Anthropology of Globalization for Global Governance #1 & #2

27/09/17 There we go. Eventually Wednesday 27^th we started "Anthropology of Globalization" for Global Governance, years 2 and 3 together. Four full hours in class, since the first two hours were a make up for the class due for 4^th October and cancelled because we have the inauguration ceremony the same day.

It was exciting to meet the students, always attentive and provocative as only GG students can be here in Rome.

So, we are going to talk about Anthropology of Globalization. I have divided the course in two parts. In the first we’ll talk about cultural anthropology, the technical meaning of “culture” and the way we can investigate such a slippery concept. Assigned reading for this part (it shall last approximately till the end of October) are

·        Notes from class

·        C. Geertz, Thick description. Toward an interpretive theory of culture (1973)

·        Appadurai, Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy (1991)

                                                

In the second we’ll focus on cultural dimensions of Globalization, bringing to surface different case studies, mostly taken from my fieldwork experience in Rome and related to the assigned reading of

·        Global Rome. The changing faces of the eternal city, the great book edited by Isabella Clough-Marinaro and Bjorn Thomassen

We started with some practical pieces of information, about this blog, the online lessons in mp3 format and the possibility to write feedbacks that count as pre-midterm reports to be evaluated.

Taking on one question about surprise tests in class (there will be none), I briefly elaborated on the model of basic behavioural patterns for humans:

1. competition

2. cooperation

3. reciprocity

4. revenge

QUESTION FOR YOU: report one example for each type of social behaviour. At least four standard page lines for type (total 15 lines minimum)

Then we discussed about the concept of CULTURE, and we elaborated a definition of it as whatever knowledge that has been ACQUIRED, pitting it against INNATE KNOWLEDGE.

ANOTHER QUESTION FOR YOU: list innate and acquired forms of human knowledge. More important, bring examples where the distinction is blurred and not clear at all (20 lines)

Next class I promised I should start from “Rocks and fairies”. We’ll definitely touch that important point that has to do with the

·        symbolic dimension of culture

but before we’ll analyse two other dimensions of culture the way anthropologists mean in, namely:

·        Culture is acquired (and we will see it can be acquired in different forms, and that makes the difference)

·        Culture is shared (with some extremely clear limitations. We shall thus begin to debate the de-finition of cultures, to what extent we can really detect cultural BOUNDARIES

·        See you in class Monday 2^nd October in room P12!