To begin, select a topic from the following list:
•Body art and ornamentation
•Child rearing practices
•Healthcare practices
•The use of music or dance as a form of political protest, or as a reflection of cultural issues, values, and beliefs
•Educational practices
•Elderly care
•Body language and proxemics
•Rites of passage
•Conflict resolution
•Marriage practices
•Alternative gender roles
•Alternate topics are possible, but these must be approved by your instructor at least one week before the Week Three draft is due.
For your final paper, you will compare one of the topics above across two specific cultures of your own choosing. It may be helpful to brainstorm a list of cultures you are interested in researching. Then, you will need to begin conducting research on those cultures.
Thoroughly read through the research guide. The research you will do for this assignment will be a dynamic, multi-step process, and the research guide serves as a starting point for you. The research guide outlines the steps you will need to follow in order to complete your research, contains resources within the guide that may help you further decide on which cultures and/or topic to choose if you are undecided, and contains instructional tutorials to show you how to effectively search in the library.
Your Partial Rough Draft must include:
•An introductory paragraph containing a thesis statement that reflects the requirements of the Final Research Paper.
•A discussion of how two specific and contemporary (currently existing) cultures approach the topic.
•A comparison of your chosen topic across the two cultures you have selected.
•A concluding paragraph that reinforces your thesis and summarizes your main points.
•A bibliography that includes entries for each scholarly source you will use in your Final Research Paper.
•In-text citations that show where you will use your source sin you Final Research Paper.
As a reminder, your Final Research Paper will be a five- to seven-page research paper that contains the following components:
a.A discussion of how two cultures (other than your own) approach the topic, including specific ethnographic examples. Be sure to choose two specific and contemporary (currently existing) cultures. Terms such as European, Asian, or African refer to continents, not cultures, and are not appropriate for this paper. Describe the culture briefly, including elements such as location, language, kinship, or other relevant information. This helps the reader understand the cultural context of your topic.
b.A compare and contrast analysis how the two cultures approach the topic from a culturally relativistic perspective.
c.A discussion on the cultural context of the topic and how it relates to symbolic systems such as religion, communication, or ritual. Here, you can use what you described in section A and discuss how it relates to your topic as it is found in the two cultures, which you discussed in section B.
