Final Exam
This is an open-book, take-home final exam. You are encouraged to use the textbook, Cultural Anthropology, by Nancy Bonvillain, articles uploaded to the Blackboard site, or any other sources you choose, but you must cite them (using any recognized system of citations).
Please submit the final by email or Blackboard on Monday, December 21st.
The exam consists of three (3) essays. Points will be given for insights, the strength of your arguments and conclusions, and your use of evidence from the readings (or elsewhere) to illustrate your points. Back up your assertions with empirical evidence. While it would be possible to write lengthy answers to each of these questions, I am not expecting you to submit more than ten pages (typed, double-spaced) total.
1. The U.N.’s International Labor Organization has hired you as an anthropologist to conduct field research among the hijras of Bangladesh. They want you to learn about their working conditions, including their safety and their rights. Your assignment is to assess their situation and make recommendations. How will you apply your knowledge and experience in anthropology to meet these humanitarian objectives? How will you begin your project? Can you list at least five (5) questions that will be part of your interviews?
2. Migration is more than just the social phenomenon of people moving from place to place, for work or any other purpose. It also has an impact on the culture receiving migrants as well as the migrants’ native culture. Some migrants are also immigrants. As we have seen, there can be a relationship between immigration and religion; immigration, sex and gender; migration and cuisine; migration, kinship and family relations; migration and making a living; migration and music; and migration and language. Choose one of these aspects of social life listed here, and write an essay about how studying that aspect of migration ethnographically can teach us more about human culture, or even human beings more generally. You are encouraged to provide many examples, from the book, from lecture, or your elsewhere, in order to show how migration influences other aspects of human culture.
3. Can you name three aspects of human social or cultural life that can be affected by climate change (aside from obvious changes brought on by weather, e.g. the need for different clothing, air-conditioning, etc.)? How can anthropologists learn about these impacts and are they in a position to soften the impacts? You can use Susan Crate’s article I uploaded to Blackboard or any other source you choose. What does Crate mean when she writes in her abstract that “Fieldworkers are increasingly encountering reports of the local effects of climate change from their research partners, and it is becoming apparent that indigenous peoples’ recognized capacity for adaptation to change may not be sufficient to cope with these effects”?
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