Etnografie del contemporaneo. Anno 6, vol. 6/2023

Etnografie del contemporaneo
ANNO 6, VOLUME 6
Edizioni Museo Pasqualino, Palermo 2023
ISSN 2611 – 4577

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INDICE

Editoriale
Rosario Perricone

Piccoli musei della restanza. Cammini di memoria e di resistenza.
VITO TETI

Abstract. In recent years, I had the chance to observe a great willingness to resist and remain in spite of everything in many villages of Southern Italy affected by depopulation. Many young and adult people, often returning from emigration, have found a space for a possible regeneration. I have also seen many openings of small bookshops and museums, not only intended as economical and cultural activities, but also as spaces for memory, sociality, and resilience. In this paper a few small museums of ‘restanza” are mentioned, places where groups or associations or even just individuals have gathered and showcased objects of the community’s traditional culture, ‘lost’ objects to which they try to give a new life.

 

I musei,tra nuove missioni e vecchie immagini.
PIETRO CLEMENTE

Abstract. The article analyses the complex situation of demo-ethno-anthropological museums in Italy, which are often neglected despite their potential to convey the stories of local diversity and the community mission of contemporary museums. Originally conceived as places of memory linked to the social struggles for the land, many of these museums have suffered decline over the years. However, new professional skills are emerging. Nowadays, DEA museums act as guardians of collective memory and support the preservation of identity and social practices. Through several examples, the article emphasizes their crucial role in fostering local development, considering them as institutions that promote participation.

 

Il Museo della Cultura Arbéreshe di San Paolo Albanese.
Diversità linguistica e culturale in un’area interna del Mezzogiomo d’Italia.
FERDINANDO MIRIZZI

Abstract. Museums that document “restanza” appear in small villages located in inland areas. The birth of these institutions is fueled by the desire of communities that are undergoing a process of progressive factual and symbolic dissolution to have their existence and
cultural resources ‘certified’ as part of the wider world’s plurality. The Museum for Arbëreshe Culture in San Paolo Albanese is an example of this kind. San Paolo is Basilicata’s smallest village, counting just over 200 residents who trace their origins back to a 16th century wave
of immigration from Albania. This museum was conceived as early as the 1970s by the local community as a tool promoting the diversity of a small Arbëreshe village in southern Italy.

 

Contenere l’incontenibile.
Narratività e documentalità nel Museo Ettore Guatelli.
MARIO TURCI

Abstract. Contain: keep in, stem, give boundary. The museum is called upon to contain, hold in, give boundary to works, objects, testimonies. But is the ethnographic museum called to contain “dishes or appetite”? Dishes are not enough, dishes are not heritage, but footprints that lead to the human dimension of appetite. Because heritage is appetite. But the appetite is irrepressible and the museum is therefore forced to retreat on the dishes, a retreat that often results in a falling back on the plate, as if it were heritage in itself. The text focuses on the substance of the relationship between museum and heritage through a look at the challenges of the Ettore Guatelli Museum, of which he has been director for the last twenty years.

 

Un racconto per restare.
L’Ecomuseo Casilino tra narrazione territoriale e metanarrazione
ALESSANDRA BROCCOLINI

Abstract. In the rich literature in Italy concerning ecomuseums, there has been a lack of serious discussion on rhetorical and discursive spaces. Regarding the “three pillars” of the ecomuseum indicated by De Varine (territory-community-patrimony), the essay suggests that it is necessary to analyse the discursive and narrative component of ecomuseums in the dual meaning of local storytelling and ecomuseum metanarrative. The case study examined is that of the Casilino Ecomuseum in Rome, which precisely through the storytelling was able to produce effective counter-narratives in defining a different ‘sense of place’.

 

Il museo etnografico di Cocullo tra resa e restanza
LIA GIANCRISTOFARO

Abstract. In Cocullo, new visions of the territory and renewing values of the local heritage are manifested through the creation of a museum focusing on the ritual that has characterised the village for at least three centuries. Added to this is the intention to inscribe the ritual of San Domenico Abate with snakes in a list of intangible cultural heritage safeguards. The patrimonialisation process is the fruit of a 40-year alliance between the scientific community of anthropologists and the local community. By lubricating the links with an ancient devotional network of Apennine villages that today gather around values of respect for the environment, the village hopes to gain an audience with regional, national and international politics.

 

Il museo degli usi e dei costumi della gente trentina.
Un esempio (tramontato) di museo contemporaneo «nel» e «con» il territorio.
GIOVANNI KEZICH E ANTONELLA MOTT

Abstract. Founded in 1968 by Giuseppe Šebesta, since 1995 the Museo degli Usi e Costumi della Gente Trentina has promoted a capillary work of coordination of the area’s small ethnographic museums, including the small hydraulic power factories and some sites that bear witness to the agro-silvopastoral past, effectively interpreting the specific role that a museum of supra-local scope has been recognised and theorised by distinguished museographers of the calibre of Georges-Henri Rivière, Roberto Togni, Fredi Drugman and Gaetano Forni. In 2021, as a result of a controversial unilateral decision by the institutional referent, this almost 30-year commitment was abruptly interrupted.

 

INTERMEZZO: EDICOLE VOTIVE A NAPOLI
Testo e foto di Cristina Pantellaro

 

Lex-voto mancante.
Antropologia e politica delle pratiche devozionali nell’eruzione vesuviana del 1631
GIOVANNI GUGG

Abstract. In the context of studies on rituals and the protection of saints in early modern Neapolitan culture, this essay analyses the value of an important textual and iconographic source, the pictorial ex-voto. The last eruptive cycle of the volcano Vesuvius lasted about three centuries, from 16 December 1631 to March 1944. The opening eruption was catastrophic and, although it gave rise to a ‘typographical epidemic’, no pictorial ex-votos can be found in the shrines of the Neapolitan area. This absence allowed the author to adopt an anthropological approach in order to investigate the relationship between disasters and popular religious devotion, which changes whether the event is collective or individual

 

Il ‘Pulcino della Minerva’ di Roma e il ‘liotro’ di Catania.
Due monumenti e due storie linguistiche a confronto
ALFIO LANAIA

Abstract. This paper compares two monuments, the ‘Elefantino di Piazza della Minerva’ in Rome and the ‘Fontana dell’Elefante’ in Catania, and their respective popular names, Porcino della Minerva or Pulcino della Minerva and Liotro. After having documented the presence of these denominations in literary works, I discuss their origins and analyze similarities and differences between what the two monuments have represented and continue to represent today on a symbolic level for the people of Rome and Catania.

 

Healing Correspondences.
Experience as a Pathway between Spirituality and Healthcare
EMILY PIERINI

Abstract. This paper examines the relationship between trance and mental health in the mediumistic practice of the Brazilian Christian Spiritualism of the Vale do Amanhecer, in which mediumship may be part of a therapeutic process. It discusses particular cases of mediums who are also healthcare professionals, exploring how they establish correspondences between spiritual and medical knowledge, and whether these correspondences may suggest new avenues to rethink the communicability between different fields of therapeutic knowledge. In doing so, it examines the category of ‘experience’ as a pathway to consilience, while re-framing spirit mediumship and possession within the therapeutic dimension.

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