Preparing for Class: August 29

Ember and Ember, Cultural Anthropology, "The Concept of Culture" (x)

As you read the assigned chapter, you should be both making yourself familiar with its key concepts and starting to think about how to apply the material. Therefore, I'm giving you a list of the ideas you should be able to explain and discuss, as well as a short series of questions you should be thinking about in starting the semester in the Clarkson Seminar. As we go through the semester, we'll continue to use and apply the ideas in this chapter, so you should be sure you understand and can explain each one. The first assigned essay, in fact, will allow you to begin using some of the chapter's ideas and terminology.

First Essay Topic: The story of the Gold Farmers raises some very real questions (cultural, ethical, economic) for our increasingly global reality. For your first essay, you should review the story, using the link on the Daily Assignments page. It offers quite a few different, often conflicting points of view. Part of the point of this assignment is to help you hone your skill in summarizing other people's arguments, so you should start your paper by briefly summarizing the cultural, ethical and economic arguments represented in the NPR report. Then, in two single-spaced pages, take a position on the subject of gold farming and the gamers' response to it. In the course of doing this, you need to (1) support your position as concretely and convincingly as you can and (2) be sure to take into account the arguments that might oppose your position.

Your answer should be in the form of an argument paper, with a clearly-stated thesis and evidence drawn from the NPR report and any other reliable sources you wish to consult. A primary emphasis here is on using verifiable and well-organized information to support your thesis. Avoid generalizations and unreliable sources.

Length: 2 single-spaced pages; rough draft is due in class on Tuesday, September 4, and finished paper is due on Thursday, September 6. During the rough draft workshop, your paper will be reviewed by one of your classmates, who will also give you some suggestions for improving it in writing the final draft.

When you turn in the final draft on Thursday, you should have the workshop review on the bottom, the rough draft on top of that, the final draft on top of that, and on top of the stack, a paragraph explaining how you used the workshop review to improve the final paper.

Key Concepts in the Reading:

• culture
• subculture
• ethnocentrism
• cultural relativism
• ideal cultural patterns
• norms
• cultural constraints (direct and indirect)
• adaptive vs. maladaptive customs
• the integration of cultural elements
• how cultural change occurs

Ideas for Consideration:

1. Using yourself as the subject, come up with an example of learned behavior vs. one of instinctive behavior.
2. On p. 20, we have an entertaining description of American dental hygene; think about other aspects of our common behavior that might be described humorously by someone who doesn't understand the details of our culture.
3. In a variety of ways, we in the United States often impose our standards of economics, ethics, and government on people of other cultures; how do we justify doing this? Should we?
4. As you go to dinner one or two of the nights this week, observe the way in which cultural patterns determine people's behavior and actions. Are there subcultures within the general culture of Clarkson students? Within each group, what are the constraints? How can individuals express themselves within these constraints?

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