INC, Cultural Anthropology(1), SPRING 2020 Amdahl-Mason, A-042511730-31 Assignments

This portion will be graded on the Ideas and Content, Evidence, and Organization parts of the rubric.

You can attach a recording or Google Slides or use Flipgrid. This will be graded using the Presentation and Enthusiasm categories of the rubric.

If you want to make a survey, create it using Google Forms and attach it or a link to it.

Pick two of the following discussion questions to answer and respond to two classmates.
1) What is unique about ethnographic fieldwork and how did it emerge as a key strategy in anthropology?
2) How do traditional approaches to ethnographic fieldwork contrast with contemporary approaches?
3) What are some of the contemporary ethnographic fieldwork techniques and perspectives and why are they important
4) What are some of the ethical considerations in doing anthropological fieldwork and why are they important?
5)How do anthropologists transform their fieldwork data into a story that communicates meaning? How are reflexivity and polyvocality changing the way anthropologists communicate their work?

You have several choices for this assignment (see Application Assignment - Week of April 27 document below). If you choose to do the essay or the creative assignment, use the attached document, Application Assignment - Week of April 27 - Essay or Creative Project. If you choose to make a video, use the Flipgrid link.

Please respond using Flipgrid, which allows you to video your response. Please respond to at least one classmate. This will be worth 4 points. The two choices are:
1)Complete an arts-based assignment, in which you use photos or digital images to represent parts of your cultural identity such as ethnicity, gender, beliefs, interests, subcultures, etc. and explain how each image represents your cultural identity.
2)Tell or describe the story of a fable (story with a message) from your cultural tradition. Then identify elements of the fable that attempt to teach cultural values. What are those values, and do they still matter today?

Answer two of the discussion questions and respond to at least one classmate.
1. How did the armchair anthropology and the off-the-veranda approaches differ as methods to study culture? What can be learned about a culture by experiencing it in person that cannot be learned from reading about it?
2. Why is the concept of culture difficult to define? What do you think are the most important elements of culture?
3. Why is it difficult to separate the “social” from the “cultural?” Do you think this is an important distinction?
4. In the twenty-first century, people have much greater contact with members of other cultures than they did in the past. Which topics or concerns should be priorities for future studies of culture?

Please complete this short check-in. Note it is due April 25 so I can use the information in setting up next week's work.

1. This chapter emphasizes how broad the discipline of anthropology is and how many different kinds of research questions anthropologists in the four subdisciplines pursue. What do you think are the strengths or unique opportunities of being such a broad discipline? What are some challenges or difficulties that could develop in a discipline that studies so many different things?
2. Cultural anthropologists focus on the way beliefs, practices, and symbols bind groups of people together and shape their worldview and lifeways. Thinking about your own culture, what is an example of a belief, practice, or symbol that would be interesting to study anthropologically? What do you think could be learned by studying the example you have selected?
3. Discuss the definition of culture proposed in this chapter. How is it similar or different from other ideas about culture that you have encountered in other classes or in everyday life?
4. In this chapter, Anthony Kwame Harrison, Bob Myers, and Lynn Kwiatkowski describe how they first became interested in anthropology and how they have used their training in anthropology to conduct research in different parts of the world. Which of the research projects they described seemed the most interesting to you? How do you think the participant-observation fieldwork they described leads to information that would otherwise be difficult or impossible to learn?

Please complete this survey. If you also have me for Algebra 2, some of the questions are the same, but several are different so I would like you to complete the survey in each class.