CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY

The general aims of course are questioning the human sociality and relationality (human nature) from anthropological statement, as “a study with” applied on forms of conceptualization which “other” societies and cultures propose about sociality and relationality (in confront with those proposed by west society and culture); and, from an anti-foundationalist perspective, with evidences about conditions and possibilities of sociality and relationality, in their various and changeable social and cultural forms.

Core arguments:

Introduction to anthropological knowledge as “study with” about various conceptions of sociality and relationality (human nature, person, morality, birth and dead, etc.), which give cultural and social form to human life (forms of life). The shaping of modern anthropological reason through the dualistic concepts of Nature/Culture, Individual/Social, Mind/Body, seen in the different forms of thought analyzed by contemporary ethnography in relation with the configurations of sociality.

Focus:

Anthropology of material culture: a) the historical role of material culture in anthropology of XX century; b) the “new studies of material culture”, rooted in the idea that the objects creates the subjects; c) the study of objects in domestic life.

Alessandro Lutri, 2013, Forme di vita e natura umana. Una mappa per il sapere antropologico, Roma, Carocci;

Dei, F., Meloni, P., 2015, Antropologia della cultura materiale, Roma, Carocci.

one of these books:

1) Miller, D., 2014, Cose che parlano di noi. Un antropologo a casa nostra, Il Mulino, Bologna;

2) Meloni, P., 2011, I modi giusti. Cultura materiale e pratiche di consumo nella provincia toscana contemporanea, Pacini, Pisa.