70025 - Cultural Anthropology

Learning outcomes

Students will better grasp the role of social and cultural diversities in making identities in contemporary world and will look at them with enhanced curiosity. They will also be able to critically assess the constructed character of social and cultural values, norms, conventions and patterns. Finally, they will be aware of the paradoxes and of the epistemological problems inherent anthropological knowledge and field research. Main contents: Foundations of cultural anthropology; ethnocentrisms and cultural relativisms; meanings of cultural diversities; common senses and local ideologies; methods of ethnographic research.

Course contents

Starting from an idea of anthropology as the study and practical understanding of cultural diversity, the course aims to a) provide the basic methodological tools of anthropological reflection and ethnographic research, b) to present the main theoretical perspectives of reference, c) to develop in students the ability to critically consider the main cultural dynamics of contemporary societies.
At the end of the course, the student will also have acquired in its basic lines the ability to observe cultural phenomena from an ethnographic perspective, starting from the details of everyday life in the direction of the wider global frames in which they are embedded.
Main topics: 1. Defining cultural anthropology; 2. The concept of culture; 3. Ethnocentrism and relativism; 4. Ethnography; 5. Evolution; diffusion, function and structure of culture; 6. Anthropologists and ethnographers: interpretation of cultures; 7. Cultural identities; 8. The traffic of cultures; 9. Is cultural diversity still alive? 10. Trans-national and delocalized cultures; 11. Mobility: migrants, strangers, travellers, tourists; 12. Global imagination and Imagined communities.

Teaching methods

The course counts lectures, workshops and written texts.

Assessment methods

oral examination

Office hours

See the website of Vincenzo Matera