ABSTRACT
This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on the concepts covered in the preceding chapters of this book. The book has contributed fundamental elements to understandings of the rural Italian society that was implanted in southern Brazil as of the late 19th century. At an earlier stage of this research project, my principal sources were crime cases involving immigrants, understood as profoundly revealing of the community’s relationship to the state justice system. Older than the practices of justice developed by modern nation states, community justice functioned on the basis of its own complex mechanisms and rules. Crime cases were but a subtle indication of the existence of such rules and practices. In order to access the intricate ways in which immigrants resolved their family and community practices, it became necessary to gather sources of different origin.
