Learning outcomes

Knowledge and capacity to understand
At the end of the course, the student should:
- have a basic knowledge of the fundamental epistemological and hermeneutic principles of anthropological ethnography;
- have a basic knowledge of the main cosmological models (Amerindian perspectivism in particular) as reconstructed by ethnographic surveys;
- have a basic knowledge of the stages in the historical development of naturalistic cosmology.

Knowledge and capacity to apply understanding
At the end of the course, the student should be able to:
• consciously apply analogical reasoning in the cultural field;
- recognize the epistemological bases of an ethnographic text;
- recognize the fundamental features of the main forms of cosmology;
- cosmologically position a philosophical theory.

Independent judgment
At the end of the course, the students will have acquired:
• the capacity to critically analyze an anthropological text in relation to its ethnological bases;
• the capacity to anthropologically analyze a vision of the world (or cosmology)
• the capacity to critically analyze the cosmological foundations of a philosophical theory.

Communication skills
At the end of the course, students should be able to:
• consciously use specific terms relating to anthropological ethnography themes;
• speak precisely about the differences and similarities between the various ethnographic theories;
• speak precisely about the cosmological problems involved in the nature-culture relationship.

Capacity to learn
At the end of the course, the students should be able to:
• analyze the quality of an ethnographic research;
• identify and analyze culturally-oriented cosmological constructions.

Program

- Ethnography between epistemology and hermeneutics;
- The problem of experiments in the history of anthropology;
- Ethnography as an experiment of experience;
- The cognitive bases of analogy and analogies in anthropology;
- Fuzziness: resonance, empathy and serendipity in ethnography;
- The historical construction of the concept of "nature";
- The historical construction of naturalism;
- The new concept of animism;
- Amazonian perspectivism according to Viveiros de Castro
- The new concept of totemism;
- Analogism.
- A special case: Mexican cultures.

Texts
- Piasere Leonardo, L'etnografo imperfetto, Rome and Bari, Laterza (almost any edition).
- One test selected from the following:
Descola Philippe, Oltre natura e cultura, Firenze, SEID, 2014 (only pp. 1-251)
Viveiros de Castro Eduardo, Metafore cannibali. Elementi di antropologia post-strutturale, Verona, Ombre corte, 2017
Gutiérrez del Ángel Arturo Humberto, Las danzas del Padre Sol, Universidad Nacional Autonóma de Mexico, 2010.

Examination Methods

Learning levels will be assessed by an oral test. Students must be able to demonstrate:
- to have understood the relevant underlying elements of epistemology and ethnographic hermeneutics;
- to have understood the relevant elements concerning the study of cosmologies as collections with ethnographic methods;
- to be able to express their own reasoning in a precise manner, identifying and selecting the essential elements;
- to be able to critically analyze the relationship between philosophical thought and the cosmological construction on which it is based.