Assignment for Paper Two: Spaces and Artifacts
Prompt
Now that you have positioned yourself with respect to your chosen sub-culture,
and you have (hopefully) made some kind of entry into it, you must begin
the difficult task of paying close attention to your field site. This assignment
will ask you to pay close attention (“look at your fish!”) to
the artifacts and spaces related to your field site. All through this unit,
you will need to take copious field notes, slow down and notice detail.
Write a four to five page paper in which you do all of the following:
- Give a detailed and focused description of the site or sites within which
your sub-culture is active. By “focused” I mean that you should
make choices about what to describe.
- Your description should not just list details, but it should rather give
the reader a real sense of what it is like to be at the site, within that
sub-culture.
- In addition to description, you must also analyze the ways in which the
space of the site is used by the sub-culture. That is, you must interpret
the sub-culture’s
use of that space.
- Focus on at least one artifact from the site, and analyze its function
or role in that site, and discuss what it tells you about your sub-culture.
That is, interpret or “read” the artifact and its context.
Remember, this is not a list of questions to ask, nor
should you organize your paper according to the bullet points. Rather, you
should develop a main idea (or thesis) about how your sub-culture uses spaces
and artifacts. The latter part of chapter three and all of chapter five in
Fieldworking should help you with this paper.
Format Requirements
- This paper must be at least four, double-spaced pages
long, and not much more than five.
- A “page” is a sheet of paper with at least 250 words on it.
Set your documents to have one-inch margins all around, and use the Times
New Roman (12 point) font.
- Your name, my name, the course section, and the date should appear in
the upper-left corner of the first page (do not use a cover sheet). Your
last name and the page number should appear in the upper-right corner of
every page (use “header” function).
Important Dates
Tuesday, March 2: Draft of paper due in class. Bring five extra copies
of your draft.
Thursday, March 4: Final Draft Due