HISTORICAL ANTHROPOLOGY
- Overview
- Assessment methods
- Learning objectives
- Contents
- Bibliography
- Delivery method
- Teaching methods
- Contacts/Info
None.
The acquisition and correct understanding of the course contents will be assessed through an oral examination (4 questions) concerning the readings suggested in the section below and other materials uploaded on the e-learning platform.
The mark of the oral examination (expressed on a scale of 30) will take into account the accuracy of the answers (worth 60% of the mark), as well as students’ analytical and presentation skills (worth 40% of the mark).
The course aims to provide students with the tools for an indepth understanding of the dynamics of poverty in its different historical and social conformations, with particular attention to territorial planning policies, social promotion and international cooperation.
The course offers a broad comparative overview of different forms of poverty. This will explore the origins, meanings and material and immaterial logics that have led to the formation of diverse experiences and perceptions of poverty in different ways of political and social organization.
The correlations that link the emergence of different experiences and representations of poverty to the contextual evolution of modes of subsistence, production techniques, social links, political hierarchies and national and international institutions are also highlighted.
FInally the course focuses on the mechanisms by virtue of which the populations benefiting from cooperation projects in developing countries today tend to take on board, or vice versa, the proposals for change and technical innovation made by external actors.
Expected learning outcomes include:
- knowledge of different cultural dimensions, ways of representing and interpreting poverty in different social-historical contexts;
- knowledge of the causal factors and mechanisms underlying the processes of deprivation and impoverishment;
- knowledge of the main forms of social response and institutional action in favour of food security;
- ability to analyse and plan development projects aimed at reducing material vulnerability.
The course is divided into two parts.
The first is dedicated to the study of the historical evolution of forms of poverty and its social representations. It offers a summary picture of different case histories, highlighting the radical diversity of interpretative frameworks, values and behaviours associated with different experiences and readings of the phenomenon within different social and state formations.
The second part, which is monographic in nature, focuses instead on some decisive variables that come into play in the management of international development aid initiatives, influencing their outcomes in a significant way. Here we focus on the dynamics linked to the cultural interaction between native and external actors, on the problems connected to the transfer of technical-organisational models and on community engagement processes.
GENERAL PART (approximately 28 hours)
- Definitions, terminologies and preliminary classifications: the social construction of poverty
- Concepts, dimensions and historical figures of poverty
- The economy of gift in hunter-gatherer peoples
- The birth of inequality in the Neolithic transition
- Reciprocity, redistribution and markets in agro-pastoral civilizations
- Beggarship, compassion and religious charity
- The pauperism, dangerous classes and immoral poverty
- Famines and colonial markets
- Impoverishment and chronic deprivation in agro-exporting systems of commodities
- Epidemics, wars and climatic disasters in post-colonial Africa
- The political famines of the 21st century
- Adaptive responses and coping strategies popular in situations of extreme poverty
- Food security policies: scarcity paradigms and denied access paradigms
- 20th century industrial unemployment phenomena
- Phenomenologies of late-industrial job insecurity
- Integrated poverty, marginal poverty and disqualifying poverty
- Poverty, social links and social protection systems
MONOGRAPHIC PART (approximately 20 hours)
- Cultural contact, hybridization and assimilation
- Ethnocentrism, symbolic meanings and identity attributions
- Native and technical-scientific knowledge
- Risk minimization logic, scarcity psychologies, tunnel effects
- Factors of innovation, diffusion, experimentation
- Local selection, diversion and reinterpretation practices
- Community engagement models.
GENERAL PART
- S. Paugam, "Le forme elementari della povertà", il Mulino, Bologna, 2012
- M. Davis, "Il pianeta degli slum", Feltrinelli, Milano, 2006
- R. Sennet, "L’uomo flessibile", Feltrinelli, Milano, 2001
MONOGRAPHIC PART
- J. Olivier De Sardan, "Antropologia e sviluppo", Raffaello Cortina, Milano, 2008, (capitoli 3, 4, 7,8,9)
OPTIONAL TEXT
- D. Narayan et Al., "Voices of the Poor" (Vol. 2) Crying Out for Change, Oxford University Press for World Bank (online), 2000.
The training objectives will be achieved with frontal lessons (for a total of 48 hours).
Students are required to previously schedule a meeting by sending a message whatsapp message to the lecturer (335/367193).