General requirements:
The final essay will be 1200 words long
Double-spaced with one-inch margins, 12-point type
Limit of two lines of quotations for entire essay
Submit a copy of your essay to Turnitin in Blackboard
You are to write an essay that combines participant observation of a panhandler and a comparison of your results with Intimate Apartheid: Ethnic dimensions of habitus among homeless heroin injectors by Bourgois and Schonberg. You are to incorporate the ideas of “thick description” from Geertz and “habitus” from Bourgois and Schonberg.
Participant Observation– Observing behaviors in a natural setting; the researcher becomes part of the group. For this assignment, you will be doing covert participant observation. Do not approach the subject. Do not speak to the subject! Be unnoticeable- walk the walk of everyone around you. If I find out that you contacted the panhandler, I will give you a zero on the essay.
Collect information on the following:
Subject: gender, age, style of dress, general look, behavior, etc.
Environment: location, time, describe surroundings
Style of panhandling: approach, attitude, contact with people, eye contact, props, etc.
Remember when you write the essay that I am not asking you for a judgement on the panhandler. Do not make assumptions that you know the person or their situation. You need to recognize that you are doing a brief observation and only collecting a thin description. View the panhandlers as active participants in their life. You might want to visit the location of the panhandler after they have left and consider why they chose the location. Why did they chose the time?
Compare your results with the article on Intimate Apartheid. Instead of the African American/White segregation, can you also find other types of segregation- by ethnicity or class? What is the composition of the neighborhood? What is the difference between a thin and thick description? What information are you missing and would like to know?
Within the body of the essay, you are allowed a maximum of two lines of quotation for the entire essay. The quotes should fit well with the discussion of the essay and help you argue a point. You must give the source with page number for the quote. Be very careful with quotations; do not use more than two lines! Your overall score will be lower by 10 points for each additional line of quotations.
Write the essay. The essay should be written in professional and clean manner. You can use any editing style that you feel comfortable with or have used in the past. (Many anthropologists use the Chicago Manual of Style). The essay should be double-spaced with one-inch margins. Keep the type to a 12 point. A bibliography will earn you extra points.
You will access “Turnitin” in the class Blackboard website to upload your essay. Keep an extra copy on an extra disk. After the analysis, Turnitin will submit a score and list similar sources. If the score is over 14%, I will review the essay carefully for plagiarized materials. This is another reason to keep your quotations down below three lines! This assignment will only be graded through Turnitin. No essay copies or emailed copies will be accepted.
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