Step #1: Choose a topic, i.e., a particular cultural
practice to explore. Your topic should not be too
broad nor to narrow. Choose a practice that you
have personal experience of or with. For
example, you’ve experienced your gender, so a
paper on masculinity or femininity would be
good, as would papers on kinship, or friendship,
or family, or the place of work, among other
things. Don’t choose a topic with which you
have no personal experience, for example, if you
haven’t been in the armed services yourself,
writing about being a soldier would not be
acceptable.
Do not choose topics that are too narrow or too
obscure. Keep in mind that you have to be able
to find two articles about two different cultures
written and published by an anthropologist in
JStor to complete this assignment, and if you
choose an overly narrow topic or too obscure,
there may not be articles that have been
published on that topic. For example, you will
not anthropological articles focusing on the
rather obscure topic of keeping of pet rabbits nor
will a search for something as narrow as the
cultural meaning of red sports cars yield results.
We will be talking about many cultural practices
over the course of the semester. You may, with
one exception, write choose one of these cultural
practices as your topic. The one exception is the
human relationship with dogs – you may not
choose dogs as your topic. All other topics,
whether we have discussed them or not, are
potentially acceptable.
Step #2: Once you have chosen a good topic,
spend some time thinking about how you have
experienced the cultural practice that you are
exploring. Write some notes to yourself about
how you learned to think and feel about the
practice…Who taught you these things? When?
Why? How? How do you feel about the
experience of learning about it? Do you feel it
was good or bad? How much of your attitude
about that practice aligns with or goes against the
way that you were taught about it? How much
does the way that you were taught and feel &
think about it now accord with your society’s
norms?
As you write these notes to yourself, notice what
jumps out for you as the most interesting bit and
explore that more deeply.
Step #3: Now, once you have written a few
notes on your cultural practice of choice, you are
ready to search for your first article.
So, go to the MATC Library’s website. To find
the database that is called “JStor” (and all
articles that you use for this project must be
found on JStor) follow these steps:
[a] find & click the label marked “articles”
toward the left side of the screen;
[b] find the link “Browse databases by A to Z
list” and click on that;
[c] find the link “JStor” and click on that;
[d] If you are asked to give a user name and
password, it’s the same as those you use to
log in at any MATC computer. If you have
difficulty logging in, contact a librarian (Do
not call Luke! Call the library.)
[e] you should now be at the search page for the
JStor database. It should like the picture
below.
