Through an in-depth exploration of the main approaches that have contributed to the definition of what can be called "an anthropology of the contemporary global world", as well as through the presentation of specific research experiences, the course aims to emphasize the absolute necessity of applying an anthropological perspective to observe, understand, and interpret the phenomena of our contemporaneity. The course aims to provide students with a general overview of both the epistemological and methodological debates that have marked cultural anthropology from the 1990s to the present day, and with the multiple and diverse challenges that anthropologists of the contemporary global world must necessarily take up; for this purpose, we will explore the different variations of their complex and ‘stratified’ subjects of study.
We will focus on the foundations, the focal areas, and the urgent issues of contemporary cultural anthropology; we will also analyse some of the most significant epistemological debates that have affected anthropological disciplines since the mid-1990s; this includes transformations in the concepts of culture, space, identity, fieldwork, as well as the definition of new politics of difference in the contemporary global world. Emphasis will be placed on the need to go beyond the notion of deterritorialization and instead explore and develop inclusive theories concerning how space is being reterritorialized in the contemporary world.
The following issues will be analysed: circulation, exchange, and value of things in social life, global cultural flows, cultural performances in the global ecumene, postcolonial dynamics, cultural change, production of locality, biocultural heritage and “glocal” development, inequality, urban governmentality, cosmopolitanism, etc. We will also discuss about some possible futures for anthropological analysis.
N.B. Students cannot attend classes or take exams if they are not officially enrolled in this course. For any information about the SIE English-taught courses for exchange students, please visit this webpage: https://www.unive.it/pag/35228/
N.B. Regular class attendance is not mandatory. But students who will attend the first 10 lessons will have the possibility to do an oral presentation on one book chosen from a list given by the teacher and will do the written exam on The Future As Cultural Fact, the lecture notes provided by the teacher and on the subjects discussed during the course. Students who will not attend the first 10 lessons will do the written exam on Appadurai’s book, lecture notes, and on two books chosen from the list given by the teacher.
N.B. The Foundation Year program students must attend 12 lessons and they must justify each absence.
READINGS:
Appadurai A., The Future as Cultural Fact. Essays on the Global Condition, New York, Verso, 2013.
Lecture notes (provided by the teacher):
Appadurai A., "Grassroots Globalization and the Research Imagination", Public Culture, 12, 1, 2000, pp. 1-19.
Eriksen T. H., Overheating. An Anthropology of Accelerated Change, London, Pluto Press, 2016, pp. 131-156.
Gupta A., Ferguson J. (eds), Culture, Power, Place. Explorations in Critical Anthropology, Durham and London, Duke University Press, 1997, pp. 33-51.
Sharma A., Gupta A., "Introduction: Rethinking Theories of the State in an Age of Globalization», in Sharma A., Gupta A. (eds), The Anthropology of the State: A Reader, Oxford, Blackwell, 2006, pp. 1-41.
One reading among the following books:
Abu-Lughod L., Dramas of Nationhood. The Politics of Television in Egypt, Chicago and London, University of Chicago Press, 2005.
Herzfeld M., The Body Impolitic: Artisans and Artifice in the Global Hierarchy of Value, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2004.
Sassen S., Globalization and Its Discontents. Essays on the New Mobility of People and Money, New York, The New Press, 1998.
Taussig M., My Cocaine Museum, Chicago and London, University of Chicago Press, 2004.
Tsing A., The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2021.
Subjects discussed during the course.
We will focus on the foundations, the focal areas, and the urgent issues of contemporary cultural anthropology; we will also analyse some of the most significant epistemological debates that have affected anthropological disciplines since the mid-1990s; this includes transformations in the concepts of culture, space, identity, fieldwork, as well as the definition of new politics of difference in the contemporary global world. Emphasis will be placed on the need to go beyond the notion of deterritorialization and instead explore and develop inclusive theories concerning how space is being reterritorialized in the contemporary world.
The following issues will be analysed: circulation, exchange, and value of things in social life, global cultural flows, cultural performances in the global ecumene, postcolonial dynamics, cultural change, production of locality, biocultural heritage and “glocal” development, inequality, urban governmentality, cosmopolitanism, etc. We will also discuss about some possible futures for anthropological analysis.
N.B. Students cannot attend classes or take exams if they are not officially enrolled in this course. For any information about the SIE English-taught courses for exchange students, please visit this webpage: https://www.unive.it/pag/35228/
N.B. Regular class attendance is not mandatory. But students who will attend the first 10 lessons will have the possibility to do an oral presentation on one book chosen from a list given by the teacher and will do the written exam on The Future As Cultural Fact, the lecture notes provided by the teacher and on the subjects discussed during the course. Students who will not attend the first 10 lessons will do the written exam on Appadurai’s book, lecture notes, and on two books chosen from the list given by the teacher.
N.B. The Foundation Year program students must attend 12 lessons and they must justify each absence.
READINGS:
Appadurai A., The Future as Cultural Fact. Essays on the Global Condition, New York, Verso, 2013.
Lecture notes (provided by the teacher):
Appadurai A., "Grassroots Globalization and the Research Imagination", Public Culture, 12, 1, 2000, pp. 1-19.
Eriksen T. H., Overheating. An Anthropology of Accelerated Change, London, Pluto Press, 2016, pp. 131-156.
Gupta A., Ferguson J. (eds), Culture, Power, Place. Explorations in Critical Anthropology, Durham and London, Duke University Press, 1997, pp. 33-51.
Sharma A., Gupta A., "Introduction: Rethinking Theories of the State in an Age of Globalization», in Sharma A., Gupta A. (eds), The Anthropology of the State: A Reader, Oxford, Blackwell, 2006, pp. 1-41.
One reading among the following books:
Abu-Lughod L., Dramas of Nationhood. The Politics of Television in Egypt, Chicago and London, University of Chicago Press, 2005.
Herzfeld M., The Body Impolitic: Artisans and Artifice in the Global Hierarchy of Value, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2004.
Sassen S., Globalization and Its Discontents. Essays on the New Mobility of People and Money, New York, The New Press, 1998.
Taussig M., My Cocaine Museum, Chicago and London, University of Chicago Press, 2004.
Tsing A., The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2021.
Subjects discussed during the course.
- Teacher: Michela BUONVINO