ABSTRACT
This chapter draws attention to some debatable statements in de Martino's writings where he seems to be building an ethnocentric hierarchy of values and judging his native southern Italian society in a negative way. It attempts to counteract this impression by accounting for these passages in the wider context of de Martino's thought. The chapter examines the author's approach to the problem of magic, in which he utilized concepts of individual identity and objective reality that actually questioned well-established ethnocentric assumptions. It proposes that his concept of culture, on which his theoretical system was founded, endowed magic with a pivotal cultural and existential function. Finally, the chapter takes up de Martino's concept of "ethnographic humanism" or "critical ethnocentrism" — one of his most original stands, in which a firm rejection of relativism is combined with a deep awareness of the historical determination and the culturally conditioned use of values and categories of judgment.
