ENVIRONMENTAL ANTHROPOLOGY 1 MOD. 1

The course is primarily addressed to students of the Master Degree in Environmental Humanities. The participation of students of other programmes can be authorised upon agreement with the instructors.
The course is taught in English.

The course aims at providing the students with the necessary tools to look at the relationship between human beings, society, and the environment through the lenses of social and cultural anthropology. Students will get familiar with the basic concepts which frame the contemporary challenges concerning environment within the historical and economic process of globalization.

This is a required/elective course offered to students enrolled in the Master Degree in the Environmental Humanities. No prior background is required. The first module grants the access to the second module of the course.

The first module of the course of Environmental Anthropology presents the students with the main perspectives and the language of anthropology, with a specific focus on the relations between human beings and the environment. After an introduction to Social and Cultural Anthropology, students will get familiar with the main perspectives framing globalization and its dynamics in an anthropological perspective. In particular, the processes of time-space compression, growth escalation, and human pressure over nature will be addressed. Particular attention will be devoted to notions like ‘modernity’, ‘development’, ‘cosmopolitanism’, ‘degrowth’ and to the phenomenon of global mobility of goods, capitals and people. The second half of the module will propose the study of ethnographic cases of human intervention over the environment, focusing in particular the African continent, with the aim of identifying both situations of risk and attempts to envisage alternative possibilities.

Mandatory readings for the first module:
Ingold T. 'Anthropology. Why it matters'. Polity, 2018.
Eriksen, T.H. 'Overheating: An Anthropology of Accelerated Change'. Pluto Press, 2016.

Complementary readings, to get familiar with the theories and methods of anthropology:
Hendry J. 'An Introduction to Social Anthropology. Sharing Our Worlds'. Palgrave, 2016 (third edition).
Eriksen T.H. 'Small Places, Large Issues: An Introduction to Social and Cultural Anthropology'. Pluto Press, 2015 (fourth edition).
Dei F. 'Antropologia culturale'. Il Mulino, 2012 (seconda edizione).
Pavanello M. 'Fare antropologia. Metodi per la ricerca etnografica', Zanichelli, 2010.
Deliège R. 'Storia dell'antropologia'. Il Mulino, 2008.

Attendance is not mandatory, but attending students are required to follow and participate in classes, intervening and animating the debate on the topics under consideration. Starting from the second part of the course, attending students are required to introduce the topic of the day by presenting, in small groups, a review of one article/chapter suggested by the instructor, encouraging questions and generating a discussion among colleagues. The class will then proceed by exploring the questions raised in the presentation and debate, moving progressively toward theoretical analysis. Attending students are those who carry out the group presentation and attend to at least six classes out of ten.
The final exam is constituted by an oral examination, based, for attending students, on the two books cited above. Non attending students will add to the programme all the articles presented during classes (made available in moodle).

The course is taught through lectures, audio-visual materials, class discussion and group presentations of selected articles.

English

The instructor receive students in his office, upon appointment previously arranged by email.

written and oral

This subject deals with topics related to the macro-area "Climate change and energy" and contributes to the achievement of one or more goals of U. N. Agenda for Sustainable Development