Final Paper (Spring 2023)

DUE: Sunday, Apr 23, 8 pm: Final Paper Proposal and Annotated Bibliography, upload to personal Moodle forum                    

  • Commentary partners' comments posted by Monday, Apr 24, 8 pm  
  • Final paper, Wednesday, May 10, 8 pm, Moodle Upload (NOT personal forum)

LENGTH and FORMAT: 8-10 pages, 8 X 11, double-spaced, 1 inch margins all around, 12 point fonts. Please spellcheck. Papers should be polished. They should be free of spelling errors and grammatical mistakes. They should be well-organized, with an introduction, a thesis or main point, and a conclusion. Citations should be complete, including web pages (see Chicago Manual of Style). If you choose to discuss print media, images or web sites, please insert in your paper or provide a URL. All media should be carefully captioned with title, creator and source (NOT just the google page!!)

EVALUATION: I will evaluate and respond to papers based on (in order of priority):

  1. Degree to which you respond to the assignment and incorporate ideas and issues from class materials in your discussion;
  2. Extent to which you demonstrate clear understanding of basic terms and historical events presented in the course;
  3. the creativity and originality of your ideas
  4. The clarity of your organization/design and writing

TOPIC: This paper will be the culmination of your semester of considering Tibet from an anthropological perspective as a contested and "globalizing" concept and place. With a particular contemporary event, person, or issue related to transregional Tibet as a focus (such as a media phenomenon related to Tibet, or a product/commodity/company; or an aspect of a key event relevant to Tibet like the 2008 Olympics, protests, Dalai Lama talks, or monk tours; a specific person (a particular official or missionary, a famous Tibetan artist or dissident, contemporary or historical), your paper should be a well-researched critical analysis of it in the light of the anthropological perspective and historical contexts presented in the course.  Your paper should make explicit reference to theories of place, identity politics and personhood, the nature of "religion", political economy, sovereignty or governance such as orientalism, nationalisms, ethnicity, the state. Aim for engaging at least 3-4 sources from the syllabus. This should not just be a passing reference or allusion but several paragraphs' discussion, including defining your terms. See especially: Said, Anderson, Chakrabarty, Das and Poole, Makley intro, Lopez, Jamyang Norbu, Dalton, Dreyfus, Huber intro, Jacoby intro, Anand, Yeh, Craig intro, Diehl intro.

Be sure to historically situate your object of inquiry, and consider especially: how should we analyze this phenomenon anthropologically?

For inspiration on possible readings, see the further reading lists provided for each week on the course website. See also the sidebar links for research sources:  General Tibet Reference Books ,  Research Guide , Web Resources

You may also choose to monitor other media forums (see course Web Resources).  These might include: newspaper or magazine articles, television programs or commercials, films not included in the course, web sites, Buddhist or activist events, or debates and comments on Tibet email lists. See the Web Resources link for more.

Final Paper Template 

Grounded in ethnographic methods, cultural and linguistic anthropology emphasize an 'inductive" approach to research and cross-cultural/linguistic understanding. We seek ways to bring our own deeply held cultural and linguistic assumptions into critical dialogue with those of others. We do this in order to avoid as much as possible projecting our values, categories and worldviews onto others' experiences and situations. The aspiration is for the approach to be more "bottom up" than "top down" (e.g., in "deductive" forms of research that start with a preconceived model). This also means that anthropologists must constantly test the applicability of social theories that claim to explain human experience across vast cultural and linguistic differences.

Thus any good anthropology paper includes both explicit discussion of theory and method and compelling ethnographic and/or historical description. We try to make our theoretical and methodological assumptions, as well as any potential problems with them, clear at the beginning of the paper.

NOTE: Take all of your academic writing as a chance to practice for writing for larger audiences (NOT just for your professors!). Consider your audience for this an educated person who is nonetheless clueless about these theories, texts and China. Ask: what does Clueless Reader need to know in order to help them understand what is at stake? How do you get Clueless Reader to keep reading and consider your voice to be credible?

Here is a typical structure of an anthropology paper aimed at analyzing a specific ethnographic case or event.

Title: reflects the thesis or main point of your paper

1) (Optional) 1-2 paragraph descriptive vignette from the event

  • using a narrative voice: compellingly written in narrative form
  • draws Clueless reader into the setting, introduces main participants
  • provides spaces for others' voices (direct quotes, prose in others' styles)
  • gives reader glimpse of the issues and stakes

2) 1-2 pages opening section explicating main theory/methods

  • using a more "academic" voice: start with a compelling opening sentence that points to the main issues or questions.
  • This section should answer the question: what can a cultural anthropological approach contribute to understanding how contested notions of "Tibet" or "Tibetans" are at work in this event/phenomenon?
  • lay out your main questions and define principle methodological terms (don't assume your reader knows these terms or why they're important!)
  • describe main problems or issues to address
  • give a sense of how the paper will be organized and follow it
  • draw on readings from the syllabus to discuss main relevant debates
  • use multiple forms of citation to directly engage texts (direct quotes, paraphrase and in-text citation, mentions of theorists' names, etc)
  • give the reader a sense of what a theorist's main goal is in a piece you cite for the first time
  • end with a thesis statement: the controlling idea of the essay, presents topic and writer's perspective on it. Explicitly state what you will argue is going on in this event.
  • In anthropology papers, we regularly situate ourselves by using the first person: "I argue that...", or "In this paper, I claim that..", or "I will show that..."

3)  3-5 paragraphs introduction to the social, cultural and/or political economic nature of the event or phenomenon to be analyzed.

  • Briefly discuss the relevant history of the event/phenomenon, and how it was impactful, discussed in the media, etc.
  • Describe the social space and structure of relations of the event/phenomenon.
  • Give a sense of the demographics of participants (how many, race, class, gender, age, occupation, what social roles, etc.)
  • Give a sense of the nature of relevant organizations and their goals
  • Focus in on describing the key aspects of the event you think are most illuminating and why.

4) 4-7 pages main analysis of the role of Tibet or Tibetans or notions of Tibetanness in the event or phenomenon

  • each paragraph should have clear topic sentence, linked to main thesis and supported by evidence.
  • Return to the theorists or terms you introduced in the opening paragraphs
  • Show how they apply to understanding important social/cultural politics in the event
  • Quote and paraphrase theorists and any secondary sources by name to back up your points or critique theirs': providing credible evidence is crucial.
  • Bring in relevant media (including perhaps images) to illustrate or evidence aspects of the analysis.

5) 1-2 paragraphs conclusion

  • Return to your main terms and the questions you raised in the opening
  • Clarify and render compelling (don't just summarize) what you concluded
  • Emphasize the larger stakes of these dynamics (power, inequality, resistance, the state, etc)

6) Bibliography (full Chicago-style citations for both syllabus and non-syllabus readings)