inessentialanthropologist

[inessentialanthropologist]

reprise: discussion paper notes

since it seems like some found these pointers difficult to unearth down the blog, here they are at the top of the list. even if you have read them once already, it is probably worth your time to read them again.

The following suggestions and format guidelines supplement the information available in your syllabus about the discussion papers: Talk over your ideas with your classmates. If you are still unsure whether you’re on the right track, run your ideas by me before it’s too late. Proof-read your work. Again. Get someone you know writes well to help you revise your work. Go to a writing center. campus resources include:

*  Library and Learning Commons: http://www.seattleu.edu/learningcommons/ *  Writing Center: http://www.seattleu.edu/writingcenter/ The Writing Center employs undergraduate writing consultants who assist students at all stages of the writing process. Consultants will help students begin writing tasks, organize and develop first drafts, and revise and edit later drafts. *  Research Services: http://www.seattleu.edu/library/services/research/ Need help finding research?  Save time by starting with your Research Services Librarians. We are eager to help you at any stage of the research process.  Contact us if you need help brainstorming keywords, using our databases, finding articles and books or sorting through the information you find on the Internet. Students can receive help in person, by chat, phone, or email, or by scheduling a research consultation. *  ‘Writer’  (http://app.writer.pearsonhighered.com/writer)  is a web site and online tool that combines the typical content of a composition handbook, style guides for major publication formats (APA, MLA, Chicago, etc.), and a set of resources to help students organize and improve their research and writing. It includes tutorials on key writing issues (everything from the idea generation process to whether to use a colon or semicolon).  It is a web-based system, and students can access it from anywhere they can access the internet (including from their smart phones). Use a dictionary. The OED is preferred for etymology and comprehensiveness, but Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th edition) is the American standard. It also contains grammar, punctuation, and style notes. The dictionary is to sharpen and clarify your own understanding; don’t quote the definitions. Read Strunk and White’s Elements of Style. For yet more detail and the ultimate authority, read The Chicago Manual of Style—anthropologists follow the author-date citation format. It is a good idea to support your argument with citations from the texts. A basic citation looks like this: (Benedict 1934). Note there is no punctuation between author and date. If the specific concept referenced is discussed on a particular page: (Lévi-Strauss 1992 [1955]: 384). The date of original publication can go in square brackets if a more recent publication date would lead to misunderstanding. If you are quoting a specific passage: “culture is public because meaning is” (Geertz 1973: 12). Most of your citations will look like this. Note that the punctuation comes AFTER the parenthetical citation, which comes after the close quote marks. Note also that the portion of the sentence outside the quotes has to agree grammatically with the quoted material. It also must be an accurate transcription: double-check what you are quoting to ensure you aren’t misrepresenting the author. Article titles and book chapters are in quotation marks; book and film titles are either underlined or italicized—choose one and be consistent. Do not cite the title of a book if you only read one chapter from that book; your citation should reference what you read.  Use care in how you talk about core concepts from the course. For example, it may be common enough in casual speech to make a statement like “our culture says that everybody wants to be rich.” But does a “culture” really speak? This is a personification of an abstract concept, and it’s inappropriate in formal writing (perhaps you will even become convinced that it is inappropriate in informal practice). Give some thought to what you have learned about what culture is and is not, according to different authors we have read. Some conventions of form: Double-space your paper.  (1.5 spacing is often acceptable, as long as there is space for marking comments and edits) Don’t use a cover sheet or a separate cover. Don’t use right-justification (i.e., don’t make the right margin even). I am a visual person and it makes me unhappy, and when I am reading lots of papers, every little bit of happiness is precious.  Write your name on the back of the paper only. You don’t need to add a separate sheet of paper. It is a good idea to include your student number in the header or footer of the paper, in case pages get separated.

You do not need to add a bibliography or references list for sources which are on the syllabus. if you cite something else, you do need to provide a full reference. Remember that ‘due in class, at the beginning of class’ means in class, printed on paper. Digital submission is not normally accepted. If something exceptional happens, it is better to turn in a paper by email than not at all, but you will still normally be required to submit the (same) paper on actual paper asap. But talk with me, and we will work it out. Any paper submitted electronically should be in PDF format. Do not submit papers to me in word format. Refer back to the syllabus for the basic parameters of the assignment. Remember, you are expressing and critiquing the authors’ arguments, not their personalities, and not your opinions about the subjects. Be specific, be clear, be concise. Ordinarily, neither the authors’ nor your own ‘beliefs’ should be central to the paper; we are discussing something advanced in argument, not secreted inside anybody’s head.  Some diacritical marks and abbreviations you may encounter on your papers: NAS/R.O. = not a sentence/run-on sentence NAW = not a word WW/WC = wrong word/word choice gram = usage/grammar unc = unclear red = redundant awk = awkward sp = spelling those little squiggles drawn off punctuation marks = remove that mark anything else that is unclear, please do ask me.

[inessentialanthropologist]

A disagreement over one piece of culture points to where our discourse has arrived when it comes to talking about all culture — at a roiling impasse.

“The conversations are exasperated, the verdicts swift, conclusive and seemingly absolute. The goal is to protect and condemn work, not for its quality, per se, but for its values.” from the new york times magazine’s latest culture issue. as always, very much worth a look.

[inessentialanthropologist]

With the Y generation coming into their own, the reality is that social media and technologically is now the norm. [sic]

is this why proofreading is dead? because it has been outsourced to your readers at their own expense? (this is not a post about social media.)

[inessentialanthropologist]

feel free to be you, but not me.

from the new york times, visiting seattle for an article on halloween costumes. apropos your upcoming group assignments, well worth reading (and following some of the links as well, for additional material.)

[inessentialanthropologist]

There's glory for you!' 'I don't know what you mean by "glory",' Alice said. Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. 'Of course you don't — till I tell you. I meant "there's a nice knock-down argument for you!"' 'But "glory" doesn't mean "a nice knock-down argument",' Alice objected. 'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.' 'The question is,' said Alice, 'whether you can make words mean so many different things.' 'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master — that's all.' Alice was too much puzzled to say anything; so after a minute Humpty Dumpty began again. 'They've a temper, some of them — particularly verbs: they're the proudest — adjectives you can do anything with, but not verbs — however, I can manage the whole lot of them! Impenetrability! That's what I say!'

the humpty-dumpty chapter from through the looking glass is remarkably apropos to our class subjects, from birthdays and identity to who gets to decide the meanings of words. worth a read even if you weren’t in a class like ours.

[inessentialanthropologist]

A lecture course teaches students that listening is not the same thing as thinking about what you plan to say next — and that critical thinking depends on mastery of facts, not knee-jerk opinions.

a short, worthwhile op-ed piece in the nyt in praise of the lecture.

[inessentialanthropologist]

the issue of culture

just in time for our shift of focus from kinship to culture, the New York Times Magazine has produced a special issue all about “culture.”

click the linked text above to peruse the issue’s contents.

[inessentialanthropologist]

there are two basic kinds of writers: Rhinoceros writers and Cat writers

from the stranger, “Here's How to Survive College If You Hate Writing“

[inessentialanthropologist]

What does it say about our own moral compass that this is how we approach the most vulnerable in our society?

a KUOW radio story about the ‘war on the visibly poor’ being perpetrated in Auburn, Washington, where at least 13 kinds of behaviors homeless folks engage in to survive are prohibited by law. This week, the Seattle parks commissioners voted to ban smoking (cigarettes) in all public parks, a policy which cannot help but disproportionately affect poor people. note that this photo of a protestor’s sign critiques exactly what we’ve come to know as a strategy of biopolitical governmentality.

[inessentialanthropologist]

“I don’t think it’s normal adopting a child from another country, of another race and paying a lot of money. I don’t think it’s normal to put a child on a plane away from all its kin and different smells. It’s a very modern phenomenon.”

a recent NYT magazine article seemingly made to fit perfectly into our class readings. the woman speaking, an adoptee who returned to the country of her birth, says that “Our goal is to make ourselves extinct.”

[inessentialanthropologist]

One metric matters above all: Can you dance to it?

NYT review of a pop-“multimedia reality network” show, in which performers riffed on all sorts of issues Jameson has touched on in Reification and Utopia. The quoted line above comes as the apotheosis of all the show’s preceding challenges, marking a definitive return to the body as anchor to the real, apparently having failed to learn from Mulholland Drive... worth a quick read to see how far, or not, we’ve come in the 40 years since Jameson’s text.

[inessentialanthropologist]

It was supposed to be a little ironic."

in passing reference to Vogue’s ‘made in china’ feature for chinese fashion designers, the scarcity thereof highlighted at this year’s met ball.

[inessentialanthropologist]

Should a child tax credit be aimed primarily at families with incomes high enough to owe taxes at the end of the year, as appears to be the case in the Lee-Rubio plan, or should it extend to families with incomes so low that they pay little in taxes?

A Truce in the War Over Family

published on the first day of class, this short op-ed traces some of the ways the idea of family, that private sphere, has been at the center of very public struggles and intervention by the state.

[inessentialanthropologist]

“He looks just like me when I was little,” he said. “I don’t feel paternal toward him. Yet it’s odd when I look at him and I see me.”

Baby Makes Four, and Complications

a somewhat long article about people trying to work out their unusual family structure’s implications. certainly chock-full of details, some of which uncannily recall Lévi-Strauss’ comments about modern families.

[inessentialanthropologist]

While technically a multiple murderer, Dom prefers to growl Zen koans such as "You don't turn your back on family... even when they do," and "I don't have friends... I got family."

Fast & Furious 101: Go Hard or Go Home

while i hesitate to risk anything which might be construed as recommending to watch all 7 (seven?!) f&f flicks, the article linked above may be worth perusing, and certainly points to the fact that the franchise relies heavily on the notion that family is not about choices; family is about what you are compelled to do. family is what makes you do what you do...

[inessentialanthropologist]

the family of man

now that we have taken some time to consider Steichen's great photo exhibit, it may be productive to compare it to the american anthropological society's exhibit on race.

you can see a virtual tour of the exhibit here [sorry, site uses flash].

[inessentialanthropologist]

reboot

new school year, new twist on an old theme.

inessential posts and pages have been removed; some still relevant remain sedimented below.

this season we will refract the subject of culture through one of the few key terms in anthropology which once could rival culture in disciplinary importance: kinship.

Once upon a time, kinship was considered the beginning and end of anthropological study. It provided basic structure to groups; it was considered the basis for rules of exchange, property, power, and law. It was also, through the ‘genealogical method’ pioneered by W. H. R. Rivers, the point of entry to alien cultures (as we would now term them, though Rivers did not), making communication and translation possible with outsiders by a kind of assumed Rossetta Stone effect. Some of the greatest debates and most vicious rivalries in anthropology played out through arguments over kinship... and then, abruptly, nobody seemed to care about it anymore. Arguably, that historical moment marked the ascendency of the modern concept we call ‘culture’....  so we are back again to the origins of this site.