ANTHROPOLOGY OF JAPAN

This is one of the core courses of the Corso di Laurea "Languages, Cultures and Societies of Asia and Mediterranean Africa".
Its formative objectives are within the area of cultural and humanistic skills learning.

The learning path includes as partial objectives:

Knowledge and understanding:
- use the ethnographic method independently;
- ability to read social phenomena and cultural production that characterize Japanese society;

Ability to apply knowledge and understanding:
- critically apply the methodologies of analysis typical of cultural anthropology;

Judgment skills:
- elaborate critical judgments on the socio-cultural phenomena examined during the course;

Communication skills:
- critically re-elaborate the contents of the program without resorting to a purely mnemonic preparation.

Learning ability:
- take notes, clearly summarizing the main topics covered during the lessons;
- autonomously integrate the study of different teaching materials;
- autonomously study topics not covered during the lectures;
- study on texts in English;

It is recommended that students have an intermediate level of English (B2) in order to be able to explore the topics covered in class in greater depth, using reference texts.
A textbook knowledge of cultural anthropology is also required. For those who have not already taken a basic course in cultural anthropology, I recommend reading the following book: Thomas Hylland Eriksen, 2010, Small Places, Large Issues An Introduction to Social and Cultural Anthropology, Pluto Press. The course is designed in a seminar style: punctuality, participation and overall contribution to classroom activities also affect the final grade.

The complete course program will be available on the Moodle platform.

Due to the nature of the course, it is not possible to refer to a textbook. The bibliography consists of a series of studies dealing with specific topics and problems.
Details on the bibliography will be provided at the beginning of the course and during the lectures. Information on the bibliography is also available on the course's Moodle page.
Texts that relate specifically to the topics covered in the lectures are available on the course's Moodle page. The slides of the lectures contain links to additional texts that can be consulted and/or downloaded. A number of reference texts will also be available on the Moodle page.

Attending students: paper to be agreed with the teacher. The written paper must consist of at least 8 pages, and possibly no more than 10, of text, excluding notes, indexes, bibliography, images and their lists.

Non-attending students: paper to be agreed with the teacher. The written paper must consist of at least 12 pages, and possibly no more than 14, of text, excluding notes, indexes, bibliography, images and their lists.

Lectures and seminar type teaching.

Italian

written