Cultural Anthropology in Italy in the Twentieth Century

Abstract

Cultural anthropology in Italy has always had poor international visibility, mainly for linguistic reasons. This chapter follows its developments by briefly summarising its first century of history, characterised by a slow and fragmented development, then focusing more specifically on the second half of the twentieth century. Thanks to the influence of Antonio Gramsci and Ernesto de Martino, between the 1960s and the 1980s a rather recognisable national tradition was established, characterised by the focus on the theme of popular culture (demology) and by a predominantly Marxist theoretical approach. In the same years, the discipline experienced significant growth in university teaching, albeit to a lesser extent than other social sciences, such as sociology. The demological trend entered a crisis in the last decade of the twentieth century, following both the crisis of Marxism and the reluctance to address the issue of popular culture in its internal declinations to mass consumption. In its place, a differentiated field of demoethnoanthropological (DEA) studies developed, with stronger relationships with international schools.