Malinowski and the Anthropological Study of the Alps: Really a Missed Encounter?”

In spite of his familiarity with the mountains of South Tyrol and their peasant population, Bronislaw Malinowski neither engaged himself in anthropological research in the Alpine area, nor did he encourage any of his pupils to do so. This should not be seen, however, as proof of a totally missed encounter between Malinowski and the anthropological study of the Alps. For one thing, Malinowski exerted a direct influence on the ethnographic investigations carried out by the historian Lucie Varga in two Alpine valleys in the 1930s. Indeed, a short piece of counterfactual history of Alpine anthropology suggests that if Varga’s works had not been so long overlooked, post-war anthropological studies might have avoided some of the theoretical and ethnographic shortcomings that plagued them. In addition, although a systematic search of the literature reveals that Malinowski is only very rarely referred to by Alpine anthropologists, there can be little doubt that his methodological approach decisively shaped the community studies conducted in the Alps especially by American anthropologists in the second half of the 20th century. It is actually one of the contentions of this chapter that a Malinowskian approach is still badly needed today to counteract a tendency to settle for hasty and fatally superficial short term research. On the basis of some evidence presented in the chapter, it is also contended that Malinowski’s attitude to both history and folklore should be reconsidered.