Learning to think anthropologically requires one to develop the capacity to write anthropologically. You will write two short papers of up to 1,500 words that respond to the prompts that will be provided on Learning Suite. Each paper is due by the date listed on the reading schedule. Each paper will constitute 15% of your final grade, for a total of 30% between the two papers. A copy of the grading rubric that will be used to grade these essays can be found here.

 

First Essay Prompt

 

Provide a working definition of culture and explain why the cultural dimension to any element of human experience is always a critical consideration. Choose some phenomenon and describe its cultural implications. In other words, what would we be missing in our understanding of the phenomenon if we were not to consider it as something that is embedded in a particular cultural and historical context? Use concepts from the readings and lectures to make an effective argument that addresses these two issues (what is culture and why do we need to understand it in your example).

 

Points of clarification:

-Do not simply quote some other scholar's definition of culture. You may use quotes, but your definition must include your own explanation of what culture is and why it is important to understand the cultural dimensions of human experience.

-Do not just say that 'culture is everything' or 'culture is a web'. These statements are insufficient in and of themselves, and if you use something to this effect you must follow it up with a thorough definition and complete description of what you mean by this in your own words.

-A good approach to selecting a phenomenon may be to either a) choose some phenomenon that is familiar to you and describe it as a cultural phenomenon that might otherwise be thought of as a purely 'natural' one; or b) choose some phenomenon from another group that seems 'strange' or 'unnatural', and describe the cultural logic that makes it make as much sense as some parallel phenomenon from your own community.

 

Second Essay Prompt

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Clifford Geertz (1973) described culture as the “webs of significance” that humans spin for themselves, making sense of the world, and then living life within those entanglements of meaning that make up any particular cultural perspective. In this course thus far, we have discussed several areas of human experience—including religion, gender, refugee displacement, health, and language—and we have discussed how people make sense of these experiences, mediated through cultural webs of significance.

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For this second essay, your assignment is to choose one author or theorist from the syllabus, and use that author’s theoretical framework to analyze some new dimension of human experience beyond what the author wrote about directly. In other words, apply their thinking to make sense of some other example or phenomenon. Use the theoretical perspective to explain and analyze how the webs of significance at play in the cultural context of the phenomenon make it meaningful to those involved in it. Unpack the assumptions that people in the community make as they engage in the practice that you are analyzing, and use the theorist that you chose from the syllabus to make sense of it.

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Points of clarification:

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When you choose your topic, it is best to focus your argument on specific examples in order to make your case. For example, if you choose religion, do not just argue about religion in general, but use specific ethnographic examples that illustrate your argument. The details matter here.

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Be precise in your explanation. It is okay to agree or disagree with the authors we have read, or the arguments presented in lecture. What is most important is that you think through the details of your argument and lay them out clearly. Apply theoretical concepts to specific examples that make the details of your argument clear.

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Make sure that your argument is a novel argument, or that it is applied to an example that goes beyond the theorist’s own writing. Do not just repeat the arguments presented in lecture or in the readings as applied to the same cultural cases that they analyzed. Come up with new examples or analyze previous examples in a new way that demonstrates your own critical thinking about the chosen issue.

 

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Guidelines for writing the short papers

The maximum length of each paper should be 1,500 words. However, do not let the short length deceive you into thinking that this is a quick and dirty task. A quality grade will require a thoughtful essay that is succinct and packs a novel argument efficiently into the allotted space. This should require drafting a longer version and cutting extraneous detail in order to distill the paper down to the most concise version of the argument that you make based on the prompts.

 

Please follow these instructions in composing and formatting the document:

 

Include a title page with your name, title, the assignment title (i.e., "Second Short Paper") and the word count of the essay

The paper should be no more than 1,500 words and be single-spaced with numbered pages.

Use the Chicago (Author-Date) style guide for formatting and citation conventions. It is critical that you adequately document and cite all of your sources (including those you reference from the syllabus) and that the document is formatted properly in order to make it readable. Plagiarism will not be tolerated and will dramatically affect your grade. Our Department of Anthropology website includes several other writing resources for your reference.

Make sure to save your assignment as a Microsoft Word document prior to uploading it to Learning Suite.

A copy of the rubric that will be used to grade these response papers can be found here.

 

Submission Instructions: Please upload your single-spaced paper as a Microsoft Word document to the gradebook in Learning Suite by 11:59 PM on the due date. Failing to follow these submission rules may result in your paper not being considered turned in "on time" or not graded in a timely manner.

 

Beyond summarizing the arguments, positions, or data in the readings, you need to stake a position or offer a novel critique to the readings you include in each paper. The selection of particular readings from lectures or the syllabus is up to you, but your sources and your argument do need to cohere around a specific topic. You may use external sources also, but all sources need full citations in the papers (the references cited does not count against your word count).