Summary Comments of Summary Analysis

Ok class, so I just spent most of my afternoon grading your summary/analysis. There are a few things we need to  think about.

Grade Reporting

First--and I will send an email about this/talk about it in class: PLEASE review your papers that I have attached to in the place of assignments and not just check your grade. Go into Sakai, Assignments, click on the relevant assignment, toward the bottom you will find a document that says "Blah blah Summary Analysis."

Second, if you look at most of your grade sheets (yes, I did use the sheets that I have you in class--scroll down to the bottom of your document), you will see that most of you are doing fine with the lower half, but the upper half we have some issues. This means that we need to work on paragraph structure, development, transitions, argument, and thesis. I frequently could not tell what the thesis of any of your papers was--what you were arguing. Even if you did have a thesis, sometimes the points you say you will address are out of order or part of a paragraph would go better with another paragraph, etc. etc. These are the issues I want peer review to focus on--we can all use Microsoft Word Grammar check to eliminate grammatical errors. I want you all in peer review to write on someone's paper "I don't get what you are saying here" or something to that effect (you will notice I have said that on some of your papers).

Argument

More than anything, you analyses frequently did not seem to make an argument about Geertz's piece, but contained more of an 'expanded' summary of the first summary. This makes the paragraphs read as summaries of each of Geertz's movements rather than your structuring of an argument. This is not easy to do, I know, but its necessary for you to be able to sort of re-piece together Geertz rather than just following his own argument.

As far as arguments go, I remember a few. 

1.) Geertz's analysis of the Balinese culture is incomplete due to his explicit exclusion of women. 

2.) Geertz's combination of narrative and in depth description may isolate either anthropologists (wishing for something more professional) or the general reader (due to the extensive analysis toward the middle and end of the essay). 

3.) Geertz's treatment of the cocks reflects an unconcern for animal welfare. 


However, I would say that the majority of you would say things about emotional, logical, and credible appeals, but without adequate support, detail, or framing such that most of your argument consisted in paraphrasing Geertz's own argument about the connection between society and the cockfight.


Citation and References

That said, many of you referenced the text itself with quotations--which was good. A comment on citations (which we will review when we get to bibliographies):

• When you cite just one text and do not have to worry about "citation style" I want you to cite page numbers for each reference you make. The proper position of an in-text citation is after the end of the sentence, but before the punctuation mark. So your quotation should look like this: 

"Before the cockfight commences bets are made depending whether it is a “deep” fight or a “shallow” fight (70). 

Not this (although I'm happy that some of you put page numbers in at all): 

Before the cockfight commences bets are made depending whether it is a “deep” (70) fight or a “shallow” (70) fight. 

That is just academic convention--I didn't punish any of you for that grade-wise. 

Related to citing, when you cite just one word, particularly if its a key word like "deep," you want to contextualize it. That is, you should explain what Geertz means by "deep play"--where he got the concept, etc. Some of you did, some of you did not. 

Sentence Structure

Some of you need to think about varying sentence structure/combining sentences in order to make more complex sentences. This will create rhythm in the prose that is more pleasant to read. 

The Good

There were of course good things about your papers. I rarely saw typos or grammatical errors. Rather, the concern was with clarity of style: eliminating unnecessary passive voice, eliminating unnecessary words by employing more powerful verbs, varying sentence structure and length. Furthermore, I could see that a lot of you put in effort to understand what Geertz was trying to say, which is good. This is not a simple and short article. 

Anyway, I hope these general comments about the class are helpful to the class as a whole. Individual issues should be taken up with me in office hours by appointment.