Learning objectives
<br />To provide basic knowledge of anthropology on the issue.
Course unit content
<br />The childbirth is not only a biological event but it conditions social relationships and it owns a strong cultural meaning.<br />The aim of this seminar is exactly this: it tries to provide useful elements of anthropological knowledge for the students in order that they understand how childbirth is not only a physical and biological moment but it has a remarkable cultural and social importance.<br /> <br /> <br />Childbirth as moment of passage; anthropological theories; woman’s role; family and kinship; conception, contraception, abortion and fertility propitiation. <br />The pregnancy; taboos about pregnancy, rituals, myths and folk beliefs; the pregnant woman condition and how she is considered by culture and society.<br />The childbirth: childbirth and feminine characters of the birth (the family women, the midwife, the obstetrician), rituals about mother and child; myths about childbirth; separation, marginality and reinstatement; the “mighty” births.<br />The “social” birth”; the child before his insertion in the social group; the baptism and the child’s integration rites; reading and debate on an ethno-anthropological study.<br />(Lecturer: Dott. Sergio Rovagnati)<br /> <br />