DEPARTMENT OF ANTHROPOLOGY

INSTRUCTOR: Dr. Susan Vincent [Office: JBB 335E; tel: 867- 5281; email: svincent@stfx.ca] ]

Assignment 2: DUE 3 NOVEMBER 2010. Worth 10% of mark. Essay research skills.

For this assignment you must

1) state the topic of your essay for this course;

2) provide a tentative thesis statement; and

3) provide an annotated bibliography of five academic ethnographic sources that you will use, indicating how you will use each source.

Re 3) The annotation must NOT simply be an abstract or other material taken directly from the work or from another person’s review of the work. It MUST be YOUR OWN summary of the key contribution the work makes to the topic of your essay. You must also indicate how you will use the work.

Model:

1) The topic of this paper is the impact of television on people in Belize.

2) My tentative thesis statement is: "I argue that access to television shows from other countries influences Belizean culture, but that this influence does not imply their incorporation into these other cultures; rather, Belizeans often resist, appropriate and reformulate the messages.

3) [This model of an annotation is on one of the required readings for this course. Note that you may NOT use the required readings as major source material so they are NOT eligible to be part of your own annotations].

Werner presents a case study of how people in Dakar, Senegal react to situation drama programs from Brazil, or "telenovelas." The telenovelas are translated into French from Portuguese, so already are different from how they might be consumed in Brazil. Werner notes that television viewing in Dakar tends to be collective, rather than solitary. He examines how the themes of the shows are discussed among people who use these themes as they also work out how to arrange their lives in a context of increased globalization. For example, women in particular draw from them ideas about whether to submit to arranged marriages, how to manage relationships with their husbands, and other aspects of their lives. I will use this article to provide a comparison, particularly with respect to how the television show has already been transformed through translation for a different cultural audience, and with respect to the complexities of how the audience reacts to the messages in the television shows.

Hints re sources:

Look for material by Richard Wilk on television in Belize.

Look for material by Heather Horst and/or Daniel Miller on cell phones, or mobile phones.

To search for further ethnographic works on these topics, try putting the following in a Google Scholar search: ethno* anthro* television [or cell phone/mobile phone].

When you find one key author, or a culture you are interested in examining, add that to your list of search terms.

CONSULT WITH ME ABOUT WHETHER YOUR SOURCES ARE PROPER ACADEMIC ETHNOGRAPHIC SOURCES.