Frequently
Asked Questions Regarding
the Community Action Website Project
2. Does the project really help students without increasing my work load?
4. What is the topic students will be writing about in their letters?
8. How do I learn more about Public Anthropology's Community Action Website project?
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1. How does the project work?
Using the internet to draw students at various universities together into an intellectual community, the Community Action Website encourages students to consider ethical issues that lie at the interface of anthropology and the contemporary world. Participating in the Community Action Website project helps students improve both their critical thinking and writing skills. By actively addressing important ethical concerns, it provides students with a sense of engagement relating to the broader world as well as an understanding of how students from other universities, with different life-experiences, view the issue being addressed. Because students get involved in the project, it frequently leads to exciting class discussions. By connecting with students' own experiences, the Community Action Website makes anthropology come alive.
(1) Each semester (quarter or term) teachers select, from three options, a two and a half week time-period (termed an Action Period) for participating in the Community Action Website. The project is done outside class on a student's own time. During the two and a half week period of the project, students spend a total of approximately two to three hours on it.
(2) Students register for the project on-line at www.publicanthropology.net. In registering, a student pays a ten dollar registration fee which allows the student to participate in the project, use the project's software, and receive a free on-line copy of ANTHROPOLOGY IN AN ACTIVE VOICE. (This fall, the book will be selling on-line for $10 -- so students have the advantage of obtaining the book plus participate in the project at no extra cost.) This book constitutes the project's main reading and is used as a lens for exploring ethical issues within the discipline. The reading is generally done the week prior to the website project and takes roughly two hours. No books need be ordered from the bookstore. Students can read the book on-line or print it out.
(3) Students write professional-style Op-Ed pieces that can be published in various local, state, and/or national newspapers or blogs. The goal is to give students the experience of writing for a larger audience, beyond the classroom, beyond their school, in a way that attracts attention and serious consideration. It allows them to not only understand how democracy works through discussions in the public sphere but effectively participate in the process.
(4) The website provides students, TAs and teachers with the needed background information to facilitate this Op-Ed writing process.
(5) After completing their own letters, students anonymously evaluate four Op-Ed pieces by other students without knowing who wrote them or which schools they are from. During this peer review process, students are drawn into reflecting not only on the perspectives presented in other students' Op-Eds but on how they, themselves, performed in respect to the grading criteria. At the end of the evaluation process, students receive feedback on how other students viewed their letters.
(6) The Op_Ed pieces with the highest grades are declared model or winning pieces. Students can, if they wish, add their names in support to one or more of these Op-Eds. In a sense, the Op-Eds become petitions, strengthening the arguments they make.
(7) Students are encouraged to publish their Op-Ed pieces in local, national, or international newspapers or blogs (with, perhaps, a selection of supporting students and/or schools).
(8) To add strength to the students' efforts to facilitate change, the Community Action Website is sponsoring -- in co-ordination with students' Op-Ed pieces -- a $30,000/year media campaign to reinforce the students' pieces. This media campaign is being funded by the Community Action Website project. The hope is, by entwining students' pieces with a media campaign, much public attention will be focused on the problem being addressed and move anthropology beyond simply providing information that others -- may or may not use in their own way for their own ends -- to actually being a political force that, through the students' efforts, can bring real change, do real good.
Note: The project works best when it is a stipulated class assignment and constitutes perhaps 10% of the final grade. When students do the project on an optional basis, many do not complete it -- thereby affecting the peer review process of other students. Making the project an optional assignment is only allowed in exceptional circumstances with formal permission from the project's webmaster.
2. Does the project really help students without increasing my work load?
The focus of the project is on students engaging directly with certain issues and thinking through, for themselves, where they stand on them. A key part of the process involves students reading other students' Op-Ed pieces and seeing how these students address the same issue. The Op-Eds are graded through a peer review process involving students reading four Op-Eds and ranking them on the degree to which they meet five writing criteria. As with Calibrated Peer Review -- an evaluation system used by over 140,000 students -- neither teachers nor TAs are required to grade the letters.
Students who are upset with their grades have the option of requesting their teachers re-grade their letters. But to take advantage of this option, students must write a 100 word explanation of why they feel their letters deserve a different grade. Usually less than 2% of a class choose this option.
The web pages are designed so TAs, especially in large classes, are able to oversee the project with little guidance from the teacher. Because students are instructed on what to do when through emails, little direct supervision is required. All technical problems are handled by the webmaster.
3. As I understand it, I can select from one of three periods when my class will participate, with other classes across the United States and Canada, in the project. When are these three time periods?
Each of the three periods is termed an Action Period -- because, it is when the "action" takes place. For FALL 2009, the Action Periods are: (1) SEPTEMBER 21 - OCTOBER 7, (2) OCTOBER 12 - OCTOBER 28, and (3) NOVEMBER 2 - NOVEMBER 18.
4. What is the topic students will be writing their letters on?
Most of the prominent institutions involved in efforts to repatriate the Yanomami blood stored in American laboratories back to the Yanomami – independent of the position different people take on the Yanomami controversy itself -- accept that we should honor the Yanomami request for the repatriation of their relatives' blood. The National Cancer Institute does; Pennsylvania State University does; the Brazilian government does. But nothing seems to happen.
This fall the Project will be helping students write OP-ED pieces (with hundreds of supporting signatures) that can be published in local, state, or national newspapers and blogs. The students will be part of a larger project, seeking to draw attention to the fact, since everyone agrees the blood should be returned, why has not it been done?
Students will be presented with two options and encouraged to choose one or the other or, if they prefer, to create a third one for addressing the problem.
The first choice affirms that students, while not knowing all the details of who did what, when and how, do know the basic facts. The prominent institutions involved have agreed to return the blood but have not actually done so. This first choice affirms that the Yanomami have played an important role in anthropology and helping them gain the return of their deceased relatives’ blood gives something back to the Yanomami for their role in the development of anthropology. According to Yanomami beliefs, deceased relatives can only die in peace (instead of aimlessly wander in a shadow world) when all their bodily parts – including the blood – are ritually destroyed. Writing Op-Ed pieces to newspapers, offers the students a chance to facilitate the return of the blood by bringing the problem to larger constituencies than the key players themselves. It also affirms the ability of students to take effective social action, to “make a difference” in the world.
The second choice, acknowledges that things may (or may not) be amiss. But the students do not have enough knowledge to make that clear judgement. They have certain facts. But perhaps there are other facts that they do not know of. Moreover, it is not their problem. They did not create it and, in a sense, it is not their responsibility to solve it. It is the responsibility of the Yanomami to address the problem. Why should North American students get involved in this problem?
In summary, the students need to think critically about the terms under which they should, or should not, get involved in problems beyond their own personal concerns. When do they have enough knowledge to act? Can, if they act, do any good? And do they have a social responsibility to help right wrongs beyond their own lives, that make the world better not just for themselves but for others? .
5. What schools have participated in the project to date and what do some of the teachers who have participated say about it?
Schools
That Have Recently Used the Community Action Website
in Their Introductory Courses
|
University
of Illinois, Chicago |
A
Sample of Quotes from Teachers
Who Have Participated in the Project
My
freshman and sophomore students, mostly pioneer-college-goers, have really
benefited from participating in the Public Anthropology Website Project.
The Project encouraged and empowered them to apply new-found critical
reasoning and writing skills to real world problems, both globally and
in their home communities.
-- Christina von Mayrhauser, California State University, Northridge
For
a large introductory course (with an enrollment in the hundreds), it
is difficult to find projects that provoke students to actively engage
with the fundamental ideas and ideals of anthropology. The Community
Action Website did that for my classes this year. The project encouraged
students to recognize the anthropological perspective as a morally-positive
way of thinking and acting in the world. My students appreciated the
opportunity to present their opinions on important ethical issues. They
came to see anthropology as focused on subjects and ideas of relevance
to their lives.
-- J. Dwight Hines, University of California-Santa Barbara
The
students in my introductory cultural anthropology course became far more
engaged with issues of ethics, ethnography, science and power through
their participation in the Community Action project. It helped them think
more broadly about anthropology’s significance and to analyze cultural
and ethical conflicts occurring in the world today.
-- Julie Skurski, University of Michigan
Students
really responded to the material and became deeply engaged with the issues
involved. They thought more carefully about questions of fact and of
bias, of responsibility and of justice, and were eager to continue the
discussion that began with the website in the classroom. Students taking
the course as a general education requirement often ask, “What's
the point of anthropology?” “What do anthropologists do and
what difference does it make?” This exercise helped them to find
their own answers.
-- Ruth Toulson, Brigham Young University
Participating
in the Community Action Website has opened up my students’ eyes
to new ways of analyzing evidence and thinking about controversies. Many
have gone from thinking that one side of the argument is “obviously
right” to understanding that the issues are much more complex than
simply “right or wrong.” Evaluating other students' letters
in terms of the criteria used in the website has raised the quality of
their own writing.
-- Diane Levine, Los Angeles Pierce Community College
Public
Anthropology’s Community Action Website engaged my students with
the potential of anthropology as an activist discipline. They loved it.
-- Carolyn Nordstrom, University of Notre Dame
6. If I have a large class, do the TAs really run the project with limited supervision from myself? Do the TAs get compensation, in addition to their regular renumeration from my school, for helping with the project?
In large classes, TAs usually supervise the project. There are clear advantages for TAs assisting with the project. They gain experience with on-line courses that they can then put on their CV's in a supportive environment (where the webmaster deals with all technical problems). Also the project tends to stimulate exciting discussions with students.
TAs do not have major, time-consuming responsibilities. Their main responsibilities are (a) discussing the issue, if appropriate, with students, (b) encouraging students to follow the specified deadlines stipulated in emails that the webmaster sends to students, and (c) requesting a student email the webmaster if the student encounters a technical problem.
In appreciation for a TA's assistance with the project, each TA receives a $65 gift certificate from Amazon.com.
7. You refer to ANTHROPOLOGY IN AN ACTIVE VOICE. What is the book about and why is it being used?
ANTHROPOLOGY IN AN ACTIVE VOICE emphasizes the power of anthropology to change the world and, in doing so, acts as a foundation for Public Anthropology’s Community Action Website. In analyzing anthropology – as a discipline, as a social structure, and as a body of knowledge – the book emphasizes anthropology needs to grow beyond its present dynamics and styles. The way to unleash anthropology’s power, the book suggests, is to move toward greater social accountability to the broader society, not to just ourselves. As in much of academia, anthropologists are suffering under the university’s increasing bureaucratization. Anthropology in an Active Voice suggests the way to liberate anthropologists is to build a coalition of support for anthropology within the broader public community by addressing broad social concerns in very public ways.
The book offers a strategy for moving anthropology from the treadmill of publications few read and the disempowering bureaucratization of professional life to playing a major role in addressing public problems. It offers a means for revitalizing the discipline and realizing anthropology’s vision for improving the human condition through the understanding of human differences.
Chapter One: A Different Way to Describe Anthropology
Chapter Two: What Have Anthropologists Accomplished to Date?
Chapter Three: The Power of Anthropology to Change the World
Chapter Four: Can Anthropologists Learn to Speak in an Active Voice?
8. How do I learn more about the Public Anthropology's Community Action Website project?
If you would like to have your introductory class participate in Public Anthropology's Community Action Website or if you have questions regarding the project, please email the webmaster at: borofsky@publicanthropology.org. To avoid last minute rushes (for you as well as the webmaster), it is best to email the webmaster as soon as you have questions or decide to participate.