Abstract EN:

After a long period of decline brought about by the emigration of many furriers to Central Europe and the West, the fur industry of Kastoria has drifted many small-scale furrier businesses after 1960, thanks to the local decontrolling of fur imports. Until 1985 confection activities kept developing and went to provide most of the furriers' income. The tax reductions first allowed by the Greek government to foreign dealers have divested Kastorla's furriers of their trading independence and have reduced them to becoming subcontractors for the Western fur confection industry: as they were compelled to lower their production costs, they dismissed their own employees and handed over their orders to home-workers who could be given lower wages since they had other sources of income. Moonlighting is widespread. The slump in fur sales has made this standard practice, thus relegating the fur confection to a mere secondary activity among workers and small craftsmen, who are now turning to other sources of income -tilling land, mostly- to ensure a living; hence leading to a slackening in the process of land concentration. So the fur-business has played but a small past in the developing process of the local economy, and the Kastorian model remains quite removed from the artisan areas of Central Italy, which are better organized and more independent.