Category: Anthropology

You may use books, notes, and the internet for reference, but all answers must be written by you during the exam period. Use quotation marks for any pasted material and list the source.

This exam assesses your ability to analyze and synthesize theories from the course. Rather than defining concepts in isolation, you are expected to apply theoretical perspectives to empirical patterns and social phenomena discussed in the readings and lectures.

Part I: Analytical Identifications (40%)

Answer THREE of the following FIVE questions. Please include the full text of the question you are addressing. Full credit requires explaining how at least one theoretical framework from the course helps make sense of the situation described.

1. Participation Without Membership

In many U.S. cities, voter turnout is low, union membership has declined, and traditional civic associations are weaker than in previous decades. At the same time, protest mobilizations, online activism, and issue-based movements periodically surge.

How would you explain this pattern using theories from the course? What does this suggest about the relationship between participation, organization, and democracy?

2. Inequality with Opportunity

The United States combines high levels of economic inequality with a widespread belief that society is fundamentally fair and merit-based.

Which theoretical perspectives from the course help explain this combination? What mechanisms link cultural values to policy outcomes?

3. Religion and Modernity

Modernization theories often predict declining religiosity as societies become wealthier and more educated.

How can this apparent contradiction be explained using course readings?

4. Global Cities, Local Consequences

Global cities concentrate wealth, high-skilled employment, and cultural capital, while also producing rising housing costs and social polarization.

How would you explain this variation using theories discussed in the course?

5. Moral Conflict in Politics

Public debates in the United States often take on moral absolutist tones.

Which theories from the course help explain this style of politics?

Part II: Essay (60%)

Choose ONE essay.

Essay Option 1 Does Culture Still Matter?

Using at least three theoretical perspectives from the course, analyze how culture shapes political life. Apply each perspective to concrete political or social patterns discussed in the course.

Essay Option 2 Informal Participation and Democratic Governance

Analyze how formal organizations, informal networks, and scenes shape political inclusion, inequality, and governance.

Essay Option 3 One Society, Multiple Trajectories

Using the United States as a central case, analyze how different theories explain its divergence from other advanced democracies.

Hierarchy.

*John Friedmann, The World Cities Hypothesis, in Paul L. Knox and Peter J. Taylor, eds., World Cities in a World System. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995, pp. 317-331 strong statement of largely Marxist ideas stressing hierarchy and inequality. Global capitalism is the driver. How much of this continues in Sassen? Are the hypotheses as deterministic as he suggests? What propositions from other theories could lead to the same results?

Michael Comiskey and Pawan Madhogarhia. 2009. Unraveling the Financial Crisis of 2008. PS: Political Science & Politics, Volume 42, Issue 02, April 2009, pp 271-275.

Week 3 – Globalization: The Emergence and Diffusion of Distinct Democratic Cultures and Institutions.

**Daniel J. Elazar, World History Curriculum, MS, 130 pp. double-space. Draft 1999. Ambitious and facile, yet remarkably coherent overview of the rise of Western Civilization from the small, volatile societies of the ancient Greeks and Jews to the present, including Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Stresses the interpenetrations among the cultures and civilizations of the world. Illustrates key concepts that recur: migration, frontier, claiming a new territory, covenants creating mutual obligations, democratic participation. How explain the lack of diffusion of these ideas across most of the globe, until very recently, and then more recent efforts toward rapid change? Elazars ideas are elaborated in far more detail and with scholarly specifics in his 70 plus books. See esp. The Great Frontier and the Matrix of Federal Democracies, Transaction Press, 1998. Vol. 3 of four volume series.

*Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations, Foreign Affairs, 1993. A forceful but overly deterministic statement of global transformation since the end of the Cold War. Uses a strong military/strategic thrust. Elaborated in his book with the same title if you want more detail.

*Lawrence E. Harrison and Samuel P. Huntington, eds., Culture Matters. New York: Basic Books. Pp. xxiii xxxiv and passim. Note the multicausal perspective of most participants; a distinct shift from the Clash of Civilizations position. But Huntington himself does not explicitly support this more balanced view.

Week 4

*Francis Fukuyama, Trust, New York: The Free Press, 1995, Part V, pp. 325362. Critique of state expansion as leading to dependency and undermining individual initiative. Social capital is important for economic development, but can come from diverse sources. In the US, from Protestant asceticism; in Germany, from the guilds; in Italy and France where guilds were destroyed, there was less social capital. Generally: those counties that had strong national states destroyed intermediary organizations, and in the process, destroyed the civic basis of trust among citizens, as in Italy, France, former Soviet areas.

*Lipset, American Exceptionalism, ch.8 pp. 267-292 on civic participation, declining trust, and public morality, an on-going debate with Robert Putnam. Appendix pp. 293-297 very short but powerful results on who joins groups and obligations felt (contrast to Putnam, etc.)

Extra. Scenes Project – Terry Nichols Clark, Univ of Chicago / Daniel Silver, Univ of Toronto / Clemente Navarro, Seville / Stephen Sawyer, Paris / Wonho Jang, Seoul and others Recent monographs on Dropbox:

These should open in your browser when you click the address, or paste it into your browser. OR you can choose “Download” in top right of screen and save the file to your hard drive.

Seoul/Tokyo/Chicago

Scenes Dynamics in Global Cities: Seoul, Tokyo, and Chicago. Wonho Jang, Terry Clark, Miree Byun. Seoul: Seoul Development Institute, 2011. 196 Pages. English text quite different from Seoul Scenes (#570) which is only on Seoul.https://dl.dropbox.com/u/5559963/Seoul%20Dev%20Inst.%20July%202012.2011-PR-60.pdf

Seoul

Seoul Scenes and Its Use for Space Characterization. Miree Byun Wonho Jang Terry Clark Jong Youl Lee. (Seoul: Seoul Development Institute, 2011), 198 pages

Spain

Step by step explanations of scenes construction and results of the Spanish project on scenes website in English and Spanish:

Clemente J. Navarro, ed., Las dimensiones culturales de la ciudad. Madrid: Los libros de la catarata, 2012. 206 pp.

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/5559963/Navarro.Spanish%20Scenes%20Bk.17243_Las_dimensiones_%283%29.pdf

Paris

Stephen Sawyer, ed. Une cartographie culturelle de Paris-Mtropole. Paris: Rapport a la Mairie de Paris, 2011. 149pp.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/5559963/Paris.May%2019.2011.Rapport%20Final%20CARTOGRAPHIE%20CULTURELLE%20FINALE%202011.pdf.zip

Video on Paris Scenes, 25 min:

http://joelukawski.wordpress.com/2010/12/17/paris-underground-exploring-urban-scenes/

China

On Dropbox: paper in English, Di WU, Jefferson MAO, Terry N. CLARK. The Influence of Regional Culture and Value in Sustainable Development of Chinese Urban Residential Choice [C]. 2011 International Conference on Management and Sustainable Development. 10.1109/ APPEEC. 2011. 5749091. (EI Index).

US and Canada are in Silver and Clark, Sceneson main syllabus. Chicago in Scenes chapter of Clark, Trees and Real Violins.

Extra: Carl Grodach and Daniel Silver, eds., The Politics Of Urban Cultural Policy: Global Perspectives. Routledge, 2012. Full book free at . Read Introduction by Grodach and Silver and one chapter that fits your interests.

Extra: Olson, Mancur. The rise and decline of nations: economic growth, stagflation, and social rigidities. New Haven: Yale University Press, c1982. Regenstein HD82.O5650 1982. Ch 1, 3. Classic counterargument to Putnam’s thesis. Argues that closely knit social, economic, and political organizations are prone to inefficient cartelization and social rigidity. A powerful state that destroys older forms of associations creates space for individual mobility, entrepreneurship and new forms of associations, which promote economic growth.

Week 5 Entrepreneurial Urban Politics.

Extra: Terry Nichols Clark, Old and New Paradigms for Urban Research, Urban Affairs Review. September 2000. Shows how globalization weakens some paradigms about cities, but strengthens others. Uses results from the Fiscal Austerity and Urban Innovation Project in 35 countries.

Extra: Terry Nichols Clark, Transforming Political Systems and Political Culture: What Works? Lessons from Bogot and Cities Around the Globe.

Extra: Eleonora Pasotti, Political Branding in Cities. Cambridge UP, 2010. For more on Mockus/Bogota compared to Naples and Chicago arts, culture, entertainment as city rebranding strategies.Choose sections for cities that fit your interests.

Extra: Alan Harding et. al. European cities towards 2000: profiles, policies, and prospects.Manchester ; New York : Manchester University Press; New York : St Martin’s Press, 1994. Regenstein Stacks HT131.E920 1994 A generally strong statement of global markets limiting local initiative. Contrast this with his paper on reserve, which looks into some concrete decisions more deeply and shows far more local initiative and variation in responding to global forces.

Extra: Norman Walzer, ed., Local Economic Development. Boulder: Westview, 1995. The first book on local development policies in countries around the world, esp. W. Europe, Russia, and the US. Contrasts traditional incentives by government that aid individual firms with public goods/amenities that seek to improve the overall climate of the locale (in chapters by Miranda, Rosdil, and Green).

Week 6 Ethnicity and Race.

* Lipset, American Exceptionalism, Ch 4. Two Americas, Two Value Systems: Blacks and Whites, pp. 113-150. Stresses the often conflictual value frameworks for interpreting similar events. Ch 6, Intellectuals and Political Correctness. How major programs for social change, like affirmative action, are struggled over by intellectuals in particular.

**Clark, Terry Nichols (Ed). Urban Innovation. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1994. Class vs. Race vs. The New Political Culture, pp. 21-78. Post-redistributive politics in American cities. Uses Hierarchy Leveling Principle (p. 29ff.) to interpret ethnic conflict. Note that this subsumes the concept of political opportunity structure in the social movement literature.

*W. Lance Bennett, “The Uncivic Culture: Communications, Identity, and the Rise of Lifestyle Politics,” PS December 1998, p. 741-758/761. Among the causes of the new local, issue politics is the public reluctance to endorse substantial class or race-based redistributive programs.

*Bobo, Larry & Howard Schumann. Racial attitudes in America : trends and interpretations.Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 1988. Regenstein Stacks E185.615.S293 Comprehensive overview of survey results on race in America.

Extra: Jesse Jackson, Mary Gotschall (Contributor), Jesse Jackson Sr, Jesse Jackson Jr It’s About the Money : How You Can Get Out of Debt, Build Wealth, and Achieve Your Financial Dreams 256 pages (January 2000). Dramatic change of tone from past civil rights activism. How widespread is this change of view?

Extra: Handouts on FAUI results on changing impacts of race in US cities (Wong, Jain, Clark); results from Clarence Stone surveys, L. Quillian? Other recent data.

Watch this video with the link. The instructions to this assignment is in the files i provided.

Prompt

In Section IV of the final project, you will use three to explain the behavior of the characters in three scenes of the film. In this assignment, you will choose one of these concepts to analyze and receive feedback on. Use the feedback you receive from this milestone as you work on your final project submission.

1. Anthropological Concept: Explain the influence of one of your anthropological concepts on a characters behavior in a specific scene in the film.
2. Cultural Relativism: Practice the principles of cultural relativism, particularly focusing on the following:
3. Using respectful language when describing your observations of characters behavior and cultures.
4. Avoid making judgments about the characters based on your own beliefs or cultural norms; remain objective.
5. Remain objective when comparing and contrasting cultures, and avoid saying that one culture is better than another.

This discussion includes two topics: marriage and sex/gender. You will compose your initial post based on the scenario assigned to you in the chart below. In your peer responses, you will respond to one peer assigned to the same scenario as you and another peer assigned to the other scenario.

First Letter of Last Name

Assigned Scenario for Initial Post

AK

Scenario A: Marriage

LZ

Scenario B: Sex/Gender

Scenario A: Marriage

Two friends, Taylor and Alex, are enjoying dessert after a show at the local arts theater. Taylor draws your attention to a very cozy couple at a table in the corner. “I wonder what show they watched,” Taylor says with a smirk. You gasp and report that you know the woman (she is your neighbor), but the man is not her husband. “Maybe they’re in an open relationship,” Taylor remarks nonchalantly.

Compose your initial post as if you are Taylor. In your initial post, be sure to do the following:

• Explain how marriage is an expression of cultural norms and values.
• Describe at least two different forms of marriage.
• Apply the principles of cultural relativism.

Scenario B: Sex/Gender

You and a friend, Elliott, are enjoying your conversation at a local coffee shop when you both take a bathroom break. You arrive at the two-bathroom doors and see each door labeled with the sign below.

Upon returning to the table, Elliott remarks, “What’s up with those bathrooms? Women should use the women’s room and men should use the men’s room.” You decide to take this opportunity to share what you have learned about sex and gender.

Compose your initial post as if you were responding to your friend, Elliott. In your initial post, be sure to do the following:

• Distinguish sex and gender.
• Describe at least two different ways that gender identity is expressed; include at least one way that gender identity is expressed in your culture and at least one way gender identity is expressed in another culture.
• Apply the principles of cultural relativism.

Peer Response Guidelines: Respond to the initial posts of at least two of your peers, one assigned to Scenario A and one assigned to Scenario B. In your responses, assess how well your peers applied the principles of cultural relativism. Point out at least one specific example of how each peer did or did not apply the principles of cultural relativism.

My chosen primate is the the Chacma Baboon

Summary

We will establish an underlying reason for spending our “grant funding” from the American Society of Primate Research. We will create a key problem statement and develop a brief background and overview for our research project. We will indicate the specific contribution to primate conservation.

Answer Focus Questions (25 points)

Continue with your chosen primate from Assignment 1:

1. Develop a general overview of the topic and explain why it is important; (5 points)
2. Describe five goals for your research project; (10 points)
3. Explain how your research study will contribute to primate conservation; (4 points)
4. Provide a brief summary of a relevant article about the current state of primate research on your topic or on related topics in the field and include the link in references; (5 points)
5. Provide a reference (1 point)

Submission:

• Provide a 25-sentence written analysis with web link/reference.

In this activity, you will model how a bacteria population is affected by exposure to an antibiotic. Bacteria are single-celled, small, simple organisms and are often used to model life cycles and evolution because they go through many generations in a relatively short period of time. Normally, bacteria die when exposed to an antibiotic, such as penicillin. However, sometimes bacteria develop mutations that make them resistant to antibiotics. The bacteria with beneficial mutations will survive longer and reproduce more offspring (ie. Natural Selection!) We will use different colored paper clips to represent the two types of bacteria. Typical bacteria (plastic-coated paper clips) will die when exposed to antibiotics. Mutated bacteria (silver paper clips) are antibiotic resistant. Model Assumptions Typical bacteria have a 1-in-6 chance of surviving exposure to an antibiotic. Mutated bacteria have a 5-in-6 chance of surviving exposure to an antibiotic. Both typical and mutated bacteria produce offspring of the same type. This means that typical bacteria will produce typical bacteria and mutated bacteria will produce mutated bacteria. Procedure Start with a population of 20 bacteria (18 typical and 2 mutated). Record the starting bacteria population for both typical and mutated bacteria in Table 1.3 in the column labeled At start of generation. The entire population of bacteria will be exposed to an antibiotic. You will simulate this event by rolling the die for each individual bacterium (paper clip) to see if the bacterium survives antibiotic treatment. For typical bacteria, survival and reproduction happen only when a 1 is rolled. Any other roll (2-6) will result in death. For mutated bacteria, survival and reproduction occurs when 1-5 is rolled. Death only occurs when a 6 is rolled. Begin the experiment. For each individual bacterium, roll the die. Determine if the bacterium survives by consulting Table 1.2. When a bacterium dies, remove it from the population by setting it aside. Record the number of bacteria that died after antibiotic treatment in the Dead column in Table 1.3. Record the number of bacteria that survived after antibiotic treatment in the Survivors column in Table 1.3. The surviving bacteria reproduce. Bacteria divide in half when they reproduce, so each surviving bacterium becomes two bacteria. In the Reproduction column for each generation, use the number of survivors to calculate and record the total number of bacteria after each surviving bacterium reproduces (Hint: Multiply the number of surviving bacteria by two.) Copy the number of bacteria in your Reproduction column at the end of generation 1 into the column At start of generation for generation 2. Repeat steps 24, filling in Table 1.3 for another four generations.

Choose one of the articles from the link below (besides the introduction) and answer the questions in Reading Memo Instruction

https://www.culanth.org/fieldsights/series/ecologies-of-war

I would love you to submit easier if better.

THIS WEEKS LEARNINGS:

Module 2 Overview_ Fieldwork and Ethnography_ SCC Sp26 ANTH 310 LEC 16970 Argent PDF ATTACHED

PART 1:

Discussion Topic

In this discussion we are going to explore some of the concepts we’ve learned by analyzing a piece of ethnographic research. In your assigned article, “Deep Play: Notes on a Balinese Cockfight,” Clifford Geertz argues that we should analyze the cockfight as a text through which people create meaning about themselves and their worlds.

Instructions

(75-100 WORDS)

Choose one quote from the article and discuss:

1. How the quotation reveals the “deep play” of the Balinese cockfight? and
2. Why is deciphering meaning from cultural practices important to anthropological research and analysis?

Make sure to discuss the article in an analytical and substantive manner! (This discussion is not a “personal reflection” like in Module 1. DO NOT simply write your personal opinion.)

ONCE PART 1 IS COMPLETE, I WILL ADD CLASSMATES POST THAT YOU CAN RESPOND TO.