No dia 8 de maio, Dario Nardini (Universidade de Pádua) será o orador convidado de um Seminário do Grupo de Investigação Diversidades sobre o tema Sport, the body and masculinity through the lens of cultural anthropology. A partir das 11h, na Sala Maria de Sousa do ICS-ULisboa e online.

This seminar aims to introduce some of the insights of the anthropological and ethnographic research on sport and physical activities, through the description of my main fieldwork analysis. Namely, Breton wrestling (gouren), surfing on the Australian Gold Coast, and Calcio Storico Fiorentino. Firstly, gouren is a “traditional” wrestling activity that is closely linked to the claim of a regional cultural specificity in contemporary Brittany – which is supposed to derive from the Celtic occupation of the Armorican peninsula. Surfing on the Gold Coast is considered as a quintessential expression (and at the same time a social field for the definition) of masculinity and the Australian “character” and way of relating to the ocean – and nature. Finally, Calcio Storico Fiorentino is the re-enactment of the sixteenth-century game of “calcio”. Since its “reinvention” in 1930, it has been a contested field for the expression and definition of masculinity and “imagined” Florentine identities. Currently, it has become a symbolic way for the participants to “resist” what they perceive as the tourist “invasion” of the city. Through different social and cultural logics, these activities contribute to the formation, promotion and orientation of different and specific conceptions of subjectivity, collective identity, the body, strength, virtues, the relationship between human beings and nature, and masculinity. And the ethnographic methodology offers the researcher a valuable tool for exploring the ways in which people collectively and processually define these conceptions in relation to the specific social and cultural context in which they practice their chosen activity.

Dario Nardini is a tenure in Cultural and Social Anthropology in the Department of Historical and Geographic Sciences and the Ancient World (DiSSGeA) at the University of Padova. He has conducted ethnographic research on Breton wrestling, surfing in Australia, Calcio Storico Fiorentino and the informal economies linked to food production and consumption in Tuscany, investigating various issues at the heart of contemporary anthropology, including the body, sport, cultural identity, heritage, the imaginary and research methodologies.

He is the editorial coordinator of Lares, and editor of Ledizioni’s series on ‘Sport, body, culture’. His most recent publications include Surfers Paradise. Un’etnografia del surf sulla Gold Coast australiana (Ledizioni, 2022); Il Calcio Storico Fiorentino. La rievocazione tra patrimonio e “identità” (Olschki, 2023); ”Economie informali: neoruralismo e filiere alimentari in Italia centrale’, monographic issue of Lares (with Fabio Dei, 2023).