Corsi di Studio del Dipartimento di Culture, Politica e Società

The course will be easier to follow for students who have acquired some previous knowledge of socio-cultural anthropology from introductory courses. However, this is no absolute requirement, as this module is designed to be essentially self-contained.

The course aims to provide advanced notions of social anthropology by focusing on research themes this discipline shares with sociology  and social history (childhood and child bearing practices, cults of possession, religious experience and historical consciousness, and so on) , in order to impart students with the ability to work in an interdisciplinary manner on real-world cases.

Students of Cross-cultural Communication and Social Service and ethnology will thus broaden and deepen their basic knowledge of topics that are central to this field of inquiry, whereas students of other  courses will be offered an anthropological perspective on such issues as the transformations of the subjectivity, the relationships between genders and generations, and the interactions between migration, health, and social rights.

The main distinctive feature of this course is that its aims is to induce familiarity with the methods and conceptual tools of social anthropology through an analysis of classic or especially representative ethnographic monographs, rather than through an abstract systematic overview.
This allows students to develop critical and independent thinking in reading the literature and at the same time to acquire a basic knowledge of the discipline which is closer to the concreteness of ethnographic experience, and therefore more useful to the practical application of what has been learned during the course.

Whole class teaching

This course is intended primarily for students of Social Service and Cross-cultural communication, but all students from other degree courses are welcome, more particularly from Psychology.

- International and Erasmus students may prepare for examinations and take them in English. Specific reading lists consisting of books and articles in English will be made available on request from the teacher.

• The exam will be oral: in addition to assess the extent to which knowledge – ethnological as well as theoretical and methodological – has been successfully acquired, it will also serve to evaluate the student’s critical ability in reading the ethnographic monographs.
• Differential programmes have been devised for students who will attend the course and for those who will be unable to do so.

The course will provide students with an overview of the main authors, concepts and theories of Psychological Anthropology. More particularly, the course will analyze the main schools (Culture and Personality, perspectivism, etc.) and research, such as the research on culture and emotion; social context and educational practices; economic dimension and expressions of mother love; culture, violence, and ritual; and so on, given their value in illustrating different ways  of being (and becoming) human. The intervention on families and children in colonies, minorities, and migrants will offer specific examples of epistemic and institutional violence. Ethnographic examples taken from the teacher’s field experiences will contribute to enlighten the different issues. Beyond the strong emphasis on interdisciplinary and comparative perspectives, the critical analysis of psychological theories about the Unconscious, the concept of experience Turner, Geertz, Throop), narrative’s theories, Personality tests, Projection tests etc. will receive particular attention. At the same time the course will explore the migration debate, where some issue of Psychological Anthropology reveal particularly important.

Texts for students attending the course (two among the following):

1. R. Beneduce, Trance e possession in Africa. Corpi, mimesi, storia, Bollati Boringhieri (FOR FOREIGN STUDENTS ABLE TO READ IN FRENCH, IT WILL BE SOON AVAILABLE A FRENCH VERSION OF THIS BOOK)

Differential programmes have been devised for students who will attend the course and for those who will be unable to do so.

 Texts for students attending the course (two among the following):
1. R. Beneduce, L'Historie au corps. Mémoires indociles et archives incorporés dans les cultes de possession en Afrique OR
E. Bourguignon, Psychological Anthropology: An Introduction to Human Nature and Cultural Differences
2. S. Taliani, F. Vacchiano, Altri corpi. Antropologia ed etnopsicologia della migrazione, Unicopli.
3. E. De Martino, Morte e pianto rituale. Dal lamento funebre antico al pianto di Maria, Bollati Boringhieri.
4. R. Beneduce, R. Collignon (a cura di), Il sorriso della volpe. Ideologie della morte, lutto e depressione in Africa, Liguori.
5. F. Remotti (a cura di), Forme di umanità, Mondadori.
6. R. Beneduce, E. Roudinesco (a cura di), Etnopsicoanalisi. Temi e protagonist di un dialogo incompiuto, Bollati Boringhieri.
7. A. Kleinman e B. Good (a cura di), Culture and Depression. Studies in Anthropology and Cross-Cultural Psychiatry of Affect and Disorder, University of California Press.
8. J. Throop, Suffering and sentiment: Exploring the vicissitudes of pain and experience in Yap. University of California Press.
9. R. Beneduce (a cura di). Etnopsicologia. Mente, persona cultura, L’Harmattan Italia.

10. J. Robbins, Becoming Sinners. Christianity and Moral Torment in a Papua New Guinea Society, University of California Press.
11. J. H. Jenkins & R. J. Barrett, Schizophrenia, Culture, and Subjectivity. The Edge of Experience, Cambridge University Press.

12. B. Malinowski, The Sexual Life of savagesin North-Western Melanesia [orig. 1929].

Moreover: 3 articles among those made available and discussed by the teacher (see teacher’s site).
 
Texts for students not attending the course: three books among the above mentioned.

Moreover: 3 articles among those made available and discussed by the teacher (see teacher’s site).

Texts for Erasmus students:

International and Erasmus students may prepare their examination on English, French or Spanish books suggested by the teacher .

- 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. In addition to those suggested here, the teacher will suggest further books useful to the examination.

- International and Erasmus students may prepare for examinations and take them in English. Specific reading lists consisting of books and articles in English will be made available on request from the teacher.