Corsi di Studio del Dipartimento di Culture, Politica e Società

In line with the objectives of the Intercultural Communication Course, the teaching is located at the intersection of medical and psychological anthropology, and intends to offer an analysis of the main concepts of these two disciplinary fields, focusing its attention on topics such as the relationship between disease, treatment and historical-cultural context; the different person models and educational practices; the moral dimensions of disease and therapy. The course intends to deal with these and other topics in order to train students to an authentic interdisciplinary work through the analysis of concrete cases.

A further objective is to promote an anthropological and critical approach to institutions and knowledge of care, diagnostic categories and therapeutic techniques. Illness and treatment will be explored as "total social facts" (Mauss), and as "revealing" phenomena of political, economic, cultural dynamics, as the recent pandemic from Covid has exemplarily testified.

The main distinctive feature of this course is to familiarize the students with the methods, concepts and tools of medical and psychological anthropology.
This will allow students to develop critical and independent thinking in reading the literature as well as to acquire a basic knowledge of the discipline, and develop a strong ability to connect and compare different concepts and issues (other experiences of the Self, kinds of memory, migrations, human rights, diagnostic categories, and so on)

In the first part of the course, an overview of the main authors (Evans-Pritchard, Foster, de Martino, Kleinman, Good, Augé, Seppilli, Crapanzano, Obeyesekere, Scheper-Hughes, etc.) and the teacher will discuss the most relevant concepts of Critical Medical and Psychological Anthropology and Ethnopsychiatry  ("illness / disease / sickness"; "health care behaviours"; "clinical reality"; "culture bound syndromes"; "social use of the disease", etc.).

Moreover, the course intends to analyze some issues such as shamanism and possession cults, "cultural idioms of suffering" and migratory experience, poliitics of diagnosis and medicalization; notions of person, unconscious, subjectivity, individual, memory, consciousness in different contexts.

Among other issue considered: the symbolic dimensions of therapeutic efficacy; the relationship between culture, economic inequalities and access to care; the notion of "biological citizenship" or "health" (Petryna, Rose); the diseases caused by environmental pollution (Minamata disease).

The course will then deal with particular emphasis on the critical analysis of some diagnostic categories (Aids, Depression, "Addictions" and Gambling addition syndrome, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Fibromyalgia,Ecological Anxiety, Solastalgia, Nodding Syndrome, Transe Epidemics amd so on) and will analyse topics of particular importance in the historical development of psychological and psychoanalytic anthropology (the Oedipus complex in non-Western societies; funeral rituals and representations of death; etc.).

A further chapter of the course will be the analysis of the recent experience of the coronavirus pandemic against the backdrop of other epidemics: social and political reactions, scientific and anthropological debate, the intertwining of economic and racial dimensions in determining the risk of infection and in the evolution of the disease, the perception and representations that dominated the public debate, the concerns that emerged in the population and the experience of vulnerability .

The course aims to examine the disease as a phenomenon able to reveal social/political issues and contradictions, as well as the specific effects of capitalistic explotation of natural ressources on "environmental health".

Lessons will be guaranteed in presence. 

The planned test is written and will be prepared on the basis of the study of two books and one article among those made available by the lecturer among the teaching materials for the academic year 2023-2024 only according to the outline below.

The questions (4), which are open-ended, involve an answer whose maximum length is 400 words.

Those enrolled in previous academic years must also take the written exam, as confirmed to the lecturer by the teaching degreteria.

Those who wish to take the exemption can report on Nov. 28 at 2 p.m., following the directions sent in the message received by all those who are enrolled. Results will be announced on December 18.

Students have two options concerning the choice of the books:

Option A:

The two texts on which the questions will focus are.

a) Trance e Possessione in Africa. Corpi, mimesi, storia (R. Beneduce, Torino, Bollati Boringhieri); there is a French Version for Francophone students

b) Antropologia medica. I testi fondamentali (a cura di I. Quaranta, Milano, Cortina)

and an article of the student's choice, the topics of which will be the subject of a free composition (a short text of about 400 words), where the student is invited to discuss the chosen article showing that he/she can summarize its contents, thesis and network of theoretical references in an original way. This free composition will be the subject of the fourth question/answer.

Option B:

The two texts on which the questions will focus are.

a) Trance e Possessione in Africa. Corpi, mimesi, storia (R. Beneduce, Torino, Bollati Boringhieri); there is a French Version for Francophone students

b)Etnopsichiatria. Sofferenza mentale e alterità fra Storia, dominio e cultura (R. Beneduce, Roma, Carocci) 

and an article of the student's choice, the topics of which will be the subject of a free composition (a short text of about 400 words), where the student is invited to discuss the chosen article showing that he/she can summarize its contents, thesis and network of theoretical references in an original way. This free composition will be the subject of the fourth question/answer.

The grade will be calculated on the basis of the answers to the questions and the ability and originality with which the texts are composed.

The evaluation will be expressed on a 30 basis (18 will be considered sufficient and 30 will be the highest grade).

The answers to questions and the open-ended composition will necessarily be written in Italian

Students are kindly invited to registrate both on Campusnet and Moodle platform

Further activities (film, documentary and so on)  and meetings addressed to focus particular issues will be planned and comunicated over the course.

1. R. Beneduce, L'Historie au corps. Mémoires indociles et archives du désordre dans les cultes de possession en Afrique, Fribourg, Academic Press (this book is an augmented translation of Trance e possessione in Africa. Corpi, mimesi, storia. Students and Erasmus students able to read French books, can choice this book 

2. R. Beneduce, Un lugar en el mundo. Senderos de la migración entre violencia, memoria y deseo, Ciudad de Mexico, ENAH y UTA.

3. A. Kleinman e B. Good (a cura di), Culture and Depression. Studies in Anthropology and Cross-Cultural Psychiatry of Affect and Disorder, Berkeley, University of California Press.

4. J. Throop, Suffering and sentiment: Exploring the vicissitudes of pain and experience in Yap, Berkeley, University of California Press.

5. A. Petryna, Exposed Life. Biological Citizens after Chernobyl, Princeton, Princeton University Press.

6. E. Bourguignon, Psychological Anthropology: An Introduction to Human Nature and Cultural Differences, New York: Holt, Rinehart, & Winston

7. C. F. Sargent, T. M. Johnson, Medical Anthropology, Contemporary Theory and Method, Westport, Greenwood Press.

8. I. Hacking, Re-Writing the Soul: Multiple Personality and the Sciences of Memory, Princeton, Princeton University Press.

9. J. Bailkin, The Afterlife of Empire, Berkeley, University of California Press.

10. H. G. West. Kulipikula, Governance and the Invisible Realm in Mozambique, Chicago, University of Chicago Press.

12. N. Rose, Our Psychiatric Future, Polity Press

13. D. Fassin, Pouvoir et maladie en Afrique, Paris, PUF.

14. B. Walker, Toxic Archipelago. A History of Industrial Disease in Japan, Seattle, University of Wahshington Press.

15. E. de Martino, The Land of Remorse, Chicago Univ. Press.

16. N. Gibson, R. Beneduce, Frantz Fanon, Psychiatry and Politics, Rowman & Littlefield

17. E. De Martino, The Land of Remorse, Free Association Books, 2005

18. R. Beneduce, Un lugar en el mundo. Senderos de la migración entre violencia, memoria y deseo, ENAH, 2015.

The course will be in presence. Students are strongly encouraged to discuss materials and issues during the classes. Some documentary films will be used in order to promote debates and analysis about the issues taken in consideration during the course.

Erasmus students can speak and put questions to the teacher in English, French or Spanish.

We strongly suggest the inscription on Campusnet and Moodle platform.