¿Quién tiene miedo del pasado? La relación con la historia de la demo-etno-antropología italiana entre los siglos xix y xx

The construction of the past and its periodic reaffirmation are fundamental moments of the construction of identity, both individual and collective, and are, therefore, the object of more or less conscious decisions and manipulations by groups and individuals. It is only through the diachronic analysis of cultural responses to human problems that certain spatial and temporal continuities of ritual forms, beliefs and symbols that justify it are clarified; it is not only at the level of the mere succession of phenomena, because of the signifiers, nor of the only sociological analysis that they possess and the attention of those who seek the reasons for being in the future must be concentrated. Things and facts mean for men because they have just one story, be it a mythical story, that is, they presuppose a temporality either understood as progression or repetition. Therefore, historical anthropology understood as an instrument of assimilation of the diachronic dimension, which is an essential moment for the understanding and explanation of the forms and meanings of contemporary cultural events, is cultural anthropology tout court.