Unit POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ANTHROPOLOGY

Course
International relations
Study-unit Code
A006361
Location
PERUGIA
Curriculum
Cooperazione internazionale e governance globale
Teacher
Riccardo Cruzzolin
Teachers
  • Riccardo Cruzzolin
Hours
  • 60 ore - Riccardo Cruzzolin
CFU
8
Course Regulation
Coorte 2026
Offered
2026/27
Learning activities
Affine/integrativa
Area
Attività formative affini o integrative
Sector
SDEA-01/A
Type of study-unit
Opzionale (Optional)
Type of learning activities
Attività formativa monodisciplinare
Language of instruction
Italian
Contents
The teaching of political and economic anthropology aims to enable students to recognize the cultural dynamics still present in the phenomena commonly regarded as purely political or economic. Starting from the ethnographic work conducted in some non-Western societies, which serve to illustrate different ideas about the economic and the political, the course will finally arrive at a critical reappraisal of some concepts of neoclassical economics and of western political
Reference texts
To the attending it will be given some scientific articles during the course

For those not attending

Li Causi Luciano, Uomo e potere. Una introduzione all'antropologia politica, Carocci, Roma,1993.
Wilk Richard, Economie e culture, Bruno Mondadori, Milano, 1997.

and a book to be chosen from the following:

Amselle, Jean-Loup, Connessioni. Antropologia dell'universalità delle culture, Bollati Boringhieri 2001.
Anderson Benedict, Comunità immaginate, Manifestolibri, 1996.
Appadurai Arjun, Modernità in polvere, Meltemi editore, 2001.
Appadurai Arjun, La vita sociale delle cose, Meltemi editore, 2021.
Balandier Georges, Antropologia politica, Armando editore, 2000.
Bourdieu Pierre, Il senso pratico, Armando editore, 2022.
Bourdieu Pierre, La parola e il potere: L'economia degli scambi linguistici, PM edizioni, 2025
Bourgois Philippe, Cercando rispetto. Drug economy e cultura di strada, Derive Approdi, Roma, 2005
Bourgois Philippe, Reietti e fuorilegge, Derive Approdi, 2019.
Dei Fabio (a cura di), Antropologia della violenza, Meltemi editore, 2005.
Gellner Ernest, Nazioni e nazionalismo, Editori riuniti, 1997.
Holmes Seth, Frutta fresca, corpi spezzati: Braccianti migranti negli Stati Uniti d’America, Meltemi editore, 2023.
Miller Daniel, Per un'antropologia delle cose, Ledizioni, 2013.
Miller Daniel, Cose che parlano di noi. Un antropologo a casa nostra, il Mulino, 2020.
Polanyi Karl, La grande trasformazione, Einaudi, 2000.
Taussig Michael, Cocaina. Per un'antropologia della polvere bianca, Bruno Mondadori, 2005.
Zinn Dorothy L., La raccomandazione. Clientelismo vecchio e nuovo, Donzelli, 2001.
Educational objectives
The main purpose of this course is to provide students with the ability to decentralize their point of view and to contextualize the political and economic phen
Teaching methods
Frontal lessons
Learning verification modality
Oral exam
Extended program
The course will touch the following topics:

The birth of economic anthropology

The debate between formalists and substantivists

The Marxist anthropology

The cultural approach

Anthropology and cooperation

The birth of political anthropology

The classics of British social anthropology

Symbolic violence and structural violence

Nationalism and the concept of ethnicity