The Death and Rebirth of Pari: Globalization of an Italian Village Community

Abstract

This qualitative inquiry takes place within a growing body of interdisciplinary work dedicated to reimagining community, one’s relationship to it, and ultimately one’s place within the global community. The study is rooted in depth psychology’s recognition that the psyche is independently real and everything has meaning. Community is an ongoing story: a living myth. One can tally all the concrete aspects of community yet still not understand what makes community. To better understand community, this study used a hermeneutic-phenomenological approach to explore the lived experience of those living in a small Tuscan village, Pari. This entailed relying on an archetypal mythological lens to interpret a rich harvesting of interviews, storytelling, dreamy attention, and the researcher’s own reflections. The goal was to understand what it means to be part of this ancient community today, to appreciate the dynamics at work within the community psyche, and to dream the community on into the future. It was found that life in this community has a rhythmic structure that permeates everything and everyone. The most important common thread was that love connects people to this place. It was also found that as this once self-enclosed community becomes increasingly porous to the world, the population diversity increases and self-sufficiency decreases. It was concluded that Pari’s myth is to become a global village. The community’s challenge for survival is to integrate its core rhythmic structure with the incoming technology age.