assessed paper
I have received the following questions regarding your assessed paper and I thought it might be helpful to share my answers with all of you.
1) Should we limit our references to your readings (including the additional ones suggested by you) or can we explore the discipline further?
I would expect you to engage with the key debates related to the topics that we discussed, but in order to get a more than average mark you should definitely include your own readings whether ethnographic examples or more theoretical literature. It is also good practice to make links across the different weeks; for example applying some of the ideas that we discussed in the Money and Markets week to a question about gifts and commodities. Basically, you need to show that you have understood the key debates surrounding an issue but your original approach to the question will be valued too.
2) Are we also free to quote and reference data/theories from other disciplines, for example general media and marketing theories
This is a bit tricky. Because this is an anthropology course I would expect you to answer the question drawing primarily on anthropological literature or if the topic has not been discussed much within anthropology you should start with the readings we have seen in class from Geography, STS, etc. Some literature from other disciplines can be included but only if it is essential to answering the question. The task is to formulate an ‘anthropological’ answer.
3) I also wanted to check about the use of photos and images in the essay. Is it supposed to be only text?
I would hope that you include photos, stills from video clips, or even video clips (you can add an 15 min DVD) . The reason why you had to submit the photo-essays each week was to familiarise you with a more visual approach. You only need to make sure that you caption and properly reference each visual you use. You can also decide not to caption visuals, but you will need to provide the reader with an explanation for this approach. If you use video clips make sure to clearly reference them in the text (for example, add watch clip 1 ). Websites should also be referenced by referring to their http and adding the date that you consulted them.
