Rethinking the “marginality” of medical anthropology in Italy. Politics of resistance for whole anthropology

Starting from the teaching and research experience of the author in the School of Medicine and Surgery of the University of Naples Federico II in Italy, and considering what is actually happening in Italian universities, the paper highlights the dangerous trend of a reduction of medical anthropology courses as important symptom of the widest and creeping impoverishment of whole anthropology, discipline so valuable and strategic for humanity. The aim is to draw the attention of the national and international academic and scientific communities on the need to develop adequate strategies of resistance to preserve, however, the epistemological wealth of anthropology, even surpassing, at this stage of criticality, some conflicts related to its various forms such as social, cultural, medical, applied, clinical ones, and to its different schools, in order to get public legitimacy in terms of a clear socio-political and institutional mandate, considering also the so-called ‘ontological turn’ in human sciences.