Paper details: Assignment 5: Individual Essay on Group ProjectDue: April 6, 2016 (by noon) in Course Dropbox (please have the Assignment stamped in the OSAS Office before depositing it)
Worth: 20% of final grade
Word limit: 1000 words (max)
Learning outcomes:
• ability to identify a particular topic from your group project and show deeper understanding of related issues
• ability to see and convey in writing an understanding of the contestation or competing views about the topic of your group project
• ability to bring in course concepts relayed in the lectures and course readings into your essay
• ability to effectively structure an academic essay
• ability to develop a clear, concise thesis/argument
• ability to write a grammatically correct assignment
• ability to edit an essay so that it contains approximately 1,000 words
As a way of synthesizing and clarifying your own position on the group project, you are to submit a 4-page essay (1000 words). It should reflect your own evolving position on the issue. It should reference course readings, and at least 5 books or journals as well as other NGO, corporate, government materials and resources from the group research. You can use the format of your abstract to cover the essentials of your essay. You should include the components below but they need not appear in the order stated:
1) Motivation/topic/problem statement: Why should the reader care about the topic/problem? What practical, scientific, theoretical or artistic gap is your research filling? One “gap” that we have talked about continuously in the class is the inability of the public media to ask the “for whom” and “by whom” questions.
2) Methods/procedure/approach: What did you actually do to get your results? (e.g. analyzed 3 articles, compiled a newspaper record, completed a field trip, conducted a survey, or interviewed 5 students or professionals).
3) Results/findings/product: As a result of completing the above procedure, what did you find out/ learn/invent/create?
4) Action/civic engagement: What sort of action can or did you take to engage with or tackle the problem?
5) Conclusion/implications: What are the larger implications of your findings, especially for the problem/gap identified in step 1? What did you learn from your action? What might you have done different if you did the project again?
The criteria for evaluation include:
• Articulation of your motivation/topic/problem and the strength of your argument
• Complexity of analysis re: context, actors, and actions
• Explicit links to course texts and group resources
• Clarity of writing and proper citations
• Reflexivity and self-reflexivity (capacity to seriously analyze your own self and your work; what issues or questions could you have brought to the project but didn’t?; what personal biases may have affected the project?)
• Incorporation of the lessons learnt from the Weaving a Web exercise and the concluding lecture and seminar of the course
Professor S has taken considerable time in his lectures to talk about the concept of reflexivity and self-reflexivity (see his lectures on MOODLE). The concepts refer to the practice of questioning the taken-for-granted views and positions that an individual might identify or hold about a certain topic. One prominent example of a “taken-for-granted position” that we have identified in the course is the tendency to equate nature protection with the setting aside of “wilderness” areas. Through this lens, “wilderness” areas are seen as good and developed areas are seen as bad. On reflection, however, using Cronon among others, we have proposed that this position is problematic, it separates humans from nature and it obscures the nature protection we need to consider in all places at all times. Another “given” that we have tried to disrupt through reflection is the emphasis on “reducing” consumption levels to alleviate negative environmental impacts.” This is a very ethno-centric and western-centric point of view that ignores the fact that 90 per cent of the world’s population does not have enough to eat. We have also critically reflected on the position that environmentalism is only about the “environmental issues”, and proposed that it is also a concern about the abuse of bodies through the concepts of ableism, ageism, classism, homophobia, racism, and sexism. The statement about reflexivity in the individual essay assignment above asks each student to provide a critical reflection on their own work and the positions they have taken in their projects.
Employing the concept of reflexivity, as Professor S and the TAs have pointed out, gives an opportunity to students to pose more questions about their projects rather than to look for absolute answers.
If you would like the paper returned to you, please provide a stamped self-addressed envelope when you submit the paper.