Back to the origins of Italian Oral History: the Ernesto de Martino Institute and its International Network

This paper examines the Ernesto de Martino Institute (IEdM) as a key site for understanding the early development of Italian oral history. Founded in Milan in 1966, the Institute combined archival research, phonographic production and militant cultural work, emerging within a broader Italian context in which anthropology, history, ethnomusicology and the folk revival were rediscovering oral sources. While the storiography has often portrayed the IEdM as an autochthonous expression of the Italian Left and of political folk culture, this study reframes its trajectory within a transnational landscape. Drawing on extensive archival research in Italy, Germany, Hungary, Switzerland and the United Kingdom, the paper reconstructs the IEdM’s international network, mapping its exchanges with record labels, researchers and cultural institutions across Europe, the United States, Latin America, Africa and Asia. These contacts reveal forms of circulation - of discs, editorial materials, ideas and practices - that challenge the narrative of oral history as a unidirectional import from the Anglophone world. Instead, the IEdM appears as an active node in horizontal networks, engaging with pioneering experiences such as the Radio Ballads, the School of Scottish Studies, Paredon Records, Oak Publications and Casa de las Américas, as well as with institutions in the GDR and Hungary. By tracing these connections, the paper offers a more nuanced genealogy of Italian oral history, showing how the IEdM’s militant approach to sound recording and public history intersects with the hybrid, interdisciplinary roots of the field. This transnational and microhistorical perspective contributes to rethinking the origins of oral history in Italy beyond national narratives and disciplinary boundaries.