Guidelines for Reader Response/Journal*
The biweekly course journal is a place for you to reflect on and respond to course materials: the readings, films, class discussions, instructor’s comments, speakers, outside observations from your own life, and your own reactions to these. The journal should show that you have really engaged with the course material, that you have read the readings carefully, and have given some thoughtful consideration to their meanings and implications. In your journals, you can:
- Write about (or talk about) the significant points, meaning, and relevance of assigned and optional books, articles, films, podcasts and other media. Your submission may be in a traditional paragraph format or submitted as a video, social media post, song, poem etc. It may be supported by photos or drawings or maps. Be sure whatever you produce relates back to assigned course materials.
- Make connections among all the different course materials. As the semester goes on, try to address the broader web of connections that you see emerging
- Compare and contrast different approaches, methods, findings
- Follow recurrent themes and analyses
- Write down questions you have about the course material, including vocabulary questions
- Make connections between the course & your own life, background, and family.
- Reflect on the relevance of the course to your own experience
- Use your experience, when applicable, to critique course materials
- Address the ways that the course material challenges or confirms your previous understandings of economic life
- Compare and contrast the themes, findings, and issues of this course with other study you have done, perhaps in other courses. How is what you are learning here different, the same, complementary, contradictory?
- Reflect on any special classroom happenings, discussions, debates, interactions that happen
I will consider your entries as private and confidential communications, between you and me. There will be times during the course when those who wish to can share ideas from their journals with the class or your work group. Your record of questions about the course materials will also be useful in guiding class discussion. You can also use your journals as resources later in writing more formal short papers for the course.
How long? 250-500 words per entry (or the equivalent in a recorded presentation) should be enough. This will require you to be succinct, and measured, in what you write. If you would like to make yours a little longer, that is okay. Please write your submission in the text box (or cut and paste it there).
Journal entries must be in your own words – Chat GPT/AI are not permitted. Cite your sources using the American Psychological Association guidelines: https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/10/ Links to an external site.
* This assignment was originally created by Timothy Sieber, Professor of Anthropology at UMass Boston. Professor Sieber taught Anthropology for many years before retiring in 2022. Please do not post this assignment on “tutoring†websites like Course Hero and Chegg.
Readings: Smelser, Neil (1992) “The rational choice perspective: a theoreticalassessment.†Rationality and Society, Volume 4, No. 4. 381-410.Trosper, Ronald (2022) “Living well by developing relationships†In IndigenousEconomics: Sustaining Peoples and their Lands. University of Arizona Press.
Venkataraman, Vivek (2023) “Lessons from the foragers: Hunter-gatherers don’tlive in an economic idyll but their deep appreciation of rest puts industrialisedwork to shame.†Aeon. https://aeon.co/essays/what-hunter-gatherers-demonstrate-about-work-and-satisfactionOptional: Sahlins, Marshall (2017, 1972). “The original affluent society†in StoneAge Economics. Routledge Classics. London and New York.https://archive.org/details/StoneAgeEconomics_201611/mode/2upOptional: Graeber, David (2017) Forward in Stone Age Economicshttps://archive.org/details/StoneAgeEconomics_201611/mode/2up
ilm: A Far Country (2001) from the series A Kalahari Family, by JohnMarshall, available on Kanopy
Anderson, Abigail, Sophia Chilczuk, Kaylie Nelson, Roxanne Ruther, Cara Wall-Scheffler (2023) The Myth of Man the Hunter: Women’s contribution to the huntacross ethnographic contexts. PLOS ONE.https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0287101Leacock, Eleanor (1998) “Women’s status in Egalitarian Societies: Implicationsfor social evolution.†In Gowdy, John, editor (1998) Limited Wants, UnlimitedMeans: A reader on Hunter-Gatherer Economics. Island Press.
Reading: Carrier, James (2017) “Production and What is Produced†In EconomicAnthropology. Agenda Press.“Introduction: pastoral systems worldwide†in Pastoralism in the newmillennium FAO Animal Health and Production Paper 150, 2001.https://www.fao.org/4/Y2647E/y2647e00.htm#toc
Please use the links I provide to complete your assignment, just pick two or three.
