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Understanding the
Call The
first thing to accomplish in deciding what to write about in a paper is understanding the call. Professional scientific associations hold regular
conference meetings in which they “call for papers.” A
“call” is an announcement requesting the participation of scholars at the
meetings. Often conferees
organize meetings around themes, and there are multiple sessions structured
around subthemes and topics related to these. It is expected that those who answer the call will have
papers that conform to the theme of the conference. To ensure this, conference organizers ask for papers to be
submitted ahead of time subject to approval. If a submission does not conform to the call, it is not
accepted (and the proposer will have wasted everybody’s time). I
conduct written assignments in the same way. The syllabus announces a call for papers, explaining the
call in detail. For example, the
syllabus for my Race and Ethnic Relations course calls for students to
“produce a comparative essay on a topic related to the study of race and
ethnicity.” It specifies the assignment by instructing the student to “choose
two countries or regions, or two time periods within a particular society,
and contrast and compare ethnic relations and/or racial systems.” Within race and ethnic relations
there is wide latitude in what a student may write about, but if the paper is
not about race and ethnic relations, then it does not answer the call and
will receive no credit.
Likewise, if the paper is about race and ethnic relations, but it is
not comparative, then it will receive no credit. Consider
the following assignment associated with my course Freedom and Social
Control: The written assignment this semester
is to produce an institutional analysis using scholarly and academic texts.
The research question, the specific form of which you formulate, concerns the
effects of corporate bureaucratic culture, operations, and strategies on
personal freedom broadly defined as choice, health, safety, or wellbeing. The
modern business firm is the paradigm.
Your paper should focus on those effects that either restrict or harm
individual freedom for the sake of profit. This
assignment is telling the student to develop an original research question
about the impact of the culture, operations, and strategies of corporations
on individual liberty. There is
a wide range of choices permitted by the wording. The assignment allows the student to choose which corporation
she will study and which effects she will focus on. Maybe a student is interested in the health effects
associated with a chemical produced by a pesticide corporation that is
alleged to produce birth defects. Alternatively, the student may be
interested in how corporations manipulate consumers through mass media, such
as teaching children to go against their parent’s wishes. Any of these would be appropriate
topics (and these examples just scratch the surface). Note
that the assignment urges students to focus on the detrimental aspects of the
culture, operations, and strategies of corporations. This aspect of the call recognizes
that identifying and empowering citizens to overcome the problems of social
life is one of the callings of the social scientist (which students are
during the time they are taking social science courses). Indeed, the resistance of
independent-thinking social scientists to participating in campaigns that aim
to legitimize the prevailing order of things is well known and
celebrated. As C. Wright Mills,
arguably our most important homegrown sociologist, argues in his
groundbreaking text, The Sociological Imagination: Know that many personal troubles
cannot be solved merely as troubles, but must be understood in terms of
public issues – and in terms of the problems of history making. Know that the human meaning of public
issues must be revealed by relating them to personal troubles – and to
the problems of the individual life. Know that the problems of social
science, when adequately formulated, must include both troubles and issues,
both biography and history, and the range of their intricate relations.
Within that range the life of the individual and the making of societies
occur; and within that range the sociological imagination has its chance to
make a difference in the quality of human life in our time. (Mills 1959, 226) It
is wise to frequently return to the syllabus and remind oneself about the
call. Do not trust memory with
something so important. Memory
can be unreliable, especially with all the distractions of college life. Good habits are hard to form. Bad habits are hard to break. Do not depend on classmates to
explain assignments. Rely on the
syllabus, the course materials, and the teacher. |
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