This course has focused on the relationship between knowledge and culture. We have explored two questions: How do we come to know about other cultures? How is what we know shaped by culture? The final assignment for the semester asks you to consider these questions in two essays, each 7.5-10 pages in length. Each essay needs to discuss substantively the ideas of three authors we have read this semester. Your two essays must discuss a total of at least six different authors. You can discuss the same author in two different essays so long as the second essay substantively treats three other authors.

In framing your discussions, pay particular attention to such issues as definitions, analytical frameworks, underlying assumptions, and evidence -- these will help you to critique each author's approach, enable comparison between them, and help you to develop a thesis statement which explains how your analysis of several authors points to specific conclusions.

For each question, you should choose three authors who can easily be placed in dialogue with each other. Use this dialogue to formulate your own argument in answer to the question and be sure to include a clear, interesting thesis statement in your opening paragraph. While your essay should focus primarily on three authors, feel free to refer to other relevant readings.

In the questions below, some authors are separated by a slash. This means that you may discuss one or more of the authors listed, but they would count as only one example.

QUESTION ONE
"Knowledge is power." This popular statement is usually employed to highlight the value of education. But we've seen over the course of the semester that claims to have knowledge about other cultures are also ways of exerting power by defining and asserting that one understands another. Based on the work of three authors we've read this semester, what are the connections between anthropological study of culture and power relations? How might anthropology itself be engaged in constructing knowledge that is used to assert power?
In answering this question, you must discuss three authors from the following list: Lutz and Collins, Mead/Freeman, Foucault, Martin, Fadiman, Grant, Brenner/Abu-Lughod/el Guindi

QUESTION TWO
"Facts don't lie." We often think that knowledge is objective and that the truth speaks for itself. But how is what we know shaped by our cultural context? How does knowledge vary across cultures? Is the truth relative? Or are some beliefs and practices closer to truth than others?
Answer these questions by analyzing the arguments and evidence presented by three of the following authors: Postman, Mead/Freeman, Plato, Foucault, Martin, Fadiman, Evans-Pritchard, Brenner/Abu-Lughod/el Guindi.

TEXT REFERENCES
These (including references to personal communications) are placed in the body of the text, not as notes. For each quotation or statement specific enough to need a reference, place the citation in parentheses (author's name, year of publication of work quoted or referred to, page(s) cited), thus: (Doe 1968) or (Rowe 1893:115-119).

NOTES
All notes follow the text as endnotes, beginning on a new page, and are restricted to material that cannot be included in the text. Notes are numbered consecutively throughout the text by superscript numerals.

REFERENCES CITED
Do not include any publication not cited in the text. References Cited must begin on a new page, and all entries must be double-spaced, listed alphabetically by last name of senior author, and chronologically for two or more titles by the same author(s). The typed layout should conform to the printed layout as follows:

Driver, Harold E.

1956 An Integration of Functional, Evolutionary, and Historical Theory by Means of Correlations. Bloomington: Indiana University Publication in Anthropology and Linguistics, Memoir 12.

1966 Geographical-Historical versus Psycho-Functional Explanations of Kin Avoidances. Current Anthropology 7:131-182.

Miller, George A.

1954 Psycholinguistics. In Handbook of Social Psychology II. Gardner Lindey, ed. Pp. 693-708. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.

Thibault, John W., and Harold H. Kelley

1959 The Social Psychology of Groups. New York: John Wiley.

 

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