ESSAY
ASSIGNMENT
INSTRUCTIONS
INTRODUCTION
to
SOCIOCULTURAL & LINGUISTIC ANTHROPOLOGY
Read
these instructions before
you begin.
Read
them after you
begin.
Read
them before you turn the
paper in!
Many
students lose marks
because they do not follow directions.
Your major
assignment for this course will be to write a 4-page
essay (typed, double-spaced, 12 point font, 1 inch margins, not
including
figures, charts or any bibliography) summarizing and critically
evaluating an
ethnography of your choice. You
will summarize the main points of the ethnography, and then concisely
discuss
the authors' and your own views about the topic covered.
In other words, you will write a
summary plus an academic "argument".
An ethnography is a
book summarizing the experiences and
conclusions of a sociocultural anthropologist doing fieldwork with a
particular
group of people on a particular topic.
Choose ethnographies on topics or locations of interest to you. There are ethnographies on every part
of the world and every conceivable topic, from hunter-gatherers to
biker
gangs.
This assignment will
consist of two stages of work to be turned
in and marked, as detailed below. The two assignments related to your
essay
will be worth a total of 27.5% (110 points). All
assignments are due at the beginning of class on
the dates specified.
Please come to my
office hours if you have any questions or
hesitations, or ask your Teaching Assistant in tutorial or outside of
it. SHORT questions may be sent by email,
but we may want to discuss your question in person if it has a
complicated
answer, so don't wait until the last minute.
ASSIGNMENT
1: ETHNOGRAPHY
TITLES -- DUE at Beginning
of Class, Thursday May 24
Library
searching and submission of 5 titles of appropriate ethnographies -
2.5% (10
points)
This
stage is worth only 2.5% (10 points), but if it is not submitted,
students may
not progress to the next stage. Also see the information in the
syllabus on the
penalties for late submission.
Submit
five titles of ethnographies you would like to read for your essay, in
order of
your choice, in American Anthropologist reference format.
Each student must do a different ethnography; in case of
duplicate requests, a coin will be tossed to determine who gets their
first
choice, etc. You may submit titles
early, in which case I will indicate to the class that the title is
taken.
The
titles must be in the specified format, that used by the journal American
Anthropologist,
or you
will lose 2 points for each incorrectly formatted title.
Some examples of American Anthropologist style references are
given in the
examples below; more can be found by looking at bibliographies in this
journal.
FORMAT:
Do
not use a
cover page! Use a single sheet of
paper. Put the ethnographies in
order from your first choice to your last choice.
Your Full Name, Student
Number
ANT102, Summer 2007,
Dr. Heather Miller
Thursday, May 24,
2007 (Date assignment
submitted)
ETHNOGRAPHY
TITLES:
(1) Author's Name.
Year.
Title of the Book.
Edition.
Series. City,
State/Province/Country: Press.
(Note: do not include Edition unless it is a 2nd
edition or higher; do not include
Series unless it is
part
of a series - see
examples below.)
(2)
Chavez, Leo R.
1998.
Shadowed Lives. Undocumented Immigrants in
American
Society. 2nd
Edition. New York,
NY:
Thomson Wadsworth.
(3)
Cummins, Bryan and John
Steckley
2004. "Only God Can Own The Land:" The Attawapiskat
Cree. Canadian Ethnography Series,
Volume1. Toronto, ON: Pearson
Education.
(4)
Dentan, Robert Know, Kirk
Endicott, and Alberto G. Gomes
1996. Malaysia and the "Original People": A Case
Study
of the Impact of Development on
Indigenous
Peoples. Cultural Survival Studies in
Ethnicity
and Change Series. New York,
NY:
Pearson
Education.
(5)
Counts, David R. and Dorothy
Ayers Counts
2001.
Over the Next Hill. An Ethnography of
RVing Seniors in
North America. 2nd
Edition.
Peterborough,
ON: Broadview Press.
Choosing
your Ethnography
Places
to look: Look through the list
posted on the CCNet space for this class (go into the Student section
and
choose Handouts) to get ideas.
These ethnographies are written for first or second year
students as
well as for professionals; other ethnographies may use more difficult
language. However, you may choose
any ethnography that you like. If you are choose a book not on the
list, you
must have it cleared with the instructor or the TA in advance, to be
sure that
the book you have chosen is an ethnography (as opposed to a collection
of
essays or a theoretical monograph).
Including books that are not ethnographies on your submitted
list will
result in a lower mark on the assignment.
Be sure
to check the library before you choose ethnographies for your list,
unless you
are willing to buy your own copy.
Note that the ethnographies on the posted list may not be in the
U of T
library system; there are also many ethnographies in the library that
are not
on this list. You may NOT use a
website as a major source, although you may find that an internet
search will
help you find interesting topics of research, or provide lists of
published
ethnographies, particularly academic websites. You
MAY use an ethnography that has been published as an
e-book, if it fulfils all other requirements as a scholarly publication.
Reading
Your Ethnography
Read
Appendix A in your textbook (Lenkeit 2003), for tips on reading
ethnographies. Follow these
instructions to determine what kind of perspective(s) your ethnographer
used, the
topics covered in the ethnography, the techniques of fieldwork, and
other
aspects of the book you should include in the summary part of your
essay. There is also a section in Lenkeit
("You and the Ethnography") that may be helpful for the analysis
section of
your essay.
Additional
Tips: One of the first things
you will have to do in your essay is to present the thesis of your ethnography. The thesis the central conclusion of
the ethnography, the most important point that the author wants to make. Books and
articles may not state their theses explicitly, or may have several
related
theses. To find the thesis you as
the reader need to think about what the piece as a whole is saying in
the most
general way, and state it in your own words in a sentence or two.
Another
important aspect of your summary of the ethnography is a
description and critique of the author's argument.
An argument is the reasoning used by the author to support
his or her thesis, the facts, conclusions, and connections between them. See the sections below on Writing your
Essay and Commonly Asked Questions for more information on recognizing
and
writing theses and arguments.
ASSIGNMENT
2: ESSAY
ASSIGNMENT -- DUE at
Beginning of Class, Thursday June
14
A
final essay, well researched and well written, on the ethnography
approved -
25% (100 points)
If your
essay is not in the format specified, no credit may be given. Also see the information in the
syllabus on the penalties for late submission.
You will be graded on style (spelling, grammar, clarity of
expression)
as well as content, so give yourself time to re-write the essay after
you do a
first draft.
Your
essay must be submitted BOTH
FORMAT
& ORGANISATION of the Essay:
Do not use a
cover page! Put the following
information on the top of the first page:
Your Full Name, Student
Number
ANT102, Summer 2007,
Dr. Heather Miller
Thursday, June 14,
2007 (Date assignment
submitted)
Title of Your
Essay
Text of essay . . .
. . . .
The text
of the essay should be no more than 4 pages (typed, double-spaced, 12
point
font, 1 inch margins). Your
references/bibliography and any figures or charts can take up
additional
pages. Be sure to reference the
figures or charts at the appropriate places in the text (e.g., "see
Figure 1"),
if you use them.
The
essay must be written in the following way, or significant marks will
be
deducted, and an F mark is likely.
You should NOT
put in headers marking these sections ("Introduction", "Summary", etc.). Instead, demark these sections by the nature
of your discussion.
(1) Introduction: Write
a short introduction, which
includes a summary of the topic you will discuss in the essay (your thesis), and the
basic topic of
the ethnography you read. It
should be no more than a few sentences.
(2) Summary
of Book: Write a summary of
the ethnography, including a presentation of the author's topic (who, what,
where, when,
etc.), thesis, perspective, fieldwork techniques, evidence/data, and
argument. Make sure you mention
all these points, although not necessarily in this order; it will vary
with
different ethnographies. Note that
not all of these points are of equal importance, so you should not
necessarily
devote the same amount of space to each of these points.
Be careful to
summarize what the author has presented, from
the author's perspective.
You will have the opportunity to
critique the ethnography and offer your own opinions in the next
section,
Analysis. This summary section
should be about two pages or a little less (no more than that).
(3) Analysis:
This section is where you develop your own thesis and argument about
the
ethnography. It should be about
two pages long, more or less.
Analysis is much
more than a simple
declaration of whether you "liked" the book or not, so avoid this
common
mistake. In the analysis
section, you present your analysis
of
the book, including an argument and evidence in support of YOUR thesis. See
the section on "Writing Your Essay" below for more information on how
to
determine your thesis. Basically, your
analysis examines the assumptions or presuppositions of the book's
argument;
evaluates its validity, strengths and weaknesses; and makes clear your
position
in relation to the author's.
You
will need to ask yourself some of the following
questions as you think about the book: What values and beliefs come
through in
the book? What assumptions about
the world or humans does the author make?
Do you agree with those assumptions? Why
or why not?
How does the truth or falsity of the assumptions affect the
validity of
the argument? Where is the
argument weakest, and where is it strongest? Does
the conclusion logically follow from the argument?
Does the author have any "blind
spots" or commit any oversights?
Use specific evidence from the book that illustrate your points
about
its strengths and weaknesses, possibly including short quotations. See below for the correct way to
reference citations so as to avoid plagiarism!!
Keep
in mind that you can agree with a writer's
basic argument and still be critical of parts of it.
Likewise, you can disagree with a writer's conclusions, but
admire his or her argument. In
such a case, make clear why you agree with some parts and disagree with
others. Working out exactly what
you agree and disagree with in a book puts you in a dialogue with its
author
and establishes you as an authority in your own right.
You have the power to agree, disagree,
or tackle what the author says just as you would in a conversation with
friends. The most important thing to
remember for
this assignment is this: your
argument about the book will be the most important and interesting part
of your
paper.
(4) Conclusion: This
should simply reiterate your main
points and conclusions. It should
be no more than a few sentences long.
The conclusion is NOT the place to introduce new information,
facts,
perspectives, sources, etc. -- if you think of things now, insert them
in the
proper place above. This closing
statement should not be a broad generalization or sweeping statement,
but a
precise summary of your main thesis and argument.
***REMEMBER:
Direct quotes must be in "quotation marks". References
to specific sections or paraphrases of particular ideas of the author
must also
be cited with page number in parentheses at the end of the sentence. See below for the correct way to do
this. Failing to properly cite
your quotations is a major source of plagiarism charges and convictions.
TIPS
on WRITING YOUR ESSAY
(1) Take careful
notes while you
read, about the author's thesis, argument, evidence, and so forth,
as well
as your own reactions to it. See
Appendix A in Lenkeit for more advice on this.
(2) Brainstorm and create
a basic
outline of topics & ideas before you begin. Define
the author's thesis and develop your own thesis.
A representative from Academic Skills
will provide helpful advice in your tutorial.
A thesis statement
expresses succinctly and specifically what
the author intends to accomplish in his or her writing, or what
interesting
insight will be supported with the evidence collected.
It is the main point of an essay or
book, the one thing you want your reader to understand and remember. It is best to have a single sentence
thesis, but do not try to present a long complex statement in one
sentence if
two are needed.
Here is a clearly
stated (author's) thesis for an ethnography
on the lifestyle of a group of hunter-gatherers in Australia: "The XXX aborigines live in a
harsh environment, yet their economic adaptations use this environment
effectively, their social systems provide backup networks in poor
years, and
their religious and artistic traditions illustrate the richness of
cultural
traditions in even the bleakest of conditions."
And a (student's)
thesis for an essay about this ethnography:
"Lee (2004) claims that the environment in which the XXX Aborigines
lived
was the most important factor influencing the all aspects of their
cultural
system. I find this convincing for
their economic and kinship systems, but argue that their gender
relations were
a more important factor than the environment in understanding their
religion."
(3)
Write the paper draft to support these major points. Your
paper needs to go
somewhere, it must not just be a list of facts. The
facts that you do include need to be there for a reason:
they provide evidence for the author's conclusion, or for your thesis. An important part of revising early
drafts of your paper is searching for sentences and paragraphs that are
tangential, and which are not relevant to the author's main points (in
the summary
section) or to your thesis (in the analysis section).
Cut them out.
If there is a hole left behind, you need to find relevant
evidence to
fill in your argument. Never hand
in first or second drafts that you have not meticulously revised for
accuracy,
logical consistency, and errors of spelling and grammar.
Catching errors is easier if you read
your paper aloud to yourself or a friend.
As
you write,
insert citations, in the format specified below (Citations section).
(4) Once you have a
draft of your
paper, you can focus on writing style.
Please
carefully review the logical flow of your ideas, from your
introduction,
through the body of the paper, to the conclusion. This is often
the main
difference between an excellent (A) paper and a good (B) paper. You will be marked on writing style,
grammar and spelling as well as content.
CITATIONS or
HOW TO AVOID PLAGIARIZING
Be sure
to say where your information comes from. You
must cite your source whether or not you directly quote
the words of that source. In
academic writing, anything that is not general knowledge, but rather
comes from
your reading (in this course or outside of it), and
everything/idea that
is distinctively the work of a particular person gets a citation.
The
citation is placed in the text immediately after the material used.
This is the
case whether an actual quote is given, or whether you are just giving
credit to
an author for information or an idea.
The citation should include the author and date, and in many
cases, a
page number. You always need
the page number if you are using a quote or specific data.
You can use just the author and date if you are referring to
a general idea that occurs throughout the work. For
American Anthropologist style, always put
the date and page
immediately after the author's name, do not use a comma.
The citation is part of the
sentence, so the punctuation comes after, like this (Smith 2001:370). Or you
can move the author's name to the front and just enclose date and page
in
parentheses, for example:
Smith (2001:370)
provides new data about the origins of agriculture in Ontario.
If you
actually quote material from a source, be sure to use quotation marks. Quotes longer than two lines must be
block indented and single spaced, and in that case no quotation marks
are used.
Use
quotes sparingly,
limiting their use to particularly apt statements that are ideal for
the point
you wish to make. For the most
part, you should be paraphrasing the materials you read; that is, you
should
re-state the points in your own words.
This involves more than just changing a few words or omitting
portions
of a sentence. Such changes are
tantamount to plagiarism -- see the guide to plagiarism at http://www.utoronto.ca/writing/plagsep.html. However, even well-paraphrased
material should be cited,
as shown in the examples above and below.
Here's
an example of a quote:
"Digging these tombs
would have required massive
co-ordinated labor, and since many of the individuals buried in the
tombs are
elites bedecked with exotic ornaments and surrounded by fineware
ceramics and
figurines, it seems clear that these were built to house elites who
were
capable of amassing and controlling a large labor pool" (Peregrine
2003:230-231).
And an
example of a paraphrase:
These
tombs were likely built for elites who controlled a large labour pool,
as a
great deal of labour would have been needed to dig the tombs, and to
supply the
exotic ornaments and fineware ceramics and figurines found in them
(Peregrine
2003:230-231).
I still
cite Peregrine, even though I don't quote him directly, because this
was not my
own conclusion -- I got this idea from reading his textbook. I provide the page numbers so that it
will be easy for the reader to find this reference, if desired. Note that when I directly quote
Peregrine, I leave the American spelling (labor), but when I
paraphrase, I use
the Canadian spelling (labour). Also note that quotes that are 2
lines or
longer are indented, while paraphrases are not.
COMMONLY
ASKED QUESTIONS:
Q:
How can I figure out what my thesis is?
* Having
done your reading, you may have a thesis in mind from the start. In this case, write your thesis first,
and then proceed to build your paper around it.
* Sometimes
your thesis will not be completely clear to you until you have spent
some time
writing and thinking your way along through your first draft. Then, summarizing your own paper can
help you find your thesis. By
looking over your rough draft, you can see what general point seems to
underlie
what you are writing. You may find
more than one, or see that the point you were trying to make doesn't
hold
up. In this case you need to
remove some parts of your essay or think about a better way to focus
your
paper.
* In
a way all writing is summarizing, deciding what to include or exclude. Part of this decision depends on your
purpose, your audience, and how much space you have.
Your thesis is, in a sense, the most boiled down summary of
your paper that is possible, and will usually be one sentence (but no
longer
than a paragraph) in length.
Q:
What is meant by "argument" in writing?
* An
argument consists of facts or statements put forth as evidence; an
argument
provides a reason to accept or reject the writer's thesis.
All papers must have an argument, but
this does not mean that you are necessarily attacking the work of
others;
rather you are presenting a flowing, logical stream of information to
back up
your thesis.
* An
argument is a course of reasoning aimed at demonstrating truth or
falsehood. It is the connections
drawn between the bits of evidence that demonstrate your thesis. Connections are many, and the one you
are interested in may not be obvious.
A successful argument identifies relevant bits of evidence and
those
elements that are indicative, and connects these with each other for
your reader.
* Just
as math professors ask you to show your work, in writing you need to
show your
reader the course of your thinking that led you to your conclusions. Don't assume that your audience is
thinking the same way you are; you have to lead them by the hand
without being
patronizing.
Many
thanks to Dr. Robin Smith, Anthropology, Western Oregon University, and
Dr.
Roger Lohmann, Trent University, for the use of a modified version of
their
essay instructions.