Assignment
1. ASSIGNMENT 1-- Understanding culture (5%)
Write a short essay(1-2 pages) about cultural difference or cultural patterning, taken from your experience. Possibilities include:
- If you are from another country or have spent time in another country, you may describe the differences that struck you or that matter(ed) in your life
- An aspect of life at Lingnan or Hong Kong that seems to be strongly patterned culturally.
You should present the facts of the case or example (and your personal
experience), and then try to make sense of it, to analyze it culturally.
Due date: Oct 8
2. ASSIGNMENT 2 – “Gift” Exchange (10%)
Write a four-page essay on gift exchange . Please bring in the examples from your reading or experience (such as moon cake in mid-autumn festival or gift in lunar new year). You may focus on one or two main points, or you may cover a few of what seem the most important points to you.
Guidelines:
1. You relate your essay to our discussion and reading materials;
2. DO NOT take for granted our culture's assumptions about, e.g., individualism and self-interest;
3. Try to make sense out of it and not just repeating facts;
4. Develop an argument. Before you decide on what material you want to use, you'd better think first of what points you want to make.
You need not agree with the instructor or anytone else, so long as you argue your point of view cogently and do not take our culture's assumptions for granted. Although you need not refer to every last one of the readings, make sure you do not blindly make a point that is contradicted or supported by one of the readings.
References: Yan, Yunxiang. 1996. "Chapter 7." The Flow of Gift.Standford: Standford UP.
Due Date: Nov 11
3. ASSIGNMENT 3: Observation and record (20%)
Introduction:
For this assignment you are asked to spend at least four hours in one community, noticing whatever occurs there, describing what is in it and the human interaction there and analyzing what goes on. The ultimate goal for this assignment is to write a paper summarizing and analyzing what you saw, did and observed. To a very limited extent this assignment recreates what ethnographers do when they are conducting fieldwork. It asks you to try your skills at observing and interviewing. You may join the field trip the instructor organizes or you could plan a trip on your own. You may travel to the community in a group but please conduct field work (observation and interview) alone.
Strategy:
-Before your field trip, you should collect some basic information of the community.
-After you arrive in your field, please settle down in a place (a square, a restaurant, a temple, etc.) first. Don't walk around idly. Try to stay in a place for at least 45 minutes before you go to another one.
-If you want to interview a person, please clearly state to her/ him what you plan to do and why you are doing it. Make your converation with informants lively, pleasurable and natural. Bring your student ID card along to show her/him that you really have been asked to do this by your teacher. If the person you talk to is uncomfortable with you using real names in the paper, you should only use pseudonyms when referring to them. If necessary, you may also have him/her call the instructor at his mobile phone (9805-2797) in order to verify who you are and what you have been asked to do.
-Tape or video record is not recommended. Probably it is best to use a small hand held notebook for notes, so as to be less obtrusive.
-Don't be upset if you get turned down, just go on to another person or place. If you should find one of your classmates in the place at the same time you go there, please don't interrupt him/her.
Requirement:
1. The paper should address at least the following:
- the specific name and location of the community
- specific dates and times you were there
- how the informants respond to you
- where you stood/sat when you did your research
- a description of the physical characteristics of the community (e.g., building, street, road, human flow, traffic, ...)
- the specific number and types (age, sex, type of clothing, probably occupations, ethnicity, etc.)of people visiting the place while you were there.
- the nature of the interactions that take place among people
- the languages used in the community and by whom
- any strange, unusual or different behavior you noticed
- any strange or unusual items you were unfamiliar with
- how the community differs from yours
- brief report on interview(s) with the people there
- history of the place or the community (if possible)
2. There should also be some kind of analysis and conclusion sections in the paper:
- Comparing and contrasting this community with others you know about
- Human relationships
- what it felt like to do the research
- why such a kind of community is found in Hong Kong
- the most difficult aspects of the research
- the best aspects of the research
3. The report should be typed, double-spaced and at least six pages long (not including the map of the community).
4. You must also draw a map of the community attached to your paper. Your map does not necessarily cover the whole area of the community. It may specify some places you have visited.
Due Date: Dec 10
posted by hegelchong at 2:54 AM
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