Corsi di Studio del Dipartimento di Culture, Politica e Società

This course examines social geographies by seeking to understand diverse aspects of the daily reality and spatial organization as people live it in various areas of the Global South. The course focuses on economic, socio-cultural, environmental and political dimensions of social reality through the key concepts of eco-cultural identity, territoriality, knowledge and power, and theorization on postcolonialism, agency, and posthumanistic geography. Through lectures and jointly read and discussed journal articles and a book fiction, the course takes a micro-perspective to the lifeworlds and every day of the studied people and seeks to identify their links with wider political-economic processes.

After completing the course, students will be able to identify global and local power relations, inequalities, and agency; assess their impact on the everyday lives in different countries of the Global South; apply critical and ethical thinking; build arguments based on theoretical concepts; understand the importance of spatial contextualization; connect information from diverse readings, and work in groups.

The course is divided into the following broad themes: 1) livelihoods, income and redistribution (including access to land and un/employment); 2) epistemic and ontological diversity (pluriverse, knowledge, cosmology); 3) intersectionality (gender, sexuality, race, class, ability); 4) bureaucracy, infrastructures and services; 5) space and environmental justice (urban environment, contamination, health); 6) migration and displacement (refuge, making home, dangerous lives, social navigating). We will examine these themes by linking recent research in human and political geography, global development studies, anthropology, gender studies, etc. with a fiction classic about social realities in Nigeria by postcolonial feminist author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. To complete this course, students will need to participate in all scheduled meetings and do independent and group work.

This course is designed as active learning, to maximize the potential for students to understand real-world contexts. This means each topic will include introductory input, but attending the course means real participation through weekly reading and discussing, and doing independent and group work.

The course will start with a foundational lecture on theories and concepts that will be relevant to discussing the proposed thematic issues. Every week will be devoted to different themes, and students will have to read and discuss one paper and one section of the fiction book finding the thematic links and proposing theoretical framing among those presented during the foundational lecture.

The course will be held in person for attendant students and there won´t be any streaming or recorded lectures. All relevant information on the course will be available on the Moodle platform of the course, as well as a forum for questions and answers. During the course, articles and other materials will be regularly uploaded on Moodle.

For those who cannot follow the course, it is possible to simply study the text indicated in the section Recommended texts and bibliography (as non-attending students). If you opt to study the text without following the lessons and debates, it will not be necessary to study the materials uploaded on Moodle: the texts will be sufficient to study for the final exam.

ATTENDING STUDENTS

Students will prepare a portfolio of memos from the suggested articles shared in Moodle. The preparation will be based on guiding questions. Moreover, they will prepare an essay, following specific guidelines that will be presented during the lecture course.

There will be three types of assignments, but only two will be graded. The final grade will correspond to the average grades of assignments 1. and 3.

1. Memos from the reading: Students will prepare a portfolio of memos from the weekly suggested articles shared in Moodle and the book “Half of a Yellow Sun” by feminist postcolonial author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie about lives’ changes during the Biafra war in Nigeria. A memo is a short (maximum 500 words) summary of the reading, presenting the main theme, research questions, theoretical framing and concepts used by the author, main argumentation, and findings. A second part of the memo will present linkages of the reading with the fiction book, with new and surprising elements that the book includes and personal reflections. In Moodle, attached to each assignment, you will find specific questions that guide you when writing the memos. It is strongly suggested to work on the weekly assignments during the course, in order to be able to follow the constructive approach of the course.
2. Group work and oral discussions in class will not be graded, also because there will be structured discussions that will give the opportunity to all students. Nevertheless, active students will have the possibility to strengthen a positive evaluation through “pluses”.
3. Final written exam: there will be two open questions that will give students the opportunity to reflect and summarize some essential elements of the topics discussed during the course and critically expose their views about them. The use of concepts and theories will be relevant to prove the acquisition of main analytical tools for the understanding of micro-realities and social geographies. 

NON-ATTENDING STUDENTS

The final examination will consist of a written examination in person (or via webex if Covid-19 restrictions will make it necessary) based on the following textbooks "James Ferguson. Give a Man a Fish. Duke University Press, 2015”; “Tania Li & Pujo Semedi. Plantation Life. Corporate Occupation in Indonesia's Oil Palm Zone. Duke University Press. 2021”. “Javier Auyero & Debora Alejandra Swinstun. Flammable. Environmental Suffering in an Argentine Shantytown. Oxford University Press. 2009”.

The written examination will last 1,5 hours and students will be asked to answer three open questions (10 points for each answer). In answering the questions, the student must demonstrate a thorough and critical knowledge of the topic. The questions will be aimed at verifying the comprehension of the themes and concepts explored in the textbooks and assessing and promoting students' capacity to analyze, interpret and creatively discuss concepts.