1,721,012 research outputs found
Paradigmi dello Sviluppo e Approccio Relativista
Full text linkIn this article the author builds on the notion of “paradigm of development” to provide analytic instruments for the institutional analysis of international development. He identifies the following four main paradigms, each rooted in different disciplines and ethical foundations:1) economic growth; 2) social equity; 3) environmental sustainability; 4) beneficiaries’ active role. Each paradigm implies different and measurable objectives, to be achieved by specific methodological approaches. The various paradigms give different consideration to relevance of specific articulations of culture, formal or informal norms and local conditions. It is accordingly possible to classify them based on their relativist attitude. The economic growth paradigm assumes generalized positive gain for the public. The beneficiaries of development are not really defined: they are an imagined community that cannot take any direct role in the design and implementation of programmes and project. As such, this paradigm stands in opposition to the highly relativist fourth paradigm that instead requires specific communities to take an active decisional role on the development process.
Equally diverging along the relativist gradient are the priorities defined by different sets of human rights, that on the whole provide the internationally agreed ethical dimension of international development. The transversal responsibilities for the application and promotion of the internationally agreed human rights have over the last two decades facilitated a process of hybridization of the development paradigms. Hybridization and inhomogeneity thus pervade the organizational culture of each international organisation, opening up space for both manipulations and negotiations. Throughout the paper, the author argues for the methodological and theoretical relevance of anthropology and the relativist approaches to development for mitigating the negative and, in some cases, devastating impacts that the first paradigm may produce on the most disadvantaged, “invisible” human communities
La fine di un’era? Suggestioni apocalittiche al tempo del Covid-19
No full textIn this chapter, the author explores, with introspective approach, the collective experience during the Covid-19 pandemic. The chapter seeks to provide an explanation for the paradox wherein, during the initial phase of the pandemic, citizens passively accepted the restrictions imposed by the government, which due to the lack of scientific evidence were generic and largely irrational, while in the second period, characterised by the availability of the vaccine, forms of rebellion were witnessed. The author explains the first situation by resorting to an analysis of symbolism and discursive figures used in public communication. For the second, he introduces insights from the conception of time and history of the Oromo people of Ethiopia, capable of elucidating the political paradigm shift experienced by the European Union during the pandemic period. The author then employs suggestions from the anthropological theory of incorporation to explain the public's reactions in terms of resistance
Valorizzare i domini collettivi per la conservazione della biodiversità. Iniziative nell'ambito del VI Convegno Nazionale di Antropologia Applicata Cremona, 13-15 dicembre 2018. Nota di concetto
Full text linkNota di concetto in preparazione del IV Convegno nazionale della SIA
Nuove frontiere nella conservazione della biodiversità: Patrimoni di comunità e assetti fondiari collettivi
Full text linkL’articolo analizza l’intersezione tra l’esigenza globale di conservazione della biodiversità— tradizionalmente affrontata attraverso la messa in opera di aree protette— e la realtà degli assetti fondiari collettivi nel contesto italiano. Viene presentato il percorso internazionale che ha portato al riconoscimento nell’ambito dell’IUCN e della Convenzione sulla Biodiversità dell’efficacia delle forme di gestione sostenibile delle risorse naturali praticate dalle comunità locali e dai popoli indigeni. In Italia tali realtà sono identificate come ‘patrimoni di comunità’ (PdC) ed in gran parte corrispondono agli assetti fondiari collettivi. Vengono proposte due modalità di classificazione di tali assetti: una fondata su diverse modalità di governance derivate da intricati percorsi legislativi, l’altra fondata su caratteristiche ecosistemiche. I menzionati sviluppi nell’ambito del diritto internazionale sono vincolanti sia per l’Unione Europea che per l’Italia, e prevedono forme di sostegno. Si suggerisce un’azione combinata di ulteriori studi e advocacy a livello europeo per ottenere l’adozione di politiche appropriate
Generation and regeneration in policy and practices
Full text linkThe idea of working on ‘generation’ and ‘regeneration’ in the context of policy arose when the European Union launched the Next Generation EU recovery plan as a way out of COVID crisis, thus resorting to a concept that East African societies based on generational class systems have been using as reference of their main main institutional set-up. Inspired by the Rhetoric culture school, attention shifted to the cognitive structures and correlations that ‘generation’ and ‘regeneration’ evocate, for appropriate and constructive use in policy and action. This special issue collects applied ethnographic studies on the implementation of EU programmes, long-term ethnography of Candomblè religion,
a study on the role of the gadaa generational class systems of the Oromo (Ethiopia), ethnography on car theft in Kanaky (New Caledonia), a collaborative ethnography of the dônga stick duelling practiced by the Mursi (Ethiopia), and a long-term ethnographic study of divination in Hamar (Ethiopia). The comparative review of the use of ‘generation’ and ‘regeneration’ in these ethnographies shows that both represent the link between past and future, providing condensed expressions of continuity of key values. Generation evokes the reproduction of society, the process of knowledge transfer, education and cultural transmission, as linked to a specific identity group or polity. Regeneration is instead activated in response to some sort of unpredictable disturbing element that breaks the normal flow of events, either as an ongoing necessity or on occasion of crises. As such, regeneration allows the idea of change and social transformation
Gadaa Across Domains. A Long-Term Study of an African Democratic Institution
Full text linkGadaa Across Domains. A Long-Term Study of an African Democratic Institutio
Federalism and Ethnic Minorities in Ethiopia: Ideology, Territoriality, Human Rights, Policy
Full text linkThis article is published open access by DADA Rivista di Antropologia post-globale, http://www.dadarivista.com/, ISSN: 2240-019
I sistemi delle classi d’età. Il contributo teorico di Bernardo Bernardi e la loro riscoperta contemporanea in chiave identitaria e patrimoniale
No full textThis chapter considers Bernardi’s contribution to two different processes of traditional institutions revival in East Africa. He was the main ethnographer of the Mugwe, a traditional dignitary of the Meru of Kenya, that ceased to exist soon after his field work. He used the attribution ‘failing prophet’ in the title of the first edition of his book, changed into ‘blessing prophet’ in the following edition, having in the meanwhile registered a growing symbolic consideration for the institution. The history of the gadaa generational class system of the Oromo is intertwined with the Oromo liberation struggle. The institution never disappeared entirely, having remained operative among the Oromo-Borana in the southern periphery of Ethiopia. In Asmaron Legesse’s ethnography it was presented as capable of providing a centre of democratic government. It became a symbol of political autonomy among the Oromo in diaspora and among the fighters, and a national Oromo symbol after the introduction of ethnic federalism in the country. It is now in full revival and enlisted among the Unesco intangible cultural heritage. Starting from his doctoral thesis in 1950, Bernardi was the first anthropologist to systematically theorize about the political significance of age class systems in East Africa
Nascita e sviluppi del concetto antropologico di cultura nei paesi di lingua tedesca
No full textAustrian and German anthropological traditions are considered in view of the influence they had on global anthropology. The chapter is built round the centrality of the anthropological notion of culture and cultural dynamics. The particularistic and relativist notion of culture is in fact believed to have emerged from in Germany from the XVIII century, where intellectuals have juxtaposed the term Kultur to Zivilisation. Within German anthropology, universalistic perspectives on culture have continued through the Nineteenth Century, as in the evolutionary approach of Gustav Klemm and Johann Jakob Bachofen. A different form of cultural universalism was introduced by Adolf Bastian with his theory of the psychic unity of mankind. Towards the end of the 19th century a third declination of Kultur emerged within the well-known cultural-historical school. Ratzel and Leo Frobenius’ methodological contributions opened the possibility to compare the cultural tracts of different peoples for the reconstruction of processes of cultural diffusion. At theoretical level this led to the definition of the Kulturkreise (‘cultural circles’, or ‘cultural complexes’). The greabnerian version of this model was adopted by the Vienna school. It stimulated the search for new syntheses on the history of humanity, as in the case of Wilhelm Schmidt’s theory of Urmonotheismus. The particularistic and relativistic notion of Kultur as well as the methods and concept of the cultural-historical school have informed the early phases of American anthropology through the mediation of Franz Boas and his school.
The Nazi phase forced several influential anthropologists to leave the country. However, the presence of important museums and research institutes allowed the recovery of some continuity with the classic approaches after the War. The Frobenius Intitute is a case in point, with its capacity to keep focus on the ‘cultural morphological’ approach through the work of Frobenius, Jensen and Haberland, three scholars linked by direct teacher-pupil relationships
The Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology of Halle-Saale was founded in 1999. It focuses on promoting doctoral and post-doctoral research. In a short time it has probably become the European research centre with the largest number of anthropologists. Germanophone anthropology is today highly diversified, open to new topics and contaminated by the most diverse tendencies, but it is still possible to identify elements of continuity with the classic themes and approaches. The rhetoric culture project, promoted by Ivo Strecker, is a case in point, an approach marked by research on universalistic cultural processes. In this initiative American anthropology, with its post-modern developments of the discipline, seems to be paying back its early time debt to German anthropology
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