicilian emigrants in Sindelfingen and surroundings. The fieldwork was carried out for my M.A. thesis.
5	Neef (1986) writes on the contrary that the first migration wave was directed towards North America, while the second one was directed towards South America.
still exist between Mirabella and Sindelfingen. Three bus companies offer direct connections between the two towns three times a week, several import-export companies offer food transport or moving services, there is even an international funeral parlour for the many migrants who often possess expensive mortuary chapels for their entire families on the outskirts of Mirabella.
The strong orientation to the hometown and the explicit wish to return to Sicily, which was the point of departure of almost all Maccarisian emigrants, resulted from the insecurity of their status as Gastarbeiter (Lauer & Wilhelmi 1986: 173). But many didn't return before reaching their personal economic goals, which often took many years, sometimes provoking nostalgic reactions in form of homesickness and illnesses (Lauer & Wilhelmi 1986: 172; Busch 1983; Frigessi Castelnuovo & Risso 1986). Like the overseas migration (Bianco 1974: XlIf.) the migration to Germany was characterised by a rapidly starting disillusionment which replaced the original wish to return. Many migrants didn't return to Mirabella anymore, even after achieving their economic goals. This was due to the fact that they often had grown-up children who rarely showed any interest in returning to the hometown of their parents (Lauer & Wilhelmi 1986: 174ff.). Especially those who were not yet receiving any pensions had to recognise that the work situation in Mirabella was still as disastrous as in the time of their migration. Even for those who returned the experience of their hometown was often a disappointment, because the reality no longer coincided with their super-elevated home ideal, which served as a psychological rein on their personal hopes and expectations during the time of migration (Lauer & Wilhelmi 1986: 186).
REVITALISATION OF RELIGIOUS FESTIVALS IN GERMANY
In the early 1970s there were clear processes of "ethnic revitalisation" (Lanternari 1977; Giordano 1984) among Maccarisian migrants in Germany, testifying against the supposed passivity or lack of appropriation of foreign space (Lauer & Wilhelmi 1986) and standing for the active occupation of it through the reactivation of social norms and institutions stemming from the society of origin. I refer to the religious festivals of Mirabella, which were revitalised by Maccarisian migrants in the early 1970s in Sindelfingen, Calw and the vicinity - in the chronological order of their appearance: the festa di San Giuseppe, the festa della Maria SS. delle Grazie and the procession of Good Friday. Through these festivals the migrants reproduce the symbolic-religious spaces of their hometown also in the foreign country and in this way create their own "familiar spaces" (Lauer & Wilhelmi 1986) of transnational character (Glick Schiller, Basch & Blanc-Szanton 1992: 1),6 in which they periodically reactivate a feeling of home.
6 I am speaking here about the transnational character of the festival of St Joseph because it still shows a high degree of information and resources exchange between home town and host town. Following Steven Vertovec (2000: 12) this is - besides the transfer of money, travel and communication - necessary in order to differentiate migration from diaspora.
MACCAR^SIAN ST JOSEPH ALTARS IN GERMANY
A case in point is the reactivation of the festival of St Joseph, who is the secondary patron saint of Mirabella. Every Catholic-formed town has one or more so-called patron saints, who are believed to be the protectors of the population of that settlement. In Mirabella St Joseph is celebrated on the 19th of March within the intimate space of single-family households.
In the week before the 19th of March Maccarisian women start with the preparations for the St Joseph altars. These altars, which are erected in different households, are large banquets: big tables are covered with a huge amount of comestible goods like fresh and dried fruits; raw, cooked and partly wild vegetables; fish, flour, pasta, and so forth. Most of these goods are ordered by a transport company, which brings them directly from Sicily. This is necessary because some goods like the wild vegetables or the big laurel branches for decoration can't easily be found in Germany or "just taste better". Next to these foods, which my informants understand as "traditional" and "poor" ("St Joseph was poor.") foods,
Photograph 1: Banquet of St Joseph in the rooms of the
Missione Cattolica Italiana, Sindelfingen, 2004 (Photo: Emanuel Valentin, 2004)
today we also find a lot of modern consumer and luxury goods like chocolate, coffee, out of season fruits or exotic fruits like mangos or avocados.
Special attention has to be paid to the most important elements of the altars: three devotional breads positioned at the highest point of the altar, ephemeral statues which represent the members of the Holy Family. Besides these, many other devotional loaves of bread cover the altar representing different symbols associated with St Joseph, some of them of phyto- or theriomorphic shape.
Altars in honour of the saint are erected as ex voto, which means that they are preceded by aprummisioni, a vow. The aim of such a vow, which an individual person takes in front of the saint mainly because of diseases, misfortunes or processes of house building, is to obtain a grazia (grace) from the saint. Particularly emigrants of the first generation, who are confronted with their children's disinterest in the parental traditions, build the altar in order "just to keep the tradition alive", bearing the wish to teach their own children something about their "original" culture.
Starting at noon on the 18th of March the altars are visited by numerous friends, relatives and curious people, to whom the members of the host family serve sweets and other typical dishes. Every altar builder knows about the gossip of the people who visit the altar, and is hence very conscious about the social control which comes along with these visits. Therefore it is very important that the altar and everything surrounding it "makes a beautiful figure" ("fare bella figura"). During the ritual the private room of the household goes through a process of opening and being made public. One woman told me: "On the 19th of March your house has to become a church!" This metaphor perfectly brings home the point that during the ritual the private, intimate and closed space of the family is transformed into a public, outwardly oriented, open realm of the community. The banquet becomes an "altar" forming the centre of the "church". Its sacrality is emphasised through a touching taboo, which begins at a fixed point in time, at noon on the 18th of March.
Starting in the afternoon and till late at night the missionary of the Italian parish visits every altar in order to give it his blessing. He is accompanied by a group of 5-10 men, who go from one altar to the next. There they sing in the Sicilian dialect the lamentations of Good Friday (Lamenti du Vènniri Santu). These chants are a fundamental part of the procession of Good Friday in Mirabella and are also recited there for San Giuseppe.
Most of my informants both in Sindelfingen and Mirabella told me that the altar has to be left alone during the night, because this is the time during which the saint goes into action. In the discourses of my informants, he visits the altars, making noise and leaving traces behind, such as finger prints in the salt which has been appositely flattened in its cup before the night comes.
According to the tradition, on the 19th of March three poor people have to be invited for a meal at the altar. These are a man, a little boy and a little girl, representing the Holy Family - Joseph, Jesus and Mary. Therefore they are called santi, or saints. All the dishes on the altar are offered to the santi, who are supposed to symbolically taste all of them. Afterwards all the goods on the altar are offered as gifts to the santi, which they take with
them to their homes and share with their families, friends and neighbours. Sometimes the gifts sustain such a family for more than one month. During the distribution of the gifts to the santi, friends and relatives are also integrated into this ritual of commensality. Several dishes are served to every single visitor, among them countless sweets, bread and a plate of Pasta di San Giuseppe, noodles with broad beans prepared according to a special recipe for that ritual occasion. Some of the festive pasta is even brought into the houses of old and sick people (for a deeper analysis see Valentin 2009a; 2009b forthcoming).
THE MATERIALISATION OF RECIPROCITY IN A LOAF OF BREAD
The main periods in which Maccarisian emigrants returned to their hometown of Mirabella were those in which the religious festivals took place, i.e. the festival of San Giuseppe (Giordano 1984: 450f.) and the festival of Maria SS. Delle Grazie (Horn 1986: 136). Their significance as "cultural magnets" (Turner & Turner 1978: 27), which they certainly still retain, decreased gradually, especially when the process of families joining their emigrant kin came to an end in the early 1970s. At this time the first emigrants began to celebrate the festival of St Joseph also in Sindelfingen and its environs. Probably because of its private character, it was the first festival introduced in the migrant community, followed some years later by the public procession, during which a copy of the painted image of Maria SS. Delle Grazie, Mirabella's patron saint, is carried through the streets.
We see that the meal of the poor bases its fundaments on archaic forms of exchange and reciprocity, namely on the distribution of food and rites of commensality (Lanternari 1959; Di Nola 1976: 193ff.). Its aim is the fulfilment of the contract between humans and the saint. It is the gift as the structuring instrument of every social and sacral interaction which starts the circle of exchange (Mauss 1968; Baal 1976; Burkert 1987; Godelier 1999), keeping up the relation between parenti (relatives) and others (Gabaccia 1984: 7f.). The reciprocal gift institutionalises social and symbolic membership and solidarity on different levels. Hence the rigorous formalism of the behaviour related to the banquet and ceremonial gift exchange isn't surprising (Giallombardo 2005: 38). Both the quality and quantity of the goods, which are destroyed (i.e. offered as gifts) in this Sicilian form ofpotlatch,7 as well as the aesthetics of their public presentation produce prestige for the donor and his family, also implying almost classical incidences of antagonism.
The ritual bears a strong function in identity forming. During the festival the Maccarisian community goes through a metamorphosis, which on one hand fits into Turner's notion of "anti-structure", while on the other it represents a reproduction of the social life during festive moments in Mirabella. The society, which is fragmented in the everyday life of the migrant community, becomes incorporated again. "Like in Italy!" a man shouted during the festival of St Joseph in the Italian mission, sitting in a circle with his friends
7 The potlatch is a ritual of gift exchange and symbolic destruction of material goods among populations of the American Northwest Coast.
and welcoming the new arrivals with a broad smile. Another custom has to be understood in this integrating, defragmenting context, i.e. the custom of incorporating old and sick people, who are not able to come to the altar, into the circle of commensality by bringing portions of Pasta san Giuseppi directly into their houses.
ABOUT THE MOVEMENT AND THE REPRODUCTION OF OBJECTS
Since the process of festival revitalisation set in, the objects at the centre of these festivals have also moved. If we look at the example of the St Joseph's banquets, they represent a kind of mobile shrine, which can be reproduced wherever wished. At the same time they are directly connected to the hometown on both material and symbolic levels, hence anchoring identity and reproducing memory.
On the material level, the most important point is that most of the goods on the altar originally come from Mirabella. Here I refer not only to the huge quantity of vegetables and fruits, but also the laurel branches needed for the decoration of the banquets, or the often handmade tablecloths (produced according to the Maccarisian art of bobbin lace making) which cover the huge tables. Most of the vegetables and fruits are ordered by a transport company, which brings them directly from Mirabella, or at least from Sicily. This is necessary because some goods like the wild vegetables or the big laurel branches can't easily be found in Germany. Another explanation was that they "just taste better", which is surely linked to a certain degree of melancholy and romanticism, too.
Another interesting point is that next to these foods stemming from Mirabella, today we can also find a lot of modern consumer and luxury goods like chocolate, coffee, out of season fruits, exotic fruits like mangos or avocados, and other goods, which - like Turkish chickpeas - don't have any connection to Mirabella. Even so they don't simply represent something we could designate as emblems of globalisation. They merely constitute what we should understand as the personal touch given to a ritual setting. Nevertheless, this personal touch is discursively perceived by my informants as "tradition" and hence serves as "tradition". The goods on the banquets - independent of their origin - are finally the ingredients for a large variety of dishes, identified by the migrants as typical local dishes of Maccarisian or Sicilian origin, among them especially cooked and fried foods like sfingi, cassateddi, pesche, impanati and many others. Within the range of individual play and the framework of descent the personal touch becomes tradition and vice versa. Personal touch has the capacity of transforming objects of modern consumer society into objects of romantic melancholy attached to "tradition". Annette B. Weiner (1980: 71) is definitely correct when she states as her basic premise "that any society must reproduce and regenerate certain elements of value in order for the society to continue".
On the symbolic level, the St Joseph's banquets are clearly connected to the hometown, because they represent first of all a devotional practice towards one of the patron saints of Mirabella. Let us look again on the objects on the altar. If we look at the devotional breads, the most important elements of the banquets, one of them represents St Joseph
and is called u pagnoccu. It has a roughly anthropomorphic shape, in which it is possible to recognize a body without extremities, decorated with flowers. For my informants the loaves of bread are like images of saints, like statues.
In 2004 and 2005 the devotional breads for the St Joseph's banquet in the Italian mission in Sindelfingen were ordered from a bakery in Mirabella. Together with a huge quantity of offerings amounting up to € 600 they were brought to Sindelfingen by a Maccarisian transport company. When in 2006 these devotional breads didn't arrive, it caused a great deal of agitation among the women involved in the construction of the altar, because - as they told me - "the [construction of the] altar can't begin before the breads have been put on it." The women quickly arranged to bake the big breads in a bakery near Sindelfingen. On the day of the festival we praised the fine breads on the altar. A woman told me: "They just didn't bring us the bread. So we said: 'St Joseph this year wants us to make it, here in Sindelfingen.' And we made it very well." A man commented: "It is clear that St Joseph wanted to be made here, at his home, in his town/country [paisi]."
This short anecdote shows that the saint, which was honoured before as deus loci, becomes released from its local town context. "It is clear that St Joseph wanted to be made here, at his home, in his town/country [paisi]." The home of the saint, his town and hence his sphere of action have shifted with those of the migrants. Hence locality, i.e. the hometown, seems to lose its meaning; the saint and its cult become delocated. But it is a relative delocation, i.e. the ritual isn't totally released from the hometown Mirabella, but rather becomes "translocative"8 (Tweed 1997: 94). As such it offers surfaces of overlapping linking the old home with the new. Paradoxically, it is precisely this relative delocation of the festival which allows a relocation of the Maccarisian migrant's identity: because of its originally strong relation to the locality (Mirabella) it represents - especially in the migrant community - a meaningful factor as an identity anchor, point of reference and orientation. The delocation of the saint also facilitates the expansion of the social unity emerging around his cult, from Maccarisian migrants alone to the whole community of Italian migrants. The saint isn't a symbol of intra-Italian diversity anymore, but becomes an inter-regional symbol with manifold meanings which is associated according to the situation with Maccarisian, Sicilian or Italian identity.
conclusion
The rare case of a very strong agglomeration of migrants from a particular Sicilian town (Mirabella Imbaccari), who now live in the close environs of an industrial city in south-western Germany (Sindelfingen), offers itself as ideal example for the analysis of the interweavement between ritual and social change. In this article I focus on ritual practices of reciprocity in the context of a local patron saint cult, namely the festival of St Joseph,
8 "[Translocative] refers to the tendency among many first- and second-generation migrants to symbolically move between homeland and new land." (Tweed 1997: 95)
which - among other festivals - was revitalised within this migrant community in the early 1970s. Through these festivals the migrants reproduce the symbolic-religious spaces of their hometown in the foreign country and in this way create their own familiar spaces of transnational character, in which they periodically reactivate a feeling of home.
At the heart of the festival of St Joseph are the large ritual banquets, which are erected ex voto by individuals within the private realm of single family households: large tables are covered with huge amounts of comestible goods like fresh and dried fruits; raw, cooked and partly wild vegetables; fish, flour, pasta, and so forth. Starting at noon on the 18th of March the altars are visited by numerous friends, relatives and curious visitors. During the ritual the private, intimate and closed space of the family household goes through a process of opening and public making, and is transformed into a public, outwardly oriented, open realm of the community. According to the tradition, on the 19th of March three poor people have to be invited for a meal at the altar. These represent the members of the Holy Family and are therefore called saints. All the dishes on the altar are offered to the saints as gifts. During the distribution of the gifts to the saints, friends and relatives are also integrated into this ritual of commensality. Several dishes are served to every single visitor and some of the festive dishes are even brought into the houses of old and sick people.
Since the process of festival revitalisation set in, the objects at the centre of these festivals have also moved. If we look at the example of the St Joseph's banquets, they represent a kind of mobile shrine, which can be reproduced wherever wished. At the same time they are directly connected to the hometown on both material and symbolic levels, hence anchoring identity and reproducing memory. On the material level, the most important point is that most of the goods on the altar originally come from Mirabella. Another interesting point is that next to these foods stemming from Mirabella, today we can also find a lot of modern consumer goods like chocolate, coffee, out of season fruits, exotic fruits like mangos or avocados, and other goods, which - like Turkish chickpeas - don't have any connection to Mirabella. Even so they don't just represent something we could designate as emblems of globalisation. They merely constitute what we should understand as the personal touch given to a ritual setting. Nevertheless, this personal touch is discursively perceived by my informants as "tradition" and hence serves as "tradition". Within the range of individual play and the framework of descent the personal touch becomes tradition and vice versa. Personal touch has the capacity of transforming objects of modern consumer society into objects of romantic melancholy attached to "tradition".
On the symbolic level, the St Joseph's banquets are clearly connected to the hometown, because they represent first of all a devotional practice towards one of the patron saints of Mirabella. But the saint, which was honoured before as deus loci, becomes released from its local town context. The home of the saint, his town and hence his sphere of action have shifted with those of the migrants. Hence locality, i.e. the hometown, seems to lose its meaning; the saint and its cult become delocated. But it is a relative delocation, i.e. the ritual isn't totally released from the hometown Mirabella, but rather becomes translocative. As such it offers surfaces of overlapping linking the old home with the new. Paradoxically, it is precisely this relative delocation of the festival which allows a relocation of the
Maccarisian migrant's identity: because of its originally strong relation to the locality (Mirabella) it represents - especially in the migration - a meaningful factor as identity anchor, point of reference and orientation. The delocation of the saint also facilitates the expansion of the social unity emerging around his cult, from Maccarisian migrants alone to the whole community of Italian migrants. The saint isn't a symbol of intra-Italian diversity anymore, but becomes an inter-regional symbol with manifold meanings which is associated according to the situation with Maccarisian, Sicilian or Italian identity.
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POVZETEK
KRUH IN SVETNIKI: OBREDNE PRAKSE VZAJEMNOSTI MED SICILIJANSKIMI MIGRANTI V NEMČIJI
Emanuel Valentin
Redek primer zelo intenzivnega kopičenja migrantov iz specifičnega sicilijanskega kraja (Mirabella Imbaccari), ki sedaj živijo v bližnji okolici industrijskega mesta v jugozahodni Nemčiji (Sindelfingen), lahko služi kot idealni primer za analizo prepletanja med obredno in družbeno spremembo. V tem članku se osredotočim na obredne prakse vzajemnosti v kontekstu kulta lokalnega svetnika zavetnika, to je festivala Sv. Jožefa, ki je bil - med drugimi festivali - oživljen znotraj te migrantske skupnosti v zgodnjih 70. letih. Skozi tovrstne festivale migranti reproducirajo simbolno-religiozne prostore njihovega domačega kraja tudi v tuji državi in na ta način ustvarijo svoje lastne znane prostore transnacionalnega značaja, v katerih periodično reaktivirajo občutenje doma.
V središču festivala Sv. Jožefa so obilne obredne pojedine, ki jih posamezniki pripravijo kot ex voto znotraj posameznega enodružinskega gospodinjstva: velike mize so prekrite z ogromno količino užitnih dobrin, kot so sveže in posušeno sadje, surova, kuhana in deloma divja zelenjava, ribe, moka, testenine, itd. Številni prijatelji, sorodniki in radovedneži obiskujejo oltarje od poldneva dalje, na dan 18. marca. Med tem obredom se zasebni, intimni in zaprti prostor družinskega gospodinjstva skozi proces odpiranja javnosti spremeni v javno, navzven usmerjeno, odprto polje cele skupnosti. Glede na tradicijo morajo biti 19. marca na obed pri oltarju povabljeni trije revni ljudje. Ti predstavljajo člane svete družine in se tudi imenujejo svetniki. Vse jedi na oltarju so ponujene svetnikom kot darila. Med razdeljevanjem daril svetnikom so v ta obred pogostitve vključeni tudi prijatelji in sorodniki. Vsakemu obiskovalcu se postreže z različnimi jedmi, starejšim ali bolnim ljudem pa praznične jedi prinesejo celo na dom.
S tem ko se je proces revitalizacije festivalov ustalil, so se premaknili tudi objekti v središču teh festivalov. Če pogledamo na primer pojedine Sv. Jožefa: te na nek način predstavljajo mobilne svetinje, ki se jih lahko po želji reproducira kjerkoli. Istočasno so direktno povezane z domačim krajem, tako na materialnih kot simbolnih nivojih, in torej utrjujejo identiteto in reproducirajo spomin. Na materialnem nivoju je najpomembnejše dejstvo to, da večina dobrin na oltarjih izvira iz Mirabelle. Zanimivo je tudi, da lahko danes poleg teh jedi, najdemo tudi veliko modernih potrošniških dobrin, kot so čokolada, kava, nesezonsko sadje, eksotično sadje kot mango in avokado in ostale dobrine, ki - kot turška čičerika - nimajo nobene povezave z Mirabello. Kljub temu te ne predstavljajo nekaj, kar bi lahko označili kot znake globalizacije. Enostavno predstavljajo to, kar bi morali razumeti kot osebno variacijo znotraj okvira obreda. To osebno noto moji informanti v pogovoru dojemajo kot »tradicijo« in torej deluje kot »tradicija«. V obsegu individualnega razpona in v okviru izvora ta osebna nota postane tradicija, in obratno. Takšna osebna
nota lahko preobrazi predmete moderne potrošniške družbe v romantično melanholijo, ki se navezuje na »tradicijo«.
Na simbolnem nivoju so Jožefove pojedine jasno povezane z domačim krajem, ker v prvi meri predstavljajo pobožno prakso v povezavi z enim od lokalnih svetnikov zavetnikov Mirabelle. Toda svetnik, ki je bil prej čaščen kot deus loci, je osvobojen iz konteksta lokalnega kraja. Dom svetnika, njegov kraj in torej njegova sfera delovanja so se premaknili skupaj z migrantskimi. Zatorej vtis, da lokalnost, to je domači kraj, izgublja pomen; svetnik in njegov kult sta postala dislocirana. Toda ta dislokacija je relativna, to je, obred ni popolnoma ločen od domačega kraja Mirabelle, temveč postane translokalen. Kot takšen nudi prekrivajoče se vidike, ki povezujejo stari dom z novim. Paradoksalno je, da je ravno ta relativna dislokacija festivala tista, ki omogoča relokacijo identitete makariškega migranta: zaradi njegove originalne močne navezave na lokaliteto (Mirabella), prestavlja festival - zlasti v migraciji - pomemben dejavnik kot utrjevalec identitete, točka reference in orientacije. Dislokacija svetnika tudi pospeši širitev družbene enotnosti, ki se poraja okoli tega kulta, od samih makariških migrantov do celotne skupnosti italijanskih migrantov. Svetnik ni več simbol intra-italijanske raznovrstnosti, temveč postane inter-regionalni simbol z več pomeni, ki je odvisno od situacije povezan z makariško, sicilijansko ali italijansko identiteto.