Anthropology and history of religion in the XXth century: the contribution of Italian school of history of religion

• Grant number: 15/07718-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research
• Start date: August 15, 2015
• End date: May 14, 2016
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Anthropology - Theory of Anthropology
• Principal Investigator: Maria Cristina Pompa
• Grantee: Maria Cristina Pompa
• Host Investigator: Nicola Angelo Maria Gasbarro
• Host Institution: Escola de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (EFLCH). Universidade Federal de São Paulo (UNIFESP). Campus Guarulhos. Guarulhos , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: Università degli Studi di Udine, Italy

Abstract

The project aims to investigate the intellectual construction of the fields of anthropology and history of religions in 20TH century Europe, focusing on the so-called "Italian school of history of religions", created in the 1920s. Almost unknown in Brazil, this current of thought constitutes an important contribution to the anthropological and historical approach, not only to the religious facts, but also to the categories identifying these "facts". Therefore, the research focuses on the relationship between the disciplinary fields of anthropology and history of religions, with regard to its objects as well as its epistemological assumptions. By analyzing the Italian case, it is possible to reflect on the processes of historical construction of own concepts of religion and culture in Western modernity, seeking to identify the transits between them, as well on the reasons of these transit. The work will consist, firstly, in the survey and the analysis of the works of the most important authors of this school and, secondly, in interviews with scholars, historians and anthropologists inheritors of this tradition. The purpose is to outline the social and political context in which the School has developed, as well its empirical fields and its intellectual interlocutors. Particular attention will be paid to the polemics and the dialogues with other lines of thought: the Father Wilhelm Schmidt's Vienna School, the Phenomenology of Religion and the Structural Anthropology. (AU)