Ernesto De Martino etnologo meridionalista: vent'anni dopo

Abstract

The author reexamines Ernesto De Martino”s Work in religious anthropology
in southern Italy _during the 1950s and tries to identify the cultural stimuli
that led De Martino to undertake research in the field. There is a brief
analysis of the ideological, cultural, and scientific tendencies that Were predominant
in Italy in that period, especially in the .area of the human sciencesanthropology,
ethnology, and folklore.
Similarities and differences are pointed out between De Martino's position
and that of the oflicial culture of the period. De Martino°s position is compared
to those of the anthro-pological sciences in Great Britain, America, France,
and Germany, With particular attention to his remarkably independent critical
view of them. The author finds that What seems to have led De Martino
to study the subcultures of the poorer classes in southern Italy W-as not
the influence of English functionalism or American cultural anthropology,
but his direct experiences (as a functionary of the Socialist Party) among the
peasants of the south, his reading of Antonio Gramsci's Prison Notebooks,
and his acquaintance With the Write-r Carlo Levi and the Lucanian peasant
poet Rocco Scotellaro. A
The author stresses the originality of De Martino's work, which gave
Italian cultural anthropology an historical basis, and its seminal influence
on contemporary anthropological sciences in Italy. In this context he points
out that studies of a variety of aspects of modern Italian culture are being
carried out by young anthropologists under the influence of De Martino's
work. And the starting-point of some current theoretical disputes concerning
anthropological science and folklore can be traced back, directly or indirectly,
to Work that De Martino did two decades ago. Finally, the author regretfully
notes that De Martino's importance for Italian anthropological studies
is not sufficiently recognized by some young ehtnologists.