ETHNOLOGY

The course is taught in English, awards 6 credits and is open to all the interested students from any master's degree programme at Ca' Foscari. It is optional for all the programmes of the master's degree in "Cultural Anthropology, Ethnology and Ethnolinguistics" (ACEL) and for the students of the master's degree in "History from the Middle Ages to the Contemporary Age".

The course aims to introduce students to the contributions of anthropology to discussions on sociocultural diversity and biodiversity in the face of the contemporary condition of the new climate regime. The focus of the course is on counter-domestications, subject/personhood and regeneration of life, based on the introduction to ethnographic anthropological works on the indigenous peoples of the Lowlands of South America who inhabit the territories of the Amazon and the Atlantic Forest in Brazil, as well as a glimpse on the diverse contribution of ethnographies from Southeast Asian contexts.

The course promotes the following skills: analytical reading of ethnographic texts, synthesis of complex concepts and themes, critique, writing and oral expression.
At the end of the course, students will be acquainted with the international critical debates on the role of Social Anthropology in debating anti-domestication, regeneration of life and temporalities connecting to the land, namely those of indigenous people in Amazonia and the Atlantic Forest. Historicities, which imply movement in the territory over time, and personhood / ancestry will be a key transversal theoretical issue. Students will learn to use different materials to explore relevant themes, namely crisscrossing ethnographic texts with films and speeches authored by indigenous people, as well as acquire the conceptual tools and basic skills to critically address how anthropology can position itself in the face of contemporary conditions of land degradation.

Although no particular prerequisites are required, it is advisable that students hold a basic knowledge of the main theoretical approaches and research methods characterizing Social and Cultural Anthropology. Students enrolled in environmental studies programmes who wish to be introduced to anthropological perspectives, particularly those emerging from ethnographies of lowland South America and Oceanic/Southeast Asia, are also welcome.

The indigenous peoples of the Atlantic Forest and Amazonia have long been targeted by modern thinkers and colonial views as savage, nature-based societies. Anthropology has always positioned itself as a counter-current to this hegemonic vision, promoting decentralised perspectives on nature-culture relations and land domestication projects such as plantations and sugar monocultures, and more recently soya and cattle breeding. More recently, and in the face of the problems resulting from the climate emergency, the theme of the regeneration of life sustained by long-term processes of anti-domestication in the formation of what some authors call an "anthropogenic forest" has made a significant contribution by anthropology to the debates around environmental and land degradation in the contemporary condition.

In this course, students will learn about regeneration of life that integrates territories that have remained biodiverse through its ethnographic underpinnings emerging from Anthropology of Lowlands South America, in contexts in Oceania/Southeast Asia. The theme of the regeneration of life is articulated here with that of temporality, historicity and the very questioning of agency, of the person - in a way critically challenging and/or contributing to the paradigms of the multi-species approach in contemporary social sciences.

After a brief general introduction to these problematics, the course is organized into three parts:

Part I. Territorialities and Historicities: Amerindian and Oceania/southeast Asian contexts.
The first part promotes a reflection on the relationship between historicities and territorialities, namely between death and territoriality. We begin by deepening the scope of Lévi-Strauss's proposal (1950) on the contrast between “hot societies” and “cold societies” to talk about the diversity of temporalities and the analysis of history by anthropology, particularly among the indigenous peoples of the lowlands from South America and in contexts marked by animal sacrifice and the connection to ancestors in Oceania/Southeast Asia.

Part II: Reconfigurations of the person and the land: anti-domestication and metapersons
In the second part, we begin with a reflection on the more than human forces in the history of political struggles, triggering the broad theme of the multiple dimensions of agency in history and the role of anti-domestication and regeneration of life in current debates on anthropology's contribution to the ecological debate.

Part III: The ways of the earth/land
The historicity that we will cover in this topic has extreme spectrums. On the one hand, it comes close to experiences and, on the other, it takes us to a contemporary framework of reflection that requires wide-ranging shifts. Is this spectrum outside the scope of empirical reflection in anthropology?

BALLARD, Chris. 2014. “Oceanic historicities”. The Contemporary Pacific, 26: 1 (2014), 95 154.
COVILLE, Elizabeth. 2002. “Remembering our dead: the care of the ancestors in Tana Toraja”. In The Potent Dead: ancestors, saints and heroes in contemporary Indonesia. Henri Chambert-Loir and Anthony Reid (eds.), Allen & Unwin and University of Hawai’i Press. Honolulu. Pp. 69-87.
FAUSTO, Carlos e Michael HECKENBERGER. 2007. “Introduction”. in Fausto, Carlos e Michael Heckenberger (org). Time and Memory in Indigenous Amazonia: Anthropological Perspectives. University Press of Florida. Gainesville. pp. 1-43.
FOX, James. 2000. “Tracing the path, recounting the past: historical perspectives on Timor”. In Fox, James J and Dionisio Babo Soares (ed). Out of the Ashes: Destruction and reconstruction of East Timor. Crawford House Publishing and C. Hurst & Co.
Australia and Uk. Pp. 1-29.
GOW, Peter. 2001. “Introduction”. An Amazonian myth and its history. Oxford University Press. Oxford. Pp.1-32.
HOSKINS, Janet. 1993. “Part three: Local time and the encounter with ‘history’. The Play of Time: Kodi perspectives on Calendars, History, and Exchange. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London. University of California Press. Pp. 273-382.
LÉVIS-STRAUSS, Claude. 2008 (1952). Race and History.
PALMIÉ, Stephan e Charles STEWART. 2016. “Introduction: For an anthropology of history.” Hau: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 6 (1): 207–23. .
McWILLIAM, Andrew. 2011. “Fataluku living landscapes”. In McWilliam, Andrew and Traube, Elizabeth (org). Land and life in Timor-Leste: ethnographic essays.
Australian National University Press. Canberra. Pp. 61-86.
STEWART, Charles. 2016. “Historicity and Anthropology”. Annual Review of Anthropology. 45: 79–94.
TAYLOR, Anne Christine. 2007. ‘Sick of History: Contrasting Regimes of Historicity in the Upper Amazon’, in C. Fausto and M. Heckenberger (eds.), Time and Memory in Indigenous Amazonia: Anthropological Perspectives. University Press of Florida. Gainsville. Pp. 133-68.
TSING, Anna Lowenhaupt. 2012. “On Nonscalability: The Living World Is Not Amenable to Precision-Nested Scales” Common Knowledge 18 (3): 505-524
VIEGAS, Susana de Matos e Rui Graça Feijó. 2017. “Territorialties of the fallen heroes”. In Transformations in Independent Timor-Leste: dynamics of social and cultural cohabitations. Routledge. London and New York. 94-110.

Other materials made available in the moodle.

Attendance is not mandatory, but attending students are required to attend classes with regularity and participation, 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 day subject by presenting, in small groups, a review of one article/chapter suggested by the instructor, encouraging questions and generating the discussion with colleagues. The class will proceed by exploring the questions raised in the presentation and debate, moving then toward theoretical analysis.

In order to undertake the exam, both attending and non-attending students are required to submit a brief essay of maximum 22,000 characters, spaces and bibliographic references included, to be sent to the teacher in pdf format fifteen days before the chosen exam session. Specific writing and editing instructions will be made available in Moodle.
Attending students can produce the essay in small groups, while non-attending students should prepare it individually.
The essay will be discussed in an oral examination aimed at assessing both the knowledge on the topics covered in classes and the capacity of oral expression of the candidates.
The final grade will take into account the appropriateness of contents and language and, for attending students, the level of involvement and participation in classes and the quality of their presentations.

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

English

The lecturer receives students in his study, upon appointment to be previously arranged by email.

written

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