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

The students must prepare a short paper (4000 words) on one of the program's issues, and send the paper to the teacher. Erasmus students can write their paper in English, Spanish or French. The paper must be uploaded 7-10 days before the date of the exam.

The details on the paper's writing will be discussed during the course. The students who not attend the course are invited to write to the teacher to receive information.

The teacher will evaluate the paper according to the following criteria: a) Appropriateness in the use of anthropological lexicon; b) Clearness and consistency; c) ability to discuss specific examples.

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.

To prepare the paper, students have tu study - apart from R. Beneduce, Corpi e saperi indocili. Guarigione, stregoneria e potere in Camerun, mandatory for all students - two more books among the following ones and three articles (chosen amon those made available on the site: "didactic material")

1. C. Lévi-Strauss, Structural Anthropology
2. F. Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks
3. F. Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth
4. A. Sayad, The suffering of Immigrants
5. R. Rosaldo, Culture and Truth: The Remaking of Social Analysis
6. J. Clifford, G. Marcus, Writing Culture
7. J. Clifford, The Predicament of Culture
8. E. de Martino, Magic. A Theory from the South
9. E. de Martino, The End of the World
10. V. Turner, La foresta dei simboli. Aspetti del rituale ndembu
11. AA. VV., La notion de personne en Afrique noire
12. P. Riesman, Società e libertà nei Peul Djelgobe dell'Alto Volta
13. C. Geertz, Antropologia interpretativa
14. J. Fabian, Il tempo degli altri
15. V. Crapanzano, Orizzonti dell'immaginario
16. T. Belmonte, The broken fountain
17. L. Piasere, L'etnografo imperfetto
18. C. W. Watson (ed.), Being There: Fieldwork in Anthropology
19. G. Devereux, From Anxiety to Method in the Behavioral Sciences
20. J. Borneman, A. Hammoudi (eds.), Being There. The Fieldwork Encounter and the Making of Truth
21. S. Khosravi, 'Illegal' Traveller
22. A. Petryna, Horizon Work
23. B. de Sousa Santos, The End of the Cognitive Empire. The Coming of Age of Epistemologies of the South 

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.