................................
THE TEAM
CONTACT
However, Jorge Dias was distant from the themes and concepts of Anglo-American production, which, since the 1950s, had focused on Mediterranean Europe, a field within which José Cutileiro (1971) would conduct research in the 1960s. Th e latter, with its emphasis on the structural economic and social inequality of the Alentej o society, presented an image of rural Portugal entirely in contrast with his own, centred on the n orth, where the asymmetry in land ownership did not take on the extreme form observed in the southern parts of the country. His knowledge of French anthropology also stemmed primarily from ethnologists and folklore scholars who had established themselves before World War II, and also from a number of Africanists whose writings emerged later, however structuralism had almost no impact on his work.
Dias’ reputation did not develop around his writings on the theory or methodology of anthropology, which were subsidiary texts to his main productions or associated with his teaching activities and did not involve elaborate discussions on the authors or theories addressed. However, it should be noted that in a country where the teaching of the social sciences was practically non-existent, and where research, when it existed, was entirely disconnected from contemporary international scientific debate, his reference to some international scientific production was in itself a n asset and a sign of highly rare cosmopolitanism.
His fame stemmed primarily from the monographs he authored or co-authored, as well as his reflections on the Portuguese "national character"—without disregarding other works produced individually or as part of a team. His first published monograph, Vilarinho da Furna (1948), is an extension of the thesis he defended in Munich in 1944. Although he was supervised by a Nazi professor, there are no traces of the racial determinism at the core of National Socialism in his writing. This community's forms of economic and social life—a collectivist and communal way of life—and its beliefs are presented as the result of environmental influence and the type of predominant activity.
