Milocca; a Sicilian village [Hardcover]

Charlotte Gower Chapman (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 255 pages
• Publisher: Allen and Unwin (1973)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0043900038
• ISBN-13: 978-0043900031
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #7,393,145 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars vision of an earlier time, July 3, 2007

By 

Robert S. Newman "Bob Newman" (Marblehead, Massachusetts USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

Sometime in the 1980s, Sunshine City Library, in the western suburbs of Melbourne, Australia, discarded this book, which made its way to a used book store in Melbourne, where I bought it in 1988. My copy subsequently traveled by sea and road to my home in Marblehead, Mass., where it sat on a shelf for seventeen years before I got around to reading it. I'm glad I finally got to it, though I can't say it will thrill many modern readers. You won't find out much about modern Sicily here; the research was done in 1929-29, during Mussolini's rule in Italy. If you are interested in conditions, customs, and culture in a Sicilian village about 80 years ago, you have certainly come to the right place.

By the same token, anthropology has also moved on in the last eighty years. What was cutting edge research in those times, is decidedly old hat now. So, if you are searching for a study of a European, Italian, or Sicilian village that will point you in post-structuralist directions, you won't find it here. That's probably obvious. But, don't blow off Chapman's study.

When anthropological field work began, in the early 20th century, British anthropologists all headed for remote corners of the globe---outback Australia, the Andaman Islands, the Trobriand Islands, and parts of Africa. Anthropology was linked with "primitives" and colonial rule. In the US, it was linked to recording and preserving "dying cultures" among Native Americans before they disappeared. In any case, anthropology sought its theories and data among tribal peoples. Cultures as isolated wholes became the regular fodder of field studies. (Researchers often disregarded what didn't fit such a picture.) It was not till after WW I that the first studies began of settled, peasant peoples who lived in villages. MILOCCA was one of the first such works, but due to various mishaps it was never published until 1971, over 40 years after its completion. It is a beautifully written, sensitive study of the type written in those days. Though a few references are made to the researcher's position, there are no local voices. MILOCCA is a long, extremely-detailed description of a Sicilian village made by an American, with topics (sex and age, social stratification, blood ties, marriage, religion, superstition, and world view among others) derived from the Western anthropological canon of the time. The author uses a large number of proverbs to illustrate Sicilian points of view, but never thinks of including interviews. MILOCCA can be seen as a pioneering work of its time, but just as the Wright brothers' airplane hardly seems cutting edge today, so Chapman's work has been superceded long ago by other, more challenging volumes. It is a fine example of 1920s anthropology and could be read in conjunction with Danilo Dolci's "Sicilian Lives" to get an excellent picture of 20th century Sicilian social history.