Reconfiguring Tradition

This research project is built on several questions which have recently arisen in the field of the historical anthropology of Europe. It fits naturally and coherently into my current research trajectory and, at the same time, it is aimed at broadening and developing my previous research hypothesis and conclusions. It is my intention to engage in an intensive, full-time historical-anthropological investigation into the transformations of traditional festive culture in rural and non-urban Europe (especially its carnivalesque declination) that have occurred in the last few decades. The project will focus on the causes, the forms and the modalities of the revitalization and/or reconfiguration of such traditions. In order to do so, my investigation and study will be founded on three main methodological pillars: 1) the reconsideration of the outcomes of my previous research (which have already been presented in several publications); 2) the outcomes of a new ethnographic fieldwork, which will be undertaken in France as a consistent part of this research project; 3) the exhaustive study of secondary sources about my topics and related ones. A strong emphasis will be put on the structural and historical causes that, according to specific European contexts, have determined the manifest changes and transformations that characterize the forms, meanings and functions of the rural traditions which will constitute the objects of my investigation. The research will also explore the symbolic roots and the more general motivations at the basis of the social use of notions such as tradition, heritage, nostalgia, and other memory- or past- based poetics and practices in recent years and today, in Europe. Europe as a field of research and the (de)construction of European identities represent other themes which will be openly problematized, in the light of ethnographic and historical evidence. The final part of the research will be devoted to the development of a theoretical dynamic model, constructed comparatively on the basis of ethnographic data and secondary literature. This model will be useful for the understanding of the causes, consequences and other aspects of the phenomena and processes connected with the contemporary revitalization of festive traditions in rural Europe. The ultimate outcome of the whole research project will be a monograph.

The research project Reconfiguring Tradition main goal was to understand the transformations of traditional festive culture in rural and non-urban Europe that have occurred in the last few decades, and explain the reasons of such transformations. It moved from and confirmed the assumption that festivals, public events, and public rituals can be studied to understand broader social and cultural phenomena related to different spheres of human activity. The project focused on the causes, the forms, and the modalities of the revitalization and/or reconfiguration of such traditions. In order to do so, I engaged in a thorough review of the existent scientific literature about this and related topics. Moreover, I reconsidered and sometimes re-worked out the material and the conclusions of my previous projects, which were methodologically and thematically related to this last one. Last but not least, I undertook a new ethnographic fieldwork i.e., a specific method of investigation typical of ethnological and anthropological disciplines in Catalonia (Spain). Thanks to these different approaches, I have been able to come to significant conclusions about the dynamics through which certain communities, in Europe, use, re-use, and manipulate their local traditions, for a variety of purposes. I have focused mainly on the political and cultural motivations and conditions of such reconfiguration, but I have also explored the ways in which representations of the past considered as a symbolic source are used in the shaping of social memory, the creation of cultural heritages, the construction of social as well as national and European identities. Said conclusions and the evidence on the basis of which I have developed them have already been presented at conferences and during my University courses. More importantly, they are presented and explained in detail in articles, chapters, and volumes that have been published or are about to be published, all or most of which are or will be openly accessible to the public through different platforms on the Internet.