For this paper, you must first find, or create, a text about people whose circumstances are radically different from those reflected in the authorial voice. (It must, in short, be "exotic" in some way. Within your completed paper, of at least four pages, you must be able to recognize and explain how the "Other" is constructed in your text The first step in doing this is to recognize how selective impressions create an authorial voice. The second step (which we will take in the next class sessions) will be to discover and use the vocabulary for textual analysis. In argumentation jargon, writers say: arguers select specific examples and use them in a specific way in order to make claims. Your final paper will use an argumentative framework to analyze the text you choose -- you will be required to find one text for each week, but then to select one for your paper. There will be no research beyond that. It will therefore be doubly important that you attend each class (or get lecture notes from another student if you miss) so that you don't wind up short-handed when you have to turn in the first draft.
Unit #3 will therefore center upon textual analysis. We will learn how to identify texts and recognize their purposes. So the point of the readings will be to identify strategies you will be able to use in analysing cultural phenomena. In order to use these strategies, you must look for a narrative that you can interpret for the third paper, as soon as possible. I can recommend texts, or you can look for them yourself.
The theme of paper #3 will therefore be “Self meets Other.” So you want to locate an “other” group of people to write about. The second thing you want to locate is a conceptual framework to discuss this “other” group. Mostly, we’ve been dealing with the matter of how this group is constructed. What are its practices? How are they interpreted? Those are the main foci we’ve been concentrating upon so far. Later, we will concentrate upon the construction of identity, and the anthropological description of human practices. Toward the end, you should have the basic tools of ideology critique and should be prepared to write a paper about it.
This paper must be able to use, with the correct usages, certain concepts:
Narrative analysis: Who are the heroes, who are the villains? How do we know -- what symbols, myths, and rituals, indicate heroism and villainy in this narrative? How are the facts used to construct the narrative? Which pertinent facts are included, and which ones are excluded, to give the narrative its peculiar shape?
Ritual analysis: What are the postures and gestures indicated in a ritual? What are its guiding myths, and how does the ritual serve in its social context? What are the guiding symbols of the ritual, and how do they give the ritual its socially-determined meaning?
A paper: A successful paper will include elements of both. Narrative concerns the way people talk, and ritual what they do -- an A paper will follow the steps of analysis as we have performed them in class.
B paper: Maybe a handle on one or the other forms as I’ve described them above. Can identify heroes and villains, perhaps, or guiding myths. Can identify how the facts are used to create a narrative without pointing out anything about inclusion/ exclusion.
C paper: describes a situation with respect to the beliefs of its participants, as it is described in a text. Some analysis of how the text “constructs” the situation.