Anthropological Research for Socio-Educational Interventions

Semester 2 · 64219 · Bachelor for Social Education · 4CP · EN

Haw does anthropological research contribute to socio-educational interventions? This course aims to provide students with useful insights on anthropological approaches and themes as well as ethnographic methods, encouraging reflectivity and critical thinking on cultural differences, social injustices, and diversity in contemporary intercultural societies. Lectures, activities, and discussions will highlight the “public value” of anthropological research as a base for socio-educational interventions.

Lecturers: Daniela Salvucci

Teaching Hours: 24
Lab Hours: 0
Mandatory Attendance: In accordance with the regulation

Course Topics
Anthropological approaches to cultural difference, social inequality, and diversity. Concept of culture(s), practice, cosmologies/ontologies, colonialism, cultural relativism, inter and transcultural perspective. Ethnographic methodologies and “anthropology as education”. Applied, and public anthropology: anthropology of/for social services and education. Habitus and Theory of Practice: embodiment, social structures, groups, and hierarchy. Hegemony, Power and Bio-power: institutional agency and subjectivity. Body, gender, and family. Migrations, diasporas, globalization. Structural violence, intersectionality, and empowerment.

Teaching format
The lesson takes place remotely.

Educational objectives
Knowledge and understanding • Knowledge of basic topics, approaches and methodologies of anthropological research • Knowledge of specific concepts of anthropological research, such as culture(s), cultural relativism, interculturality, power• Acquisition of appropriate scientific languages for the description and analysis of sociocultural phenomena to promote and organize socio-educational interventions. Applying knowledge and understanding • Ability to apply concepts of anthropological research to socio-educational contexts• Ability to apply anthropological approaches and concepts to the analysis and understanding of socio-educational practices in both institutional and everyday life contexts. • Ability to apply academic knowledge and the basic approaches and concepts of anthropological research to one own personal and professional experience as a social educator. Making judgements • Development of critical and independent thinking. • Development of reflexive self-awareness in relation to categories and practices of socio-educational work. Communication skills • Ability to recognize the fundamental elements of scientific writing. • Ability to develop a correctly structured short scientific presentation. • Ability to participate in scientifically grounded discussions and express an informed opinion. • Ability to communicate appropriately in an academic setting. Learning skills • Ability to autonomously extend the knowledge acquired during the course in dealing with social works settings. • Ability to acquire new approaches and theoretical concepts to analyze, deconstruct and understand taken for granted categories and the diversity of sociocultural practices.

Assessment
Assessment is based on a final oral exam (about 30 minutes long), which counts 100% for the final mark. Students are asked to prepare 6 articles, or book chapters, from the bibliography for the final exam.

Evaluation criteria
Comprehension of the contents of the lectures and of the scientific readings. Coherence and clearness in presenting the contents of the requested readings during the individual presentation as well as during the final exam. Critical thinking in discussing the arguments proposed during the lessons and in the scientific readings.

Required readings

Bourdieu, P. 1988. Social space and symbolic space. In Bourdieu, P. Practical Reason. On the theory of action, Stanford University Press, pp. 1-18.

Bourdieu, P. 1998. Anamnesis of the hidden constants. In Bourdieu, P. Masculine Domination, pp. 54-68.

Butler, J., 1993, Critically Queer, in Bodies that matter. On the discursive limits of “sex”, Routledge, pp. 221-242.

Carsten J., 2000, Introduction. In Carsten J. (ed.), Cultures of relatedness. New approaches to the study of kinship, Cambridge university press, pp. 1-37.

Constable N. 2006. Brides, maids, and prostitutes: reflections on the study of ‘trafficked’ women. PORTAL, Journal of Multidisciplinary International Studies, v. 3, n. 2, pp. 1-25.

Dietz G. 2018. Interculturality. In H. Callan (ed.) The International Encyclopedia of Anthropology, John Wiley & Sons, pp. 1-19.

Dossa, P., 2008, Creating Alternative and Demedicalized Spaces: Testimonial Narrative on Disability, Culture, and Racialization, Journal of International Women's Studies, 9(3), pp. 79-98.

Dubois, V. 2018. The State, Legal Rigor, and the Poor: The daily practice of Welfare Control. In Thelen T., et al. eds). Stategraphy. Toward a Relational Anthropology of the State. Berghahn Books, pp. 38-55.

Fassin D., 2001, The Biopolitics of Otherness: Undocumented Foreigners and Racial Discrimination in French Public Debate. Anthropology Today, 17(1), pp. 3-7.

Gribaldo A. 2014. The paradoxical victim: Intimate violence narratives on trial in Italy, American Ethnologist, v. 41, n. 4, pp. 743-756.

Ingold, T. 2025. Old Ways, New People. Anthropology and/as Education. Oxon, New York: Routledge.

Jacobsson, K. and Gubrium, J.F., eds. 2021. Doing Human Service Ethnography. Bristol: Policy Press.

Lyon-Callo, V. 2008. Medicalizing Homelessness: The Production of Self-Blame and Self-Governing within Homeless Shelters, Medical Anthropology Quarterly, v. 14, n. 3, pp. 328-345.

Ness, C. 2004, Why Girls Fight: Female Youth Violence in the Inner City, The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 595, pp. 32-48.

Parisi, R. 2019, New “racialised” geographies of kinship. Kinning in Mixed families, Antropologia, v. 6, n. 2, pp. 101-116.

Parreñas, R. 2002, The Care Crisis in the Philippines: Children and Transnational Families in the New Global Economy. In B. Ehrenreich, A. R. Hochschild (eds.) Global woman: Nannies, maids and sex workers in the New Economy, New York: Holt Paperbacks, pp. 39-54.

Ribeiro Corossacz, V., 2018, The uses of silence. Researching sexual harassment against female domestic workers in Brazil, ANUAC, 7(1), pp. 43-65.

Romano, S. 2018. Moralising Poverty. The “Underserving” Poor in the Public Gaze. Oxon, New York: Routledge.

Scodellaro, C. et al., 2017, Disorders in Social Relationships. The Case of Anorexia and Bulimia, Revue française de sociologie, v. 58, n. 1, pp. 1-30.

Taliani, S. 2012, Coercion, Fetishes and Suffering in the daily Lives of young Nigerian Women in Italy, Africa: Journal of the International African Institute, v. 82, n. 4, pp. 579-608.

Tauber, E., and D. Zinn. 2015. A Lively and Musing Discipline: The Public Contribution of Anthropology through Education and Engagement. In E. Tauber, D. Zinn (eds), The Public Value of Anthropology: Engaging Critical Social Issues through Ethnography, Bozen: BuPress, pp. 1-30.

Tauber, D. Zinn (eds), The Public Value of Anthropology: Engaging Critical Social Issues through Ethnography, Bozen: BuPress, pp. 1-30.

Tengan, K., 2002, (En)gendering Colonialism: Masculinities in Hawai’i and Aotearoa, Cultural Values, v. 6, n. 3, 239-256.

Zinn, D. L., 2017, Migrant Incorporation in South Tyrol and Essentialized Local Identities. In F. Decimo, A. Gribaldo (eds.), Boundaries within: Nation, Kinship and Identity among Migrants and Minorities, IMISCOE Research Series, pp. 93-114.

Supplementary readings

Burraway J. 2025. Becoming Somebody Else. Blackouts, Addiction, and Agency amongst London’s Homeless. HAU Books.

Cardoso D., C. M. Scarcelli, 2021, Breaking the silence. Young people, sex information and the internet in Italy and Portugal. In Scarcelli et al (eds.) Gender and Sexuality in the European Media Exploring Different Contexts Through Conceptualisations of Age, Routledge, pp. 41-57.

Carrier N., Gezon L. 2023. Anthropology of Drugs. Oxon, New York: Routledge.

Degli Uberti, S. 2019, Borders within. An Ethnographic Take on the Reception Policies of Asylum Seekers in Alto Adige/South Tyrol, Archivio antropologico mediterrano, 21(2), pp. 1-22.

Della Rocca M., 2021. Feminist Ethnography in a Women’s Shelter: Self Reflexivity, Participation and Activism in Ethnographic Writing. In E. Tauber & D.L. Zinn (eds.) Gender and Genre in Ethnographic Writing, Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 71-97.

Gallo, E., 2019, A broken chain? Colonial history, middle-class Indian migrants and intergenerational ambivalence, International Journal of Comparative Sociology, v. 60, n. 1-2, pp. 37-54.

Grilli, S., Parisi, R., 2016, New Family Relationships: between Bio-genetic and Kinship Rarefaction Scenarios, Antropologia, v. 3, n. 1, pp. 29-51.

Leinaweaver, J.B. 2010. Outsourcing Care: How Peruvian Migrants Meet Transnational Family Obligations, Latin American Perspectives, v. 37, n. 5, pp. 67-87.

Martial, A. 2019, Multi-parenthood and contemporary family forms in French studies, Antropologia, v. 6, n. 2, pp. 13-26.

Tesar C, 2015, Begging—Between Charity and Profession: Reflections on Romanian Roma’s Begging Activities in Italy. In Tauber, E., & Zinn, D. (Eds.). (2015). The public value of anthropology: Engaging critical social issues through ethnography. bu,press, pp. 83-109.

Vignato, S., 2020, Motherly Landscapes: Matrifocality, Marriage, Islam and the Change of Generation in Post-Conflict, Post-Tsunami Aceh, East and West, v. 1 n. 60, pp. 31-59.

Download as pdf

Sustainable Development Goals
This teaching activity contributes to the achievement of the following Sustainable Development Goals.

1 3 4 5 8 10 16