Public lecture on anthropology
Cesare Poppi will illustrate and criticise current dominant trends in comparative anthropology and reassess its founding stance of cultural relativism
A public lecture, titled ‘Beyond a Room With a View: Jack Goody and the Future of Comparative Anthropology’, is being held at the Valletta Campus Library today at 5pm.
In 1991, Goody published Towards a Room with a View: A Personal Account of Contributions to Local Knowledge, Theory, and Research in Fieldwork and Comparative Studies.
Recent developments in anthropology have reassessed anthropology’s founding stance of cultural relativism to the effect of scuppering the agenda of comparative anthropology, of which Goody was arguably the last practitioner of the Classic School.
The lecture, to be delivered by Cesare Poppi, will illustrate and criticise present dominant trends in anthropology in that direction.
Poppi obtained a philosophy degree at the University of Bologna with Bernardo Bernardi. Subsequently, he was awarded an MPhil and PhD in social anthropology at the University of Cambridge, UK, with Goody. He has conducted research among the Ladins of the Val di Fassa (Dolomites) since 1974.
From 1983, he has been engaged in research on masks and secret societies in north-western Ghana.
Since 2003, he has conducted fieldwork on winter masquerades in Europe (carnivalkingofeurope.it).
Currently, Poppi lives and works in a deserted hamlet in the Eastern Dolomites - and sails the Adriatic whenever possible.