User talk:Cassidy (Wiki Ed)/Cultural anthropology

Feedback on the draft

Thanks for taking the time to provide feedback on this draft. Please leave your feedback in a new section below. Cassidy (Wiki Ed) (talk) 18:45, 29 March 2018 (UTC)

Other areas

Do you have a guide or draft for Gender-related articles? I feel this is sorely needed, as I see lots of problems with student editors' edits. Mathglot (talk) 22:11, 18 April 2018 (UTC)

Hi Mathglot, We do! We currently have a guide for students in Women's studies courses, and are in the process of developing another guide for editing topics related to sexuality. If you're interested in providing feedback on this new guide, we are still accepting input through today here: User:Cassidy (Wiki Ed)/Sexuality studies. Thanks for reaching out! Cassidy (Wiki Ed) (talk) 22:22, 18 April 2018 (UTC)

Today is final tax day, can you make it tomorrow? ;-) I wish I had known about this earlier, I would give you extensive feedback if I had. And can you link the women's studies guide, please? Mathglot (talk) 22:29, 18 April 2018 (UTC) Clobbered material restored; Mathglot (talk) 03:43, 19 April 2018 (UTC)

Mathglot, Yes absolutely, through tomorrow is fine. I understand it's a busy time :) Cassidy (Wiki Ed) (talk) 22:31, 18 April 2018 (UTC)

Mathglot: Yes, this is the women's studies brochure on Commons. Cassidy (Wiki Ed) (talk) 16:18, 19 April 2018 (UTC)

Well, I started to look at Sexuality studies , but I had so many questions about who exactly this is aimed at, and what other materials they have seen already, that it just seemed not enough time. I assume the students have other materials to digest about Wikipedia, and if that's the case, then it seemed like the guide didn't really get into issues specific to sexuality until halfway into it, and the majority of the article could be applicable to pretty much any liberal arts topic. To really critique it or suggest improvements I'd have to understand its place among other documents better, but for starters, I'd recast it in Summary style with links to other articles that cover editing principles applicable to any article, so that what's left is at least 75% about what's different about editing articles on sexuality in particular. That's probably not much help at this point, but if you wish, we can go into it further either here or on our talk pages. Sorry I couldn't be of more help, and earlier to respond. Best of luck, Mathglot (talk) 09:22, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

Thank you for your thoughts Mathglot. Students access a number of other resources to help them make meaningful edits, including online trainings. The Sexuality studies brochure serves as a reinforcing guide to those trainings and something that students can have a physical copy of to reference. Thanks again, take care! Cassidy (Wiki Ed) (talk) 23:05, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

Thoughts on sources

Hi, thanks for the opportunity to provide my thoughts on these guidelines. Overall I think they make lots of sense, and I think they'll be really useful for students in the WikiEd program. I do have one area of concern, which is the section on primary versus secondary sources. I would respectfully disagree that students should not use ethnographies when editing pages related to cultural anthropology. If students are editing pages about specific cultural groups, for example, with insufficient information about cultural practices, beliefs, etc., then ethnographies can truly be the best source of information (even if they count as primary sources). It would be silly, for example, to ignore Paul Spencer's two monographs about the Samburu when editing the Samburu page. Ethnographies, when published by reputable academic presses, very often ARE peer-reviewed, and go through as rigorous an editing process as journal articles do. It's also a bit confusing to suggest that students can use papers published, for example, in Current Anthropology but not in book-length ethnographies - because I'd argue that most papers in those types of anthropological journals aim to present primary ethnographic data rather than more synthetic analyses of existing literature. I'll be really interested to hear your perspective on this issue! Thanks. Ninafundisha (talk) 00:05, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

Thank you so much for this feedback Ninafundisha. I really appreciate it. I'll be incorporating your great point about ethnographies in the newly updated draft, which I'll be posting here this week. Thanks for taking the time! Cassidy (Wiki Ed) (talk) 22:36, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

Hi Ninafundisha, I just wanted to let you know that I've incorporated changes into this brochure draft, in case you'd like to take another look. Specifically I've added a section about how students may approach using ethnography as a source (in a new section titled "Primary vs. secondary sources"). We'll be moving forward with printing the brochure starting next week, 3/2, so if you have any more thoughts, I'd appreciate them before then. Thanks again! Cassidy (Wiki Ed) (talk) 16:36, 27 April 2018 (UTC)

Hi Cassidy (Wiki Ed), looks great. I just have a few very minor edits to suggest:

I'd change this part "doesn't include sections about their systems of belief, customs, morality, law, or knowledge" to "doesn't include, for example, sections about their systems of belief, customs, or knowledge."

Also, I don't understand this part: "Consider adding an anthropological perspective to an existing article, like an article about a social phenomenon or cultural belief." What does the last phrase mean? Are there existing stand-alone articles about cultural beliefs? Or do you mean add anthro info to articles about specific cultures with sections on cultural beliefs? Maybe an example would help clarify.

And finally, what does this mean? "you can’t apply a single research study to a larger group." A larger group of what? Are you talking about a cultural group? I'm not sure what you're getting at there, and why you couldn't apply a single study to the study of a specific group.

Okay hope this all helps! Ninafundisha (talk) 14:28, 28 April 2018 (UTC)

Hi Ninafundisha, Thanks so much for this feedback. I've gone ahead and incorporated your note about "doesn't include sections..." As for adding an anthropological perspective to an existing article, what I mean to say with that is that students in anthropology courses don't necessarily need to feel limited to editing specifically anthropological topics (like theories, biographies of theorists, or particular cultures). Instead, they can also think about many different topics from an anthropological or sociological angle. That might mean writing about the history of a particular topic through an anthropological lens, thinking about how cultural conceptions of the topic has changed over time and across cultures, etc. I agree with you that this could be clearer.. I find it tricky to define because it could be applicable to such a wide range of articles.

As for your final note, I mean to say here "you can’t apply a research study about a single group of people to a larger group of people". Basically, "don't generalize research". I'll make that change so it's more clear.

Thanks again for your help. Cassidy (Wiki Ed) (talk) 17:42, 30 April 2018 (UTC)