"Non trovo pace più". Note relative alla ricerca su/di Frank Cancian, antropologo visivo nell'Italia del Sud

In 1957 a young American researcher, Frank Cancian, took 1801 photographs of Lacedonia, a small town in southern Italy, in the province of Avellino, in Campania. His photos describe the living conditions of the villagers and their work, in particular the peasants, the craftsmen, the middle class but also their social, economic, political and religious life during six months: from January to July. He also wrote an interesting field diary, in which he noted the problems related to fieldwork. In those years, many American researchers went to southern Italy to study the life and culture of peasants, such as Edward Banfield who developed his theory of “amoral familism”. Cancian’s work, however, proposed a partial critique of Banfield’s ideas. These materials are the subject of the research that the “Annabella Rossi” anthropology laboratory (University of Salerno - Department of Cultural Heritage Sciences) carries out in agreement with Pro Loco “Gino Chicone” and the Municipality of Lacedonia. This essay constitutes a first account of this research. An attempt to place Cancian’s figure and work in the flow of historical and cultural events after the Second World War.