DESCRIPTION

The Summer School Learning from the Local is located in India from 8 September 2018 to 23 September 2018. The School is based on an intense academic program, on several meetings with local associative and cultural realities, and is strongly imbued of a travelling timing, that improves its educative value. The School leads the students to deepen the following topics in the field:

• local development/ strengthening. Effects of bottom-up cooperation initiatives on local communities. Calcutta and Mumbai areas;
• heritage. Enhancement of local cultural traditions (West Bengal);
• dissemination of knowledge. Dissemination and impact of communication technologies on local communities in productive activities and training, initiatives in the fight against poverty (Mumbai).

The Department of Sociology and Social Research of the University of Milano Bicocca and the Department of Cultural Heritage of the University of Bologna (Campus of Ravenna) approved the recognition of 6 cfu for students participating in the Summer School. The Italian Embassy in India promotes and sustains the program.

CONTENTS COVERED

The Summer School aims to strength student’s capabilities with regard to the following points:

• different ways to organize social and cultural life;
• managing cultural diversity in complex contexts;
• critical awareness of NGO’s activities;
• direct experience of several processes of social, cultural and economics changes;
• ethnographic research projects.

The Summer School includes also visits to several places of main cultural and environmental interest, with regard to:

• anthropological issues;
• arts, local craft and immaterial heritage;
• tribal people rights;
• making of “Indian” and local identity;
• sustainable tourism;
• microcredit projects.

The Summer School is articulated in two stage: the first part counts 4 preliminary lectures/meetings in Italy, dedicated to present some basic concepts of anthropological theory, to delineate the main feature of the country and of the localities we will go to visit, and to prepare students for the travel part of the Summer School. A more definite schedule time and the detailed travel program will be defined for the end of April 2018.

PROGRAM COORDINATOR

Prof. Vincenzo MATERA - University of Milano-Bicocca