Fiesta, fiestas: algunas notas desde los escritos de Luigi M. Lombardi Satriani

Luigi M. Lombardi Satriani, an Italian demologist and anthropologist, had a profound interest for the forms of the popular and peasant tradition of Southern Italy, but also for the processes of cultural change due to the economic thrusts of the commodification of culture. The theme of the feast was one of the topics on which the scholar mostly exercised his critical reflections about folk culture. Many of his writings are dedicated to the study and symbolic deciphering of the behaviors of the participants in festive events, in particular Holy Week, Carnival and pilgrimages. Through the reading of Lombardi Satriani’s writings this article proposes a critical path in search of the ethnographic approach and the interpretative model with which the scholar approached the theme of the feast.