Corsi di Studio del Dipartimento di Culture, Politica e Società

According to the learning objective of the Master in Cultural Anthropology and Ethnology, aimed at providing a basic preparation in the anthropological discipline and its main thematic fields, the course Fields of Anthropology and Methodologies of Ethnographic Research offers, in the first part, a general overview of more relevant issues by illustrating the theoretical foundations of Anthropology and its historical development. The notion of culture, identity and "belief", the debate on "modernity of witchcraft", the concept of "fetish" and ritual, the racism's issues will receive particular emphasis.

The second axe will explore “colonial situation” and its legacy, as well as the "coloniality"; the anthropology of migration and the politics of citizenship; the "Ontological Turn" and the perspectivism. The aim is to develop the students' critical awareness and autonomy of judgment by the comparative and historical analysis of different research fields and issues. Particular attention will also be paid to those issues that have made the present time particularly gloomy: the racist violence and the epistemic injustice, the environmental conflicts, and the contemporaries anxieties related to the threat of the "end of the world". These issues directly interpellate the anthropological discipline, its place, and its responsibility.

An important part of the course will consider the methodological issues: what ethnography means today? which kind of subjective questions it interpellates? how violence affects our fieldworks and ethnographic research? what remains of "participant observation" today? how to conceive an anthropology "on demand"? how recent pandemics changed the ethnographic habitus?

The didactic materials used for the exam and discussend during the course will enable students to acquire advanced knowledge about the main concepts and debates of anthropology and ethnology and realize an ethnographic research.

The students will be able to actively discuss the specific methodologies (participant observation, participant hearing; subjective , affective, objective, and quantitative dimensions of the anthropological research; different strategies of research; and so on).

FInally, students will be able to analyze ethnographic cases presented in class or in the books, and to articulate a critical dialogue with history, geography, psychoanalysis, cultural studies and so on.

The course aims to deepen the developments of anthropology considering it as a historical, political and epistemological watershed.

Some of the major classics of anthropology will be taken into consideration in order to offer an in-depth analysis of the most significant theoretical passages of the discipline, studying in detail those authors and those texts that have given rise to schools, debates, controversies.

The current developments promoted by the critique of colonial anthropology and the new methodological perspectives arising from the "crisis of representation" and the dissolution of previous approaches will also be treated

The aim of the course is essentially to

1. interpellating the ways in which anthropology was born and explored the social, historical, political and cultural realities within which the phenomena studied take shape, exploring the foundations of the ethnographic method and the reasons for its crisis. It is therefore a question of analyzing not "what anthropology is" but "what anthropology has been and what is becoming", considered as a knowledge in the making.
2. to cross these thematic fields placing oneself “inside” the flow of events and “between” the social actors who have directed their direction (colonized, young people, immigrants, etc.).
3. offer concrete training on the methodological aspects of ethnographic research.

Special themes:

Analysis of the epistemological space occupied by anthropology

Anthropology as a Crisis of Western Consciousness. "The scandal of the ethnographic encounter" (de Martino)

The missed encounter. The anthropologist in the colony. The Breakup: Frantz Fanon.

Racism, alterity, othering, and anthropological knowledge.

The postcolonial debate and the main methodological perspectives of anthropology.

The "postcolonial subjects" (immigrants, refugees, asylum seekers) and the riddles of citizenship.

Post-structuralism (perspectivism, ontological turn, etc.) and its limits.

Anthropology and the debate on epistemic injustice. The decolonzation of knowledge: a ceaseless process

Anthropology: gender, class, race and ... Women's anthropological writing 

The challenges of the climate crisis and environmental conflicts. Living in an apocalyptic time

Methodological issues in ethnography (the ethnographic interview; the strategies of visual anthropology). Affects, emotions and the research field. Ethical issues in anthropological research. Self-ethnography; autochtonous ethnographies; cultural countertransference.

Lessons will be guaranteed in presence except from different indications

The teacher invites everyone to enroll both on Campusnet and Moodle to access to information and didactic material.

the exam is oral. The unit of measurement is that of votes in thirtieths

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

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