Reading "Malinowski and the Alps – Anthropological and Historical Perspectives" in Ritten
A Mountain Foodways Bookclub. Readings, rereadings and high-altitude snacks for the mind
This month, we are reading together the book “Malinowski and the Alps – Anthropological and Historical Perspectives”, edited by Elisabeth Tauber and Dorothy Zinn.
You can find a PDF version here.
Bronisław Kasper Malinowski, a Polish-British anthropologist, is widely recognised as a prominent figure in the field. His 1922 work, "Argonauts of the Western Pacific", established him as one of Europe's most essential anthropologists. He held positions at the London School of Economics and Yale, and his social theory emphasised how social and cultural institutions meet basic human needs.
Although a notorious philanderer, in 1919 married Elsie Rosaline Masson, an Australian photographer, writer (in 1915 published An Untamed Territory: The Northern Territory of Australia), and traveller. I think they would have been influencers in this time and age.
Curiously, our birthdays are almost a century apart.
I first encountered Maliniwski’s work while studying. As a sociologist who was forever in love with anthropology, his research hit very soft spots. So many years after my university studies, it is a pleasure to be back reading a collection of academic essays on these topics.
The Italian version of this article is available here.
Oberbozen
Between the second half of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th, the “discovery” of the Dolomites, Oberbozen, which had become a tourist resort since the arrival of the cog railway.
The affluent class, yesterday and today, lived between the upper-class village of Oberbozen with its Sommerfrischhäuser (holiday houses) on the Ritten-Renon plateau, and the Kurort (spa town) Gries - quite not the backward rural backyard, but indeed not London.
The members of the local upper-class society from Bozen also spent their summers on the Ritten plateau. Typically, they vacationed in the meadows from the Day of St. Peter and Paul (June 29) to the Nativity of Mary Day (September 8) in their “fresh” summer residences—and avoided boiling in Bozen, with its two mephitic rivers and piping hot temperatures.
The Malinowskis
And it is precisely Oberbozen-Soprabolzano and Gries that became home to Bronislaw Malinowski, his wife, Elsie R. Masson, and their children for a while. And with them, their friends.
In Malinowski’s time, as today, wealthy individuals from the upper and middle classes often travelled throughout Europe, gathering in capital cities such as Paris, London, and Vienna and vacationing together in the southern French Riviera or the Alps. They embraced a "romantic" ideal and embodied a "bourgeois-bohemian" sensibility, similar to what we might recognise as such in today's terms, says the essay.
They decided to buy “Villa Amalia”, a cottage they could see from their window, which was for sale. In 1923, they bought this house “with meadow and pasture” from a lawyer in Bozen for 35,000 Lire.
Although the Malinowskis moved from Oberbozen to London in 1929, they continued to holiday in Oberbozen and to host their friends there in the 1930s.
By living here, so close to Bozen, did he leave a mark on Alpine anthropology?
He maintained a villa at Oberbozen, where he and his students regularly vacationed. A generation of British anthropologists experienced invigorating walks in the mountains and enjoyed what Malinowski is said to have regarded as the finest scenery in Europe.1
Anthropological study of the Alps started in the 1950s and 1960s when several fieldworkers from the United States travelled to the high Alpine valleys. Although what was happening before their eyes was anthropologically relevant, they could not grasp the depth of it: Malinowski arrived in Oberbozen after the 1919 Saint-German Peace Treaty, which established the new border between Italy and Austria along the Brenner Pass and determined the sorrowful administrative separation from Austria.
The German-speaking South Tyroleans were to concede that they had been defeated on the Alpine Front during World War I,” and this, accompanied by an ethnic substitution and the forced Italianisation of the area, was part of the fascist hybris.2
Although no link has been found between Malinowski and these mountains, the anthropologist recalls this early experience in the Polish mountains among the Tatry peasants and shepherds in his biography.
Despite his profession, the differences between the German Bauer and the Italian contadino were so plainly evident in Rittens that they did not interest Malinowski that much.
Lucie Varga
Lucie Varga, a trained historian and ethnographer who worked long after Malinowski but was influenced by his methodological plea “to grasp the inside point of view,” argued that anthropological research in the Alps has influenced social and microhistory, with its questions referring to social practice and change3.
Specifically, Varga expressed gratitude to Malinowski for his help designing field research, which aimed to investigate a third diagnostic feature: the “folk culture” of an Alpine valley. Back then, the Alps were some Eldorado of folk studies because they were a reliquary of old customs, sayings, and artefacts that had long disappeared in most other parts of Europe.4
“Anthropology begins at home”. Even Volkskunde, the study of the German people by German scholars, though partly mystical and largely misused, is nonetheless an expression of the sound view that we must start by knowing ourselves first and only then proceed to the more exotic savageries says Malinowski in 1938.
In the 1930s, folklore studies and social anthropology were separated and impossible to join. For anthropologists, it is only “the history surviving either in live tradition or in institutional working which is important”.5
Malinowski rightfully feared how folklore studies and history could be harnessed for nationalist purposes and that he, therefore, “attempted to keep the dangers of political instrumentalisation at bay by keeping history at a distance from anthropology”.
Back to Oberbozen
The essay collection, which you can read here: https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/75910, concludes that Malinowski's distance from historical research is not a radical rejection but a necessary outcome of his focus on the 'new anthropology.' He emphasises social relations and symbolic-ritual expressions, which he investigates through the rigorous and comprehensive fieldwork of 'participant observation' within specific social contexts of limited dimensions.
Sure is, his family delightfully enjoyed Ritten, but even more so, they enjoyed visiting the humble maso of their maid Maria. Her kitchen was outstanding, and it is recorded that, during a visit, “her family spread the Malinowski’s each a slice of bread with thick butter in the nice, simple way farm people would do…”
The changing global scenarios certainly explain why the Alps have witnessed a sensible decline in community studies based on prolonged and intensive fieldwork in the past two decades. Mountains are almost conventionally remote areas.
Still, the Alpine valleys are close enough to allow “native” anthropologists. Alpine studies are therefore shifting, or returning, to what Berardino Palumbo has termed “fieldwork Italian style”. These passionately sought ancient economic forms and tools to unravel the economic essence of bygone eras. He revered the mountain farmer as a custodian of ancestral traditions. His mission was to vividly portray the financial hardships faced by Tyrolean mountain farmers, both in the past and present, highlighting their honourable struggle against the formidable mountain terrain.
“Our valley is a mountain valley, which means there is no wheat. The properties are small, with just enough to provide hay for the cattle owned by each one, usually 3 to 14 heads. In the lower part of the valley, apple trees still grow and produce bitter, green fruit. The peasants make sweet cider from them or slice and dry them; the latter is a great delicacy for children in winter. There are also small vegetable gardens with potatoes, cabbages, lettuce, peas and beans. Wealthy families also have one or two pigs and a few chickens.”
MFEA – The Malinowski Forum for Ethnography and Anthropology Project
The Provincial Cultural Commission established a historical marker at the Oberbozen villa where the Malinowskis spent their leisure time and happy summers. Bozen-Bolzano’s “Hill of the Sages” garden is another site that commemorates Bronislaw Malinowski, with a tree planted in his honour.
Moreover, the MFEA project (The Malinowski Forum for Ethnography and Anthropology Project) aims to study the works and lives of Bronislaw Malinowski and Elsie Masson, focusing on their presence in South Tyrol. It makes available different resources about Malinowski—traces in the rise of collective ideas and shared lifestyles that contributed to the development of science, ethnography, and anthropology. (For more information, see Project).
On the trail of the Malinowskis
If there were now an intellectual collective of holidaymakers who meet in the summer to walk, think and spend time together, this group would probably meet for an aperitif at Vögelino in Bolzano, and would mingle among the chic crowd and tourists in slippers in the center of Bolzano.
Probably, after a tour of Sportler Alpin, under the arcades, or of Oberrauch Zitt for the less sporty. Walking and hiking plans would be made, and future outings planned.
At dinner time, with hunger biting, the group would move to Lana, not far from Bolzano, for a perfect dinner at Reichhalter 1773. Under the delicious pergola on those very hot summer nights, and in one of the warm rooms lined with wood on cooler days.
They would have a rack of lamb on their plate, or some grilled vegetables, and certainly a dessert with seasonal fruit, indulging in the atmosphere of the restaurant which is also a small charming hotel, where some of them would probably have stayed.
In the morning, dispatched, they would go on a trip. I have three itineraries to suggest:
At the Seiseralm, for a beautiful circular trip on the Bullaccia plateau, with a journey up to the Tuene hut (Tuenehütte) for a delicious plate of canenderli and strudel with cream.
In Obereggen, for a walk overlooking the Lagorai, in a real Alpine amphitheatre, and a lunch at Oberholz.
In Renon-Ritten, for a circular tour from the cable car arrival station to the top of the mountain and back to the Feltunerhütte with its amazing cellar and a lunch in the sun with dumplings in broth.
In the evening, having descended back into the valley, it would be perfect to linger at the Merano spa for a sauna and a comforting bath, which would relieve those suffering from the fatigue of the mountains.
Mountains are places that are simultaneously communal and collective, solitary and individual. For this reason, every month, I offer you a reading by someone other than me who writes about mountain food and foodways.
I propose this artcile by “The Management of Reality” that says “Anthropologists are keenly aware that all manner of human interactions beyond language itself are governed by grammars.2 So, just as an English article forces one to follow with an English noun, in other domains of action one must also always carefully precede and follow certain complex behaviors with certain others according to the relevant grammatical rules.”
Cole, J. W., & Wolf, E. R. (1974). The hidden frontier. Ecology and ethnicity in an Alpine valley. Academic Press.
Salvucci, D., Tauber, E. & Zinn, D. L. (2019). The Malinowskis in South Tyrol: a relational biography of people, places and works. In Bérose – Encyclopédie internationale des histoires de l’anthropologie, Paris. http://www.berose.fr/article1754.html?lang=fr
Lucie Varga, (2006). In an Alpine valley (G. Huppert, Trans.). Journal of The Historical Society, 6(2), 251–274. (Original work published 1936)
Helbok, A. (1931). Zur Soziologie und Volkskunde des Alpenraumes [On the sociology and folklore of the Alpine space]. Zeitschrift für Volkskunde, 3, 101–112.
Malinowski, B. (1945). The dynamics of social change. Yale University Press.