Assignment:Write 3 full pages (minimum) that address the questions below, using standard format (~11-12 pt font, 1” margins, double-space). Be sure to indicate when you are citing a source, and when you are drawing on your own experience or position. Use in-text citation and provide complete bibliographic information at the end of your essay. Make sure togive your essay a suggestive title that relates to your conclusions. Upload your essay to BlackBoard by ‘end of day’ (11:59 PM) on Monday 25 April.
What is “framing” (as cultural process of metacommunication and social powerfact) and how is it evident in a given symbolic contestation about human behavior going on today?Choose oneof the following contested frames today as your essay’s case study:
1) the policing frame (symbolic contestation over whether to increase funding for the police, implement police reform, or abolish the police and create a different means of providing security and safety for communities, etc.); you may draw on the recent protest around Jalil Muntaqim’s talk for this.
2) the work frame (symbolic contestation over the value of work today, whether to give more tax breaks to the very rich that will trickle down, whether everyone should receive a universal basic income, or whether we should abolish work altogether and do something else with our lives, etc.).
3) Framing the future (symbolic contestation over aspirations and anticipations of the future, eg, endless war of attrition, or rapid cultural adaptation to slow down climate change and reduce or eliminate poverty and racism, etc.). You may draw on the current war in Ukraine for this.
You are allowed to use an alternate frame of your choice, subject to instructor approval. Email me advance notice please.
Your essay should focus on only one of the above frames and apply critical thinking and creative writing to the question of how we as people think through symbols (socially patterned thought). It should be grounded in the information provided you in your text book (cf. chaps 8-14). Cite relevant concepts and examples from the textbook of what framing means as a cultural process humans engage. If the relationship of symbolic signs and what they signify is relatively arbitrary, then meaning making is open to contestation from diverse positionalities, while also limited and constrained by social power. Describe your understanding of what framing is, as a cultural and social process. For the second part of the essay, where you examine a specific widespread cultural frame and its contestations (eg, how shall we maintain peace? Or what shall we do with our lives? Or what is my future and that of my children and my people?) you should cite at least 1 source from outside the assigned readings, but also include your own empirical analysis based on your knowledge. The goal in this part is not to evaluate and pass judgement on one symbolic frame over another, but rather to describe the different key symbols used by different positionalities (as objectively as you can), and discuss how those key symbols connect to other meanings about life (eg., Black Lives Matter and blue line flags are both summarizing symbols in the case of the policing frame, that evoke different worldviews). If you find it difficult to be objective about these contested frames, you may try imagining that you are from another planet and visiting Earth for the first time, and trying to understand the behavioral patterns of humans you are observing because you have to file a report about them for your home planet, where they are wondering if they should establish relations with humans or not. Save your judgements for your concluding paragraph.
The Textbook:Anthropology – What Does it Mean to be Human? Fifth Edition. by Robert H. Lavenda and Emily L. Schultz (referred to in the schedule as “L&S”). Oxford University Press