Vintilă Mihăilescu
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Vintilă Mihăilescu (born 23 May 1951) is a Romanian psychologist and anthropologist considered to be the only cultural anthropologist in Romania.
In 1974 he graduated from the University of Bucharest, Faculty of Psychology with a bachelor's degree in psychology. Between 1974 and 1978 he worked as a researcher at the National Institute of Gerontology. Between 1979 and 1991 he was a researcher at the Center for Anthropological Researches of the Romanian Academy and headed the department of cultural anthropology. In 1991 he was a Lecturer at the Faculty of Sociology, Psychology and Pedagogy of the University of Bucharest. He obtained a six-month grant from the "Mission du Patrimoine Ethnologique de France" and he was the founding director of the Social Observatory of the Bucharest University. In 1993, he earned a Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Bucharest. In 1995, he was assistant professor at the department of sociology. In 1997 he became head of the master program in anthropology at Bucharest University, Director of the Bucharest Rural Observatory, PHARE Rural Development Project, and director of a World Bank/CNCSU project on community development. In 1998 he wrote many accounts in the cultural weekly revue Dilema, and in 2000 he became full professor at the National School for Political and Administrative Sciences. He is head of the master program in anthropology at National School for Political and Administrative Sciences. In 2005 he became the Director of the Museum of the Romanian Peasant.
He tried to define the domain of cultural anthropology, whose true meaning was still unknown for the great part of Romanian public. This is because in the communist era cultural anthropology was considered an obscure science belonging to Western "imperialist" and "colonialist" culture. His major anthropological work was presented in a book, Fascinaţia Diferenţei (The Fascination of Difference), which is a synthesis of more than 20 years of practical research in a Romanian village. The book is a testimony of the efforts of conserving and saving the rural tradition of the Romanian village, preventing it from losing its identity, and it also offers many tools for anthropological understanding and research.
