Introduction
Pistoia - Dialoghi sull’uomo / Pistoia-Dialogues on Man
May 27 - 28 - 29, 2011
Encouraged by the flattering success of the first edition—last year the festival drew considerable interest by Italian media and academics, and 9,000 visitors keenly attended and participated in its various events—the we are glad to introduce the program of the second edition of ‘Pistoia-Dialogues on Man’, the cultural festival devoted to contemporary anthropology and sociology.
Once again, the festival will feature a number of events—public meetings, performances, lectures and debates—concerning topical issues of our time, discussed in an accessible language with a view to drawing as large an audience as possible.
The theme selected for this second edition—‘The body that we are’—is one of great cultural and social impact and we trust it will attract the interest of many people of all ages and cultural backgrounds. The body is like a blank page on which every community, every society and every culture writes, draws, inscribes and thus leaves its mark on it. The body is also one of the main tools by which human groups express their sense of belonging, as proven by the fact that no human society that ever lived in the world left is just as it was. But the body is also the prism through which we appraise the well-being or the malaise of a society—its problems, its weaknesses and its development—and is thus a sort of mirror of our being here and now.