Ars longa, vita brevis: en torno a la trayectoria personal de Carmelo Lisón Tolosana

Abstract

This article reviews the personal and academic career of Carmelo Lisón Tolosana (1929-2020), author of a rich and deep anthropological production, whose works fill the last half century of Spanish production in this academic and scientific field. His intense scientific activity did not prevent him from carrying out another, no less intense, academic activity, which includes his contribution to the institutionalization of a social anthropology in Spain, of clear English and European roots. This anthropology was consistent with his training at Oxford University with a distinguished functionalist teaching staff, whose members made up the so-called English school, which gave British anthropology fame and splendor for several decades. The text pays special attention to the intellectual and professional itinerary of Carmelo Lisón, which begins in the rural environment of the province of Zaragoza (Spain), in a small town of farmers, in the bosom of a family of artisans, and in a Spain poor, with little social openness. However, this is not an obstacle for him, skillfully using his intelligence and the social channels that remain open, to experience a marked personal progression, simultaneously with a pronounced social promotion. This is how it is incardinated first in the English university and, later, in the Spanish one, where it travels the entire academic ladder in a short space of time, while its scientific production becomes an inexcusable reference of anthropological interpretivism, both in Europe as outside our continent. In spite of everything, we are facing a trajectory analogous, in many respects, to that of other university professors of his time, whose substantial difference is found in the singular intensity that he imprints on his surprising life trajectory.