Bodies of vital matter: Notions of life force and transcendence in traditional southern Italy

• Bodies of Vital Matter presents an innovative study that explores folk beliefs relating to the vital force of the human body and to the transcendence of the corporal. The time frame is the period from the unification of Italy to the Second World War. There are three principal themes of investigation. A first theme is loss of vital force believed to result from the influence of other persons and beings. Topics discussed in this context are folk medicine and ideas concerning the humours of the human body, as well as beliefs relating to "thefts" of mother’s milk, the evil eye, blood-sucking witches and the harmful influences of menstruating women. A second theme is imageries of how life energy can be replenished from external sources. Here the focus is on popular cults of grace-giving martyrs and saints, on rural sanctuaries that connect with creative natural forces, and on the celebration of Easter and the Eucharistic Sacrifice in the Roman Catholic Mass. The third principal theme is the denial of death as expressed in practices of entombment and by ideas about regeneration of new life from death; among the topics discussed are death and burial practices, the celebration of All Souls Day, and natural symbols of renewal and rebirth. Bodies of Vital Matter is based on data extracted from a comprehensive body of texts written by South Italian ethnographers and folklorists in the decades around the turn of the century, complemented by the author’s field observations in contemporary Italy. Interpretative social anthropology constitutes the theoretical framework. The comparision of customs and beliefs from hundreds of South Italian villages and towns reveals patterns of cultural meaning that could hardly be discerned in a study focusing on a single local community. The systemic cultural approach used in the study has a remarkable power of explanation. A wide variety of seemingly unrelated beliefs, practices and myths are shown to be generated by a core set of cultural presuppositions. Features of social organization are crucial to the interpretation of the ethnography. In particular, various forms of reciprocity in social interaction are seen as fundamental in shaping ideas about transference of vital force, both between individuals and from divine beings to human beings. The notion of "la famiglia" as a social unit of paramount importance is a key to the understanding of representations of corporal transcendence and family continuity.

Ämnesord

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Sociologi -- Socialantropologi (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Sociology -- Social Anthropology (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

socialanropologi

Italien

magi

övertro

social anthropology

Italy

symbolism

cosmology

Roman Catholicism

social organization

vitality

folk medicine

burial practices

death

cult of saints

the evil eye

witches

Publikations- och innehållstyp

vet (ämneskategori)

dok (ämneskategori)