Anthropological Area

The Anthropological Area of the Department of Human Sciences for Education at the University of Milano-Bicocca is or has been engaged in research within the following scientific-disciplinary group:

Demoethnoanthropological Sciences (11/SDEA-01)

This group includes exclusively the scientific-disciplinary sector (SDS) of Demoethnoanthropological Disciplines (SDEA-01/A).

The ongoing or completed research activities of the Anthropological Area fall within the scientific-disciplinary sector SDEA-01/A, which is part of the Italian scientific-disciplinary group 11/SDEA-01:

Demoethnoanthropological Disciplines (SDEA-01/A)
formerly M-DEA/01 – Demoethnoanthropological Disciplines
This field focuses on the study of cultures and societies in their differences and continuities across time and space. It investigates sociocultural processes and the historical dynamics of the contexts in which individuals and groups act, adopting both holistic and comparative perspectives. The field examines the continuities and discontinuities of the phenomena studied, along with the general mechanisms underlying them.
Particular analytical attention is given to the practices, representations, and knowledge of various social actors—whether individual, collective, or institutional—and to the meanings they attribute to them. Central to the discipline, though not exclusively so, is the ethnographic method: a form of empirical qualitative research, ideally conducted over an extended period within one or more specific contexts. Depending on the research, ethnography may be complemented by formal and quantitative methodologies, archival research, and the use of written, oral, visual, and digital sources.
Characterized by a strong interdisciplinary orientation and openness to multiple skill sets, the field is marked by sensitivity to cultural models and diverse worldviews. Both in research and teaching, it employs critical theoretical perspectives and engages with various domains of human experience—including religion, kinship, politics, economy, health, gender, reproduction, education, mobility, environment, expressiveness, and creativity. It addresses different forms of participation and interaction, as well as the social, historical, and political processes involved in the production and construction of culture and diversity.
From a universalist perspective, the field also explores the cognitive foundations or diverse ontologies underlying sociocultural experience. Furthermore, it examines these topics through area-specific approaches (continental or macro-regional), with particular attention to different cultures and histories, models of categorization and social interaction, local forms of knowledge, and worldviews. It also considers how alternative histories and resistant group identities persist or emerge in the face of colonial expansion and dominant sociocultural and political systems.
Finally, the field engages with cultural, social, and historical processes in relation to narrative and literary traditions (both written and oral), as well as ritual, performative, artistic, and musical forms at local and global levels. These are explored through frameworks such as heritagization, musealization, revitalization and reinvention of symbolic and expressive forms, and cultural consumption. Such inquiries are situated within dynamics of hegemony and subalternity, in dialogue with cultural studies. The field also includes research on its own epistemological and methodological foundations, its applied dimensions, and the history of the discipline.