Assignment:
Write a brief essay responding to your choice of 3 of the 5 prompts below. Suggested length for each essay is 500 to 750 words.
For each essay you may choose to address only one or two readings, and you should make substantial reference to at least 4 course readings (you can substitute one film for one of these five readings) across your three essays.
Make sure to clearly label each essay with the number of the question you are responding to.
Format: Essays should be organized, free of excessive errors, and appropriately formal in tone (however, formal elements like coversheets and broad introductory paragraphs are not necessary-focus on answering the questions with as much detail and specificity as possible.) Include a single bibliography for all three essays, citing and formatting references according to the American Anthropological Association's preferred citation style.
Essay Prompts (choose 3 to answer):
1. In both of the full-length ethnographies we read this term, we see events unfold over time in ways that don't fit neatly with the narrative of progress that informs so much of our thinking about the past and the future, at least in the U.S. Briefly discuss the two cases - are the forces that shape the lives of the Gebusi and the steelworkers of Chicago's South Side the same or different? Do their reversals of fortune effect the two communities in the same way? Consider what these two cases, taken together, tell us about the idea of progress, or how we might think about time, the past, or the future differently.
2. Consider two readings we have read this term in which gender plays a significant role in the phenomenon the author is writing about, even if the author doesn't make gender the focus of their analysis. Don't use Fausto-Sterling as one of your cases-the vignettes she mentions are too brief-but you can use her ideas to frame your discussion. Compare/contrast these instances, paying attention to how gender relates to cultural symbolism, social statuses and roles, or questions of power and inequality in each case.
3. The Anthropologist Arjun Appadurai argued that ‘globalization' is too broad a term to be analytically useful, and urged us to pay attention to specific kinds of relationships and circulations that connect distant parts of the world. He proposed that tracing out these different kinds of connections would allow us to see the world in terms of distinct "-scapes" or mappings of connection (as well as revealing the people and places that are left behind or left out of these new forms of connectivity). See lecture slides from 5/15. Pick one of the "-scapes" Appadurai lists and show how seeing the world in this way allows us to draw connections between the people and places described in two (or more) readings from the course as parts of a larger landscape of globalization.
4. The relative equality or inequality among persons is one important feature that anthropologists (along with other social scientists) use to define particular societies and compare them to one another, hence the terms ‘egalitarian' and ‘stratified' to characterize different societies. As we know, inequality can vary between one society and another not only in degree but in kind; gender inequality is can exist with or without class inequality, etc.. Compare two societies we've read about in terms of the forms of equality and/or inequality that characterize them, and talk about how this shapes the culture, politics or individual opportunities in these societies.
5. An important goal of doing ethnographic research has long been not only to learn about other cultures but to reflect on our own culture(s) in light of what we have learned about others and about the range of what is possible for humans. Is there anything you learned in this course that significantly changed your perspective on any aspect of human culture, society or experience (including aspects of your own life experience)? Discuss in detail what your perspective was before, how it changed, and what specific case(s) or idea(s) from the course contributed to the change. Note: Although this question is potentially more personal, make sure you maintain the same level of care and specificity as you would in answering any of the other questions (let Christine Walley be your guide here). Also, even if the perspective shift you talk about here is related to the topic of another question, make sure you're not just re-stating your answer to the other question.
Ethnographs read
Knauft, Bruce. 2016. The Gebusi: Lives Transformed in a Rainforest World (4th Edition). Walley, Christine J. 2013. Exit Zero: Family and Class in Postindustrial Chicago.