Respond to two of the questions below. Each response is to be limited to about three pages in length (double-spaced, 12 point type).
        The questions are broad, and different students will give significantly different responses, each of them potentially valuable and appropriate.  Since such questions don't have single correct answers, evaluation of your responses will judge them as more or less comprehensive, coherent, relevant, insightful, and so on. A more organized presentation is a clearer one and your space is severely limited, so pay attention to organization, as you would in any essay.
        You are responsible to see that your two responses do not cover essentially the same ideas and sources. They should be quite distinct from each other. Some sorts of overlap are to be expected and may be necessary, but keep it to a minimum.
        Your responses are due in my e-mail box by the end of the day on Tuesday 9 December. gehman@uwo.ca
        You've earned a good long holiday. I hope you get one.

1.    Describe and contrast two of the ethnographies (Schieffelin, Sanders, Tsing) with regard to their use and analysis of stories.

2.    Many of your readings have dealt with rituals and ceremonies (secular or sacred). Dealing simply and concisely with instances from 3 of those readings, compare the various authors' intentions in their accounts: that is, what is each analysis intended to illustrate/demonstrate/prove?

3.    Berger and Luckman (1966) came up with the formula: "Society is a human product. Society is an objective reality. Man is a social product." Choose one of the ethnographic pieces you've read here (book or article) and show how it does or does not support such a description.

4.    Several of your authors rail against the common Western (and often anthropological) tendency to emphasize the differences between ourselves and Others, the tendency to make them "exotic". But at least in part those Others are of special interest because they are different and their situation is different. The question becomes: how does an ethnographer continue to seek insight from difference while at the same time underlining the intelligibility and familiarity of both their worlds and our own?
        Outline Tsing's approach to this problem and compare it with that of one other author you've read here.