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- Binde, Per, 1956
(författare)
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Bodies of vital matter: Notions of life force and transcendence in traditional southern Italy
- 1999
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- 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.
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| 2. |
- Binde, Per, 1956
(författare)
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Nature versus city: Landscapes of Italian Fascism
- 1999
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Ingår i: Environment and Planning D: Society and Space. ; 17:6, s. 761-775
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- In this paper I explore the symbolism of nature and city as two opposing domains in the worldview of Italian Fascism. Nature was construed as a disordered and hostile realm destined to be conquered by man. Farmwork and projects of land reclamation were represented by means of metaphors of violent attack and war; agriculture came to symbolise the Fascist struggle for a radical transformation of Italian society. The city, understood as the epitome for civilisation, constituted an already domesticated and therefore ambiguous realm. As an ideal city, Rome represented the glorious era of the Ancient Roman Empire, which the Fascists wished to resurrect in a futuristic form. Rome of that time was, however, understood as corrupted by centuries of cultural decadence. Extensive modifications of the urban landscape were therefore made so as to represent in city space the Fascist claim to be a continuation of the antique past into a glorious new millenarian era. A comparison between Italian Fascism and German Nazism reveals that these movements had antithetic views on nature and cities.
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