Making the Invisible Ethnography Visible: The Peculiar Relationship Between Italian Anthropology and Feminism

The gender ethnography such as feminist anthropology is a textbook case of invisibility in Italy. The contemporary anthropological analysis has focused on deconstruction to unveil the mechanisms of power and the dynamics of the social hierarchy. In this sense, cultural anthropology would have had to acquire the commitment and reflexivity of gender and feminist ethnography without hiding them or relegating them into “dedicated texts.” Why are anthropologists such as Denise Paulme, Germaine Tillion, Michelle S. Rosaldo, Louise Lamphere, Nicole-Claude Mathieu, Gayle Rubin, Marilyn Strathern, Henrietta Moore, and Lila Abu-Lughod less famous than Bronislaw Malinowki, Edward Evan Evans-Pritchard, Marcel Griaule, Claude Lévi-Strauss, and Clifford Geertz? This chapter proposes the reconstruction of some of these exemplary ethnographies to bring them to the heart of the history of Italian anthropology. The author answers to the question if an Italian anthropology of women and a feminist ethnography exist and if it is visible. The author tries to understand if the ethnographies examined in this chapter has considered the international debate, knowing that the Anglo American positions do not overlap with the French ones. Finally, if there has been, conversely, an Italian case able to affect the national and/or international debate.