00045 - Cultural Anthropology

Learning outcomes

The course aims at presenting a synthetic overview of the problematic framework in anthropology. This will include a critical discussion of the basic concepts deployed in the discipline and the history of anthropolological thought understood both as the focalization of the basic concepts and the successive shifts in the problem- related framework of the discipline. In the last part of the course, the specific contribution of the discipline to the social sciences will be investigated according to the classic partition of the subject in political anthropology, economic anthropology, the anthropology of kinship and gender and - finally - the anthropology of symbolism, religion and cognition.    

Course contents

NB: All lectures will take place on Monday from 11am to 1pm, Aula A, Palazzo Hercolani, Strada Maggiore 45

LECTURE PROGRAM

Lecture One: Course Presentation. Social and Cultural Anthropology. The Concept of Culture.

Lecture Two: Ecology and Cultural Ecology. Community, the Environment and the Individual

Lecture Three: Cultural Dynamics: intra- and inter-systemic factors

Lecture Four: Anthropological Theories I

Part One: Evolutionism and Sociobiology
Part Two: The Organic Paradigm. Structural Functionalism and 'Process and Action' Theory

Lecture Five: Anthropological Theories II

Part One: The Linguistic Paradigm and Structuralism
Part Two: Post-structuralist and Postmodernist Anthropologies

Lecture Six: The Anthropology of Politics and Economics

Lecture Seven: Gender and Kinship

Lecture Eight: The Anthropology of Religion and Ritual

Lecture Nine: Cognition and Symbolism. Conclusions.

Readings/Bibliography

The recommended reading for the course is:

Bernardi, B. 1995. Uomo, Cultura, Società: introduzione agli studi demoetnoantropologici, Milano

This text is clear and comprehensive, but it can  be  substituted by one one the following:

Barnard, A. 2002. Storia del Pensiero Antropologico, Bologna

Fabietti, U. 2001. Storia dell'Antropologia, Bologna

In addition, students taking the course will have to demonstrate knowledge of ONE of the follwing monographs:

Evans-Pritchard, E. 2004. I Nuer: un'anarchia ordinata, Milano

Malinowski, B. 2004. Argonauti del Pacifico Occidentale, Milano

Dundes, A. and Falassi, A. 1989. La Terra in Piazza: antropologia del Palio, Milano

Davis, W. 1988. Passage of Darkness: the ethnobiology of the Haitian Zombie, Chapel Hill

NB: students with specific  ethnographic interests can read a monograph of their liking having previously agreed their choice wiith the lecturer

Teaching methods

Standard lecture delivered by the Lecturer with a chance of discussing specific points of the Course

Assessment methods

Written examination

Teaching tools

No other teaching support besides the lectures  is  involved  in the course in  question

Office hours

See the website of Cesare Poppi