Bodies and Machines

Fall 2015 Instructions for Presentations and Final Paper (300pts)

Presentations (50pts)You will be scheduled to give a 10-15 minute presentation between the 10 th and 13th week of classes. The schedule of presentations will be posted by or before Friday October 23rd on D2L in the content area under Syllabus and Assignments.

You should think of your presentation as an opportunity to share with the class the research that you did and what you will be doing in your paper. This will be an opportunity to get feedback from the class regarding questions or concerns that you have about putting your paper together.

Getting an A for the Final PaperAn A paper will be exceptionally well written which means that it will be a pleasure to read. It will follow all of the directions herein. It will be structured using the “content” guidelines. It will have well organized paragraphs and clear transitions. It will offer numerous, richly detailed, and well chosen examples from the data that you collected. It will reflect an engagement with the class readings and discussions and demonstrate mastery of relevant concepts; this will be made evident as the concepts are applied to analyzing the data and discussing it’s significance in a clear and compelling manner.

DeadlinesThe deadline for the final ethnography will be Friday December 11 by 10pm.

Note that there is no deadline for your draft. The draft assignment will be graded on a pass/fail basis. This means that you will receive 50pts for your draft as long as you turn it in. I will provide you with detailed comments and suggestions for the final paper within one week of receiving your draft. You must send an email notifying me as soon as you submit the draft to Dropbox.

You will need to turn in your draft no later than November 24 if you want my comments at least a week before your final paper is due.

The final ethnography is final in the sense that you will not be able to revise it. You will also not be receiving final comments on this assignment.

FormatYour final paper should be between 10-12 pages in length, not including a bibliography. It should have a title. It should be written in 12 pt font, double-spaced, with 1 inch margins. Pages should be numbered.

Your paper should have a bibliography. Authors should be listed by last name in alphabetical order. That is all I require. Otherwise you can use whatever bibliographic format you would like.

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WritingWhen writing about your observations “in the field” I suggest reducing the font to 10pt and indenting it so that it is visibly distinct and separate from the body of your discussion. This will help offset this data and help you distinguish data from discussion of the data as well as the time of research from the time of discussion and analysis. Also, you should use the past tense to refer to the data-gathering portion of your research and the present tense when analyzing that data. These two strategies will help with establish a distinction between data-gathering discussion, and analysis.

All quotations from our readings should be followed with the last name of the author, the date of the publication, and the page numbers (Schull 2014: 13-14). Quotations should only be used to support a point that you are making. Be selective in your use of quotations. Never assume that a quote speaks for itself. You must explain what the quote means, why you chose to include it, and how it supports your point. Quotes from your consultant need only have reference to the person’s name or alias.

ContentThe purpose of this paper is to examine the social and cultural dimensions of the body and technology using qualitative research data. You will be expected to use the following four-part structure to write your paper:

Introduction to the social and cultural dimensions of the body and technology and the importance of qualitative research methods.In your introduction you will need to demonstrate an understanding of what it means to study the body and technology from a social and cultural perspective and why qualitative research methods are well suited for this purpose. This portion of your paper will need to explain how the body and technology are social and cultural phenomena and the relevance of anthropological research methods. You will demonstrate this understanding by selectively quoting the Lassiter, Volti, and Helman readings.

Part One/Pheonomenology of the Technobody“The technobody” refers to an intimate and personal interaction between an embodied human subject and technology. This is a way of being technologically embodied that enables meaningful activities such as “playing”, “listening”, “calculating”, “looking”, “watching”,” moving”,” riding”, “planning”, “exercising”, “working” etc… And by doing these things it both creates a world and a way of being in the world. Your task is to describe this world; specifically what it is that they do, how they do it, and what it feels like to do it. A technobody is a particular way of being in the world and your job is to convey that as clearly and compellingly as possible. Many of our readings this semester have provided examples of phenomenological analysis- see especially Cevetello, the readings excerpted from The Inner History of Devices, and most recently, the readings by Schull.

Part Two: Discourse(s) of the TechnobodyHow did the people that you studied talk about their technobody? What were the particular words, terms, phrases, metaphors, and ideas that they used? Your discussion of this discourse will need to help us understand their social roles and relationships. You will be expected to describe as clearly and compellingly as possible how this talk is shared and negotiated with others in particular social contexts. Examples of this were provided by the Gusterson, Belk, Schull, and Anderson readings, among others.

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Part Three/ Political Economy of the TechnobodyThe third part of the paper is to think about the people and groups who you did not study--those designers, producers, marketers, and executives who are otherwise hidden and behind the scenes. The groups who made this technology that the user embodies. How do they benefit from the choices that your informants have made to embody technology in the way that they have? What might be the conflicting interests between those who embody this technology and those who make and sell it?

Part Four/ The Social and Cultural Significance of the TechnobodyYou need to address all of these questions in your analysis: What does your study of this technobody teach us about the tensions and contradictions in our 21st century culture? What does your study teach us about the specific norms, values, beliefs and/or expectations that people are struggling with at this moment in time? How is the technobody you studied a solution to these “problems”? How does it contribute to and even perhaps exacerbate these “problems”? What might be some new risks, problems, responsibilities, and uncertainties that are the result of being embodied technologically in this way? You will need to draw on at least three different authors this semester to support your analysis.

ConclusionThis is where you will re-iterate what you learned about the social and cultural dimensions of technology and the body by doing ethnographic research; what it has taught you about the phenomenological, discursive, and political economic dimensions of this technobody; and what is socially and culturally significant about it.

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