Week 5 - Economics Writeup

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WEEK 5 - ECONOMICS CHAPTER WRITEUP

This week you'll write a draft of your chapter on economic issues. Use your general model for a good paper–write an introduction, body, and conclusion. In the introduction you want to lay out the basic points for economics in Fijian village and make any argument you may have about the material so the reader will know what points to look for while going along. You might also summarize the topics you'll be discussing in the body of the chapter.

In the body of the chapter, divide your information into useful topics and give each section a descriptive heading or title. Try to be as thorough as you can with the information you currently have. Be sure to be clear about what kind of data you are using to justify your conclusions (note, for example, that this is based on interviews with six arbitrarily selected households).

Topics you should cover include:

sources of income:Where does the money come from in the households you surveyed? What is the total income of the household and how is it distributed over the year (e.g. do they make most of this money in sugar season which is only six months long?). Did all of the households you surveyed have similar levels of income and sources of income or was there a lot of variation? I.e. are there rich and poor people in your village? Are some people dependent on others for money or do most household members have independent sources of income? Are some categories of people (e.g. young women) more likely to lack independent sources of income?

expenditures:
How much money is spent on necessities of life? Does this household need a lot of money to survive or is money mostly used for luxury goods that they could readily do without? How much money is spent on donations to festivals, fundraisers, rituals and on gifts to friends and kin? (How much money do people receive from such sources, on the other hand). These are all "levelling mechanisms" which potential bring everyone to a similar level of material wealth by taking money away from people with more money and redistributing it to those with less money. You should try to figure out, then, to what extent levelling mechanisms actually do level out income in the village: do richer households contribute much more? Do people live in a similar style or do some people seem to have a higher standard of living than others? Analyzing your village "Adi" or fundraising festival will be very helpful here if you are able to witness this event: find out who comes, and how much they contribute to your group's cause.

people's feelings about their work and lifestyle:
Do people seem to take pride in their work and enjoy it or do they consider it drudgery and long for urban jobs? Do they feel that they are poor and resent demands on their income from things like fundraisers? Or do people seem to feel that they are living well?

other issues that arose in you interviews:
some of you obtained detailed and complicated information about things like the FSC and land leasing. You should be sure to include all of this information as this reflects issues that your informants consider to be the important ones in their economic lives.

NOTE: All of these topics are relevant to the issues raised in your Week Four readings (Is Kinship Costly? etc.) so you can take this opportunity to summarize these issues and to comment on them through analyzing your material on economic life. E.g. Is the author of the second article correct in saying that most people are coming to find the festival system too demanding and many would like to save money to enhance their individual standard of living?

Here are some general guidelines for writing anthropological material–guidelines that the Gmelches give their students:

VERY IMPORTANT: Use direct quotations, examples, brief case studies, personal experiences (where appropriate) to illustrate or support the general points you make. Note how Nayacakalou livens up his otherwise dry presentation by giving examples of specific incidents, using quotes from people, and his own experiences. Keep in mind that people most enjoy reading about these specific kinds of things, as long as they're written with a general point in mind.

Good writing requires several revisions. Read and reread your draft, examining it for economy (do you say things directly, simply), for elegance (do you say things well, is your writing a pleasure to read), and for coherence (do you explain things fully, does what you say make sense, does one section or point lead into the next). As you read your draft to yourself, ask "Does this say what I want it to say?" "Could I say this better using fewer or different words?" Strive to be interesting!

Strive to achieve a good balance between data and analysis. Data and analysis should be mixed and integrated with one another. Analytic passages should not run on for very long without the support of actual data: descriptive materials, incidents, events, accounts of episodes, survey results, quotations from respondents, etc.. No less than half to two-thirds of your chapter should be devoted to data. But remember, your data must be used for a purpose–usually to support an analytic point or generalization you are making. Resist the temptation to throw everything into your paper just because you collected it. If something is not very revealing or doesn't connect well to what you are writing about, omit it. Remember that guiding your discussion should be your own analytical points that you're trying to get across.

We are giving you a fair degree of latitude in deciding how to organize your chapter. This is because you should have different information and somewhat different interests and analytical points. Remember that this chapter is a draft, that I'll be giving you comments and that you'll also continue to find out more information that may be relevant. Keep in mind that you're trying to give your readers an overall sense of what the economic situation is like. Divide the chapter into sections covering different topics; this will help with your overall organization.

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