Carlo Tullio Altan

Born into an ancient Friuli family in San Vito al Tagliamento, Carlo Tullio-Altan was one of Italy leading experts in cultural anthropology, as well as a philosopher, sociologist and intellectual.

[6] Inviato in Albania durante la World War II, partecipa successivamente alla Italian resistance movement, militando nel Action Party (Italy).

From 1953, thanks to the influence of Ernesto De Martino, Remo Cantoni (whose voluntary assistant he will also be, starting in 1958) and Tullio Tentori, he devoted himself to anthropology,[8][9] according to an approach that is not based exclusively on field research and ethnography but that makes recourse above all to philosophical thought, the history of religions, epistemology,sociology, and psychology.

[17] In questo progetto, vanno inserite alcune fra le sue opere più recenti come La coscienza civile degli italiani e il manuale di Citizenship education (subject).

The last period of his research activity, he devoted it to the study of the basic Symbol components of Identity (social science),[18] focusing, to this end, on the Theory of categoriesof ethnos, identifying and analyzing its five main components, namely the "epos" (i.e.,Collective memory), the "ethos" (i.e., the sacralization of norms and rules[19] into values) the "logos" (i.e., interpersonal language), the ‘genos’ (i.e., the idea of a common descent) and the "topos" (i.e., the symbol of a collective communal Identity (social science) settled on a given territory), in order to find a possible rational solution, from the perspective of anthropology, to the conflicts between the various Ethnocentrism.