Event: XI SIAA Conference – Perugia, December 14-16, 2023

This year, the Conference, celebrating the tenth anniversary of SIAA, aims to explore the social use of anthropology applied to heritage, health, and territories. Anthropologists can intercept these aspects in collaborations with various stakeholders, primarily institutional, where ethnography can provide a valuable contribution in terms of reconfiguring knowledge and practices guiding public intervention in different social and cultural contexts.

Over the years, Italian anthropology has developed the issue of heritage on various themes, such as cultural heritage, medical heritage, and sound heritage, reflecting on operational and social aspects, within the complexity of national and transnational territorial issues.

Themes such as the processes of heritage, the epistemic postures of heritage anthropology and their variations, management, enhancement, protection, and safeguarding of cultural heritage, with particular reference to the intangible, and heritage, museum, and ecomuseum policies, are at the center of a scientific debate where anthropology is engaged in interdisciplinary, interinstitutional, and international discussions.

Medical anthropology and ethnopsychiatry also address new issues, valuing the scientific commitment and operational vocation of field research, particularly regarding public health, the right to health, and environmental sustainability.

Working closely with territorial dynamics and policies represents a challenge and an opportunity for contemporary anthropologists, drawing on the extensive experience gained by scholars who have been trained in dialogue with Perugia Anthropology and Tullio Seppilli’s (1928-2017) teachings.

The predominant role of public anthropology in heritage, health, and territories can also overturn the premises of an anthropology that engages with institutions, reconfiguring the problems posed to them when applied in society. The Conference aims to rekindle a critical dialogue between scientific knowledge and public debate, emphasizing the freedom of anthropological reconfiguration of problems.