essay

Choose one of the five topics below for your Writing Assignment 2 Essay. Write about 500-600 words and upload your essay via the link provided above.

1) In my discussion of an Andean first haircutting ceremony as a “rite of passage” in the Lead-in to Lesson 5, I introduced the concept of “ritual kin”, or what anthropologists often call “fictive kinship” – the application of kin terms to nonrelatives to create bonds between people as if they had the kinship relationship implied by the term used. Other examples are Christian godparent relationships, “blood brothers,” members of college fraternities and sororities calling each other “brother” and “sister,” treating one’s friends as “aunts” and “uncles” of one’s children, etc. Think of your own relations, those of your family, friends, and others in your wider social and work environment, and describe all the instances of such fictive kinship that you are involved in or familiar with. What kin terms are used, in what texts are they used, and what motivates their use? Why do we use fictive kin terms to create bonds between us at all? Why do such terms have such emotional pull?

2) The website “”Race: The Power of an Illusion” provides interactive modules to explore the ways we classify and categorize humans. Click on the link provided on the “Lecture Notes” page to access the site. You will need a Flash 6 Plug-in to play the site in your browser, and this can be downloaded from the website if you don’t have it installed already. The Web exercises are divided into six categories: “What Is Race,” “Sorting People”, “Human Diversity”, “Race Timeline”, “Me, My Race and I”, and “Where Race Lives”. Each is short, educational, and interactive, so explore them all. Pay special attention to the sorting interactivity, the fingerprint, blood and skin type sorting exercises, the genetic diversity quiz, and the other interactive exercises. Your essay assignment is to write a reaction paper on what you learned about race at the Website, and whether or not you find the arguments made there and evidence presented convincing. You are welcome to go further and discuss your own experiences with racial groupings, racial profiling, and race relations, or to expand the discussion still further to explore the differences (if any) between race and ethnic identities, and the strength of your feelings about any racial or ethnic identity you have.

3) Ferraro and Andreatta’s Chapter 14 gives a variety of examples of the principles of magical thinking played out in real-life around the globe. Most of the examples probably seem quaint or exotic to you, but I expect that most of you can cite examples from closer at hand. In fact, I argue that some of the perceived cultural distance between ourselves and people of other cultures or subcultures arises from the questionable assumption that they think magically whereas we do not. For this essay, give examples from your personal life and from those around you that illustrate the point that in our daily lives, we likewise think as magically as anyone (in terms of imitative and contagious principles of magic, or other violations of the canons of rationality); or you can beg to differ with me and argue that there really are cultural differences in the domains and degree that magical thinking holds sway. Do you see any patterns in this regard? When are we more likely to turn to magically rites, when are we more likely to turn to more empirically-justifiable procedures to accomplish our aims?

4) Discuss body art in one or more of its various forms. Discuss body art (hairdos, tattoos, piercings, makeup, etc.) in your own culture, or do a comparative analysis of body art in different cultures. Bring your own experience to bear as much as possible, and that of those around you (perhaps you might like to interview your friends and acquaintances on this!). Discuss choices, styles, symbolism, motivation, associated rites and passages, and any other personal, social and cultural significance you can draw from your observations.

5) Reflect on the course. Some of the things you may like to address include: What are the most important things you have learned in this class? What is likely to stay with you the longest? What was the most eye-opening? The most disturbing? What most interested you and why? What are some things that you have seen, read, or done that troubled you, or that you disagreed with? Has your thinking changed on anything over the course of the semester? (You are not limited to these questions by any means, and you may not have space to discuss all of them.)