Corsi di Studio del Dipartimento di Culture, Politica e Società

MEDICAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL ANTHROPOLOGY. The fundamentals of a critical knowledge.

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 goal is to promote an anthropological and critical approach to the institutions and knowledge of care, diagnostic categories, and therapeutic techniques. Disease and cure will be explored as“ total social facts” (Mauss), and as “revealing” phenomena of political, economic, and cultural dynamics, as the recent Covid pandemic has exemplarily testified. From these premises also arises the role of medical and psychological anthropology within the broader anthropological horizon: an indispensable role, which aims to highlight how social and political suffering cannot be considered separately from the economic dynamics and biological processes at the heart of the clinic, the production of illness and the horizons of healing.

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)

The first part of the teaching will offer an overview of the main authors (Evans-Pritchard, De Martino, Kleinman, Good, Augé, Seppilli, Crapanzano, Obeyesekere, Scheper-Hughes, etc.) and the most relevant concepts in Critical and Psychological Medical Anthropology and Critical Ethnopsychiatry (“illness/disease/sickness”; “health care behaviors”; “clinical reality”; “culture bound syndromes”; “social use of illness,” etc.) .

The teaching intends to analyze next such issues as those related to shamanism and possession cults, “cultural idioms of suffering” and migratory experience, politics of diagnosis and medicalization notions of person, unconscious, subjectivity, individual, memory, consciousness in different contexts (Sayad, Fassin, Ticktin, etc.).

Similarly, symbolic dimensions of therapeutic efficacy will be considered; the relationship between culture, economic inequalities and access to care; and the notion of “biological” or “health citizenship” (Petryna, Rose).
The teaching will treat with particular emphasis the critical analysis of some clinical conditions and diagnostic categories (Aids, Anorexia, Depression, “Addictions” and Gambling addition syndrome...) and new “syndromes” (Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Fibromyalgia, Ecological Anxiety, Solastalgia, Nodding Syndrome, Epidemics of transe schooling, Review Syndrome, etc. ) and will analyze issues 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).

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".

An additional chapter of the course will be an analysis of the recent experience of the coronavirus pandemic against the backdrop of other epidemics: the social and political reactions, the scientific and anthropological debate, the intertwining of economic and racial dimensions in determining the risk of contagion and the evolution of the disease, the perceptions and representations that have dominated the public debate, the anxieties that have emerged in the population, and the experience of vulnerability.

The course aims to examine, including through ethnographic examples, disease as a “detector” of social and political conflicts, interests and contradictions, as well as the effects of capitalist exploitation of natural resources on “environmental health” (the case of Minamata disease, bronchial afflictions in Indonesia caused by coal mines, contamination of land by pesticides such as cordacone in Martinique or the consequences of PFAS desmination in the environment, etc.).

Standard course. Lessons will be guaranteed in presence. 

The planned test is oral and is based on the study of three articles and two books (one of which is common and mandatory for all: L'histoire au corps - for Francophone students - or, alternatively, Frantz Fanon, Psychiatry and Politics - for Anglophone students - or Un lugar en el mundo. Senderos de la migración entre violencia, memoria y deseo - for Hispanophone students).

Students are kindly invited to registrate themselves on line and to communicate the choosen books and articles to the teacher when called according to the order of enrollement.

The answers will be evaluated according to the following criteria: a) Appropriateness in the use of Anthropological lexicon (with particular regard to the vocabulary of Anthropology of Violence); b) Clearness of language, speech consistency and consistency of answers; c) ability to give and discuss specific examples.; d) ability in giving details about the contents discussed during the examen.
Questions will address both the notions analysed by the teacher during the course and the texts (books and articles) each student selects upon previous agreement with the teacher.

Erasmus students can speak in English or French during the exam (in agreement with the teacher).

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

Documents and videos will be viewed and discussed, and further in-depth meetings on particular issues will be offered to those who request them, where possible.

Students with special needs (SLD) can contact their teacher to agree on learning methods and request materials to facilitate learning.

Texts for ERASMUS students attending the course (two among the following; more books can be suggested during the course):

1.Beneduce, R. 2016, Trance e possessione in Africa. Corpi mimesi, storia. Torino: Bollati Boringhieri.

2. Beneduce, R. 2007, Etnopsichiatria, Sofferenza mentale e alterità fra storia, dominio e cultura, Roma: Carocci.

3. Quaranta, I. 2006, Antropologia Medica. I testi fondamentali, Milano: Cortina.

4. Petryna, A. 2002, Life Exposed. Biological Citizen after Chernobyl, Princeton: Princeton University Press.

5. De Martino, E. 2015 [1961], La terra del rimorso, Milano: Il Saggiatore. / De Martino, E. The Land of Remorse, Chicago Univ. Press.

6. Fanon, F. 2020, Decolonizzare la follia. Scritti sulla psichiatria coloniale, a cura di R. Beneduce, Verona: ombre corte.

7. Beneduce, R. e Collignon, R. (a cura di), 2004, Il sorriso della volpe. Ideologie della morte, lutto e depressione in Africa, Napoli: Liguori.

8. Kleinman, A. e Good, B. (a cura di), 1985, Culture and Depression. Studies in Anthropology and Cross-Cultural Psychiatry of Affect and Disorder, Berkeley, University of California Press.

10. Beneduce, R. Frontiere dell'identità e della memoria. Etnopsichiatria e migrazione in un mondo creolo, Milano: Franco Angeli.

11. Hacking, I. 1996, La riscoperta dell'anima: personalità multipla e scienze della memoria, Milano: Feltrinelli. / Hacking, I., Re-Writing the Soul: Multiple Personality and the Sciences of Memory, Princeton, Princeton University Press.

12. Rose, N., 2019, Our Psychiatric Future, Cambridge: Polity Press.

13. De Martino, E. 2024, Sud e magia, Torino: Einaudi.

14. Bihel, J. 2005, Vita: Life In A Zone Of Social Abandonment, Berkeley: University of California Press.

15. Martin, E. Flexible Bodies. Tracking Immunity in American Culturefrom the Days of Polio to the Age of AIDS, Boston: Beacon Press. 

16. Coppo, P. 2005, Le ragioni del dolore. Etnopsichiatria della depressione, Torino: Bollati Boringhieri.

17. De Martino, E., 2021, Morte e pianto rituale, Torino: Einaudi.

18. Lesmo, I. 2019, Malattie Rare in Emergenza, Sesto San Giovanni: Mimesis.

Moreover: 3 (three) articles among those made available and discussed by the teacher.


Erasmus students can do their exam in English or French, but they have to demonstrate ther ability to understand written and spoken Italian.

The course will be held in presence on Monday, Twesday and Wednsday, 12.00 to 2.00 pm, in the classroom H2 of the Campus Luigi Einaudi. It will start on February 16th 2026.

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 or French.

We strongly suggest the inscription on Campusnet and Moodle platform.

Students with special needs (SLD) can contact their teacher to agree on learning methods and request materials to facilitate learning.

Start of the course: February 16, 2026, 10:00-12:00 p.m., classroom H2