ANTHROPOLOGY AND HISTORY LM – 2026-2027

The module will follow different phases:
– Fieldwork, critical ethnocentrism, the concept of culture, the interpretation: the instruments of anthropology.
– Archive, time, use of the sources: critical perspective of historiography.
– The study and understanding of the encounter between disciplines: making ‘culture’ entering history, making ‘time’ entering anthropology; analysis of the international debate.
– Ibn Khaldun, anthropology or history? Locating the debate outside the Western world.
– The use of the two disciplines in the methodology of the research in Italy: Ernesto De Martino, Carlo Ginzburg, Alessandro Portelli.
– The colonial experience, the postcolonial phase, and their narratives: case studies to analyse the encounter between history and anthropology.

1. C. Ginzburg, Il formaggio e i vermi, Milano, Adelphi, 2019 (ed. or. 1976).
2. E. De Martino, Sud e Magia, Torino, Einaudi, 2024 (ed. or. 1959) (exstracts).
3. A. Portelli, L’ordine è già stato eseguito. Roma, le Fosse Ardeatine, la memoria, Milano, Feltrinelli, 2012 (ed. or. 1999) (exstracts).
4. G. Casentini, Al di là del fiume: storia e antropologia di un confine africano (Ghana e Togo), Roma, Viella, 2015.