Critical Ethnocentrism (1949–1959): The Southern Period and the Articulation of a Post-colonial Anthropology alongside Claude Lévi-Strauss

Abstract

The World of Magic can be regarded as a symbol for de Martino’s fundamental role as a promoter for the study of religion on the Italian peninsula. Because of his involvement with some of Italy’s most distinguished publishers, such as Giangiacomo Feltrinelli (1926–1972), Alberto Mondadori (1914–1976), and Giulio Einaudi (1912–1999), it has been argued that “half of the books published in the field of anthropology and religious studies” between the late 1940s until the mid-sixties, ‘carried the stamp of de Martino’.”1 His collaboration with the Einaudi publishing house was an immense success, leading to the publication of a series known as Collection of Religious, Anthropological, and Psychological Studies (Collezione di studi religiosi, etnologici e psicologici).2 It was co-directed by de Martino and the renowned Italian literary figure Cesare Pavese (1908– 1950) until the latter’s suicide in 1950. Supported by Raffaele Pettazzoni and Angelo Brelich, two important historians of religion—who collaborated with translations and introductions3—the series is also commonly known by the name Purple Series (Collana viola) for the distinguishing color of its cover. However, his magnum opus also stands for de Martino’s isolation within this disciplinary matrix. Indeed, his professional development as a historian of religion was not burgeoning as he had hoped. In 1948, after his book was published as the first volume of the Purple Series, de Martino was rejected from a teaching position in anthropology at the Sapienza University in Rome. There, two of his closest allies, Boccassino and Pettazzoni, considered his work to be too philosophical and not anthropological enough. In the words of one