Handbag, or no handbag?

Today I stood in front of Manor at the Piazza Dante for a good 20 minutes while waiting to meet my partner for lunch. Simply out of curiosity, I started comparing the number of women vs. the number of men who carry purses, handbags, backpacks or some form of container for their personal belongings. A random sample of 10 (5 men, 5 women) was chosen: every third person who passed by the ash tray was counted until his/her gender quota was filled. Not surprisingly, only 1 out of 5 men carried a backpack and all women carried a purse or a handbag.

It makes me wonder, what is it in our culture that causes such phenomenon? Is it simply the influence of popular culture/fashion? If women tend to carry purses or handbags to hold their belongings, where do men's belongings go? Can we take advantage of such kind of behaviour in the field of cultural heritage?

TEC-CH Seminar: Museum Anthropology

Tomorrow, May 30, starts a three-days seminar held by guest-speaker Paolo Campione. Prof. Campione has a wide experience as anthropologist, he has conducted fieldwork in New Guinea, Bali and, most recently, northern Laos; in Italy, has studied the popular arts of traditional communities in Sardegna and the Alps. He teaches Cultural Anthropology at the University of Insubria and from 2005 he is curator of the Museo delle Culture, in Lugano.

The seminar is themed on Museum Anthropology, encompassing the history of the anthropological museum, issues in the interpretation of cultural objects, complexity of giving meaning, classification and display of ethnographic objects, with rich examples drawn from the Museo delle Culture in Lugano and the exhibitions which have been designed with the collaboration of prof. Campione. A special section is dedicated to the interpretation of Indian works of art and of distinctive objects from Melanesia and Polynesia, with examples from the museum collection.

All lectures will be held at Museo delle Culture in Lugano, in Via Cortivo 24/28.