2019-20

Social psychology is one of the most fundamental branches of the discipline of psychology. It recognizes the fact that the individual is an active participant in the shaping of our social universe thanks to the mutual influences between individual and social environment and concentrates upon the point where these two entities interconnect. It deals with phenomena and types of behavior that can be examined and explained at four levels of analysis, that is, intra-individual, interpersonal, intergroup and ideological.

This course examines both the rise and expansion and the decline and fall of the British Empire from 17th to the 21st centuries. Its main goal is to examine the issues that arise from occupation by an imperial power, both for the conquered and the conquerors. It shows the unsystematic fashion in which the empire expanded,  in which it was influenced both by chance, risk and venture and by political and social circumstances in Britain itself.

The various units of the course deal with the period from the end of the First World War to the fall of Communism. The units of the first half of the course examine ideological, political and socio-economic clashes during the interwar period, the rise of democracies and dictatorships and the consequences of the economic crisis, the birth and enormous expansion of totalitarian regimes and the Second World War.

The aim of the course is to acquaint students with the biology of man and the demography of a series of populations studied by anthropologists, such as the Ache, !Kung, Rendille and the Hutterites and to lead students to the study of the forces that shape the progress of such populations in space and over time.
Course outline:
Population structure and size of population: The examples of the Ache and the Dobe !Kung
Mortality and life expectancy among the Ache, !Kung, Bari, Agta, etc.