Unit CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY
- Course
- Primary teacher education
- Study-unit Code
- GP004455
- Curriculum
- In all curricula
- Teacher
- Daniele Parbuono
- Teachers
-
- Daniele Parbuono
- Hours
- 48 ore - Daniele Parbuono
- CFU
- 8
- Course Regulation
- Coorte 2026
- Offered
- 2026/27
- Learning activities
- Base
- Area
- Discipline sociologiche e antropologiche
- Sector
- SDEA-01/A
- Type of study-unit
- Obbligatorio (Required)
- Type of learning activities
- Attività formativa monodisciplinare
- Language of instruction
- Italian
- Contents
- In the first part of the course, the theoretical foundations and the main concepts of the discipline with brief hints to the history of Anthropology, as well as to classical and contemporary ethnographic cases, will be illustrated. In the second part, attention will be paid to problems and methods of research with particular reference to the anthropology of education and educational contexts. The third part will be dedicated to the group works conceived around the central thematic of “manual skills”. In the last lesson, the main topics will be discussed, reflecting about the results of the course. Students will have access to the UniStudium teaching platform and will be able to consult the teaching material, interacting with each other on the topics of the course.
- Reference texts
- - Kottak C.P., Antropologia culturale (IV edition), italian edition edited by Laura Bonato, Milano, McGraw-Hill Education, 2025.
- Sclavi M., Arte di ascoltare e mondi possibili. Come si esce dalle cornici di cui siamo parte, Milano-Torino, Pearson, 2022.
NB:
Students who are required to earn only part of the designated credits will only need to study Parts I and II of the following textbook:
- Kottak C.P., Antropologia culturale (Quarta edizione), edizione italiana a cura di Laura Bonato, Milano, McGraw-Hill Education, 2025. - Educational objectives
- At the end of the course the students must acquire basic knowledge on the perspectives and methods of Social and Cultural Anthropology with particular reference to educational contexts. They will also learn how to relate them in a complex way with the concept of “manual skills”.
- Prerequisites
- No
- Teaching methods
- Lectures with a strong interaction and group works.
- Other information
- Students with disabilities and/or SLD: for any information on University services, consult the page https://lettere.unipg.it/home/disabilita-e-dsa and contact the Disability and/or DSA Department Coordinator (prof.ssa Moira Sannipoli: moira.sannipoli@unipg.it).
- Learning verification modality
- Oral examination.
The exam focuses on the following aspects:
· Knowledge and understanding - Ability to apply knowledge and understanding: Summary
· Knowledge and understanding - Ability to apply knowledge and understanding: Detail
· Autonomy of judgment, understood as the ability to produce autonomous judgments, arriving at coherent reflections on social, scientific or ethical issues;
· Communication skills, conceived as the ability to communicate information, ideas, problems and solutions to other interlocutors;
· Learning ability, understood as the necessary skill to advance in studies with a high degree of autonomy
For information on support services for students with disabilities and / or SLD visit the page https://www.unipg.it/disabilita-e-dsa. - Extended program
- - The first anthropological definition of culture: Edward B. Tylor. Critiques of Tylor. The deconstruction of race as a classificatory principle for human variation: the two anthropological traditions (United States and Great Britain); genetics and advances in biology.
- Workshop on manual skills. Brainstorming groups and collaborative reflection.
- Historical Particularism and American Anthropology: the primacy of diversity and contextualization. The notion of relativity: methodological and ethical issues. Franz Boas.
- British Functionalism: Bronislaw Malinowski and ethnography. Participant observation in field research and educational contexts.
- Introduction to the Culture and Personality School.
- The Culture and Personality School: transmission and learning. “Basic personality” and “status personality.”
- French Socio-Ethnology: Marcel Mauss and the concept of the “total human being” as biological, psychological, and cultural. Structuralism and the search for universals of human thought: the relationship between differences and similarities; engagement with cultural models different from our own.
- Anthropology, beliefs, and religions. Arnold van Gennep and the theory of rites of passage.
- The concept of culture: definitions and etymology. Essentialist and processual approaches. Selected anthropological definitions of culture.
- Cultural transmission and change. How culture is produced and transmitted. Enculturation and acculturation. Social and cultural hierarchies: the relationship between dominant and subordinate cultures. Interculturality. Cultural critique.
- Seminar: reflections on Interspeciesism: Beyond the Anthropocene.
- Presentation of the volume Popular Traditions in Umbria.
- “Attitudinal and ideological ethnocentrism.” The educational value of decentering.
- The relational notion of identity: “us” and “them.” Identity strategies and the social organization of difference. Political uses of the concept of identity. New forms of separation. Forms of racism. Institutional racism. Cultural relativism and ethnocentrism. Critical ethnocentrism. Introduction to decentering.
- Biological and socio-cultural dimensions: sex, gender, and sexuality. Family and families. Contextualizing the concept of family.
- Ethnography; anthropological research methodologies and perspectives on the world. Ethnography in educational contexts.
- Workshop on manual skills: student groups present their work on the concept of manual skills in a 15-minute presentation. Each presentation is followed by a 10-minute discussion moderated and enriched by the instructor.
- Course review and synthesis. Main themes discussed, shared reflections, final considerations, and conclusions. - Obiettivi Agenda 2030 per lo sviluppo sostenibile
- - Quality Education
- Gender Equality
- Reduced Inequalities