Cultural Anthropology

In the first module (60 hours), we will examine the key stages in the history of anthropological thought, considering anthropology both as a discipline concerned with understanding, interpreting, and describing cultural difference, and as a critical form of knowledge aimed at questioning taken-for-granted assumptions and deconstructing common sense. We will explore the major epistemological paradigms, from evolutionism to the anthropology of the contemporary world, focusing on core anthropological concepts and themes such as progress, cultural relativism, participant observation, gift exchange, ritual, ethnic identity, habitus, and agency. Particular attention will also be devoted to the reading and discussion of selected landmark texts in the history of anthropological thought.

The second module (20 hours) adopts a comparative anthropological perspective to examine how individuals and groups imagine the future, cultivate aspirations, and reshape their life trajectories in contemporary global society. Particular attention will be paid to the role of social and cultural expectations in shaping imaginaries of success, achievement, and personal fulfilment, as well as to the inequalities that influence people's capacity to aspire and to envision the future. We will explore experiences of mobility, return "home," and new beginnings as privileged contexts for observing the forms of agency through which individuals negotiate constraints, opportunities, and biographical transformations. The course will examine practices of adaptation, reorientation, and the creation of new possibilities for action that emerge in moments of disruption, highlighting how experiences commonly perceived as failures may become opportunities for redefining the self and reimagining future horizons. Finally, we will analyse the relationships between imaginaries, social and digital narratives, subject formation, and intergenerational relations, asking how young people and adults envision and negotiate the future in contexts marked by increasing uncertainty.