essay

PARAMETERS FOR MID-TERM ESSAY – READ THROUGH CAREFULLY BEFORE BEGINNING YOUR ESSAY

• This essay will be submitted to Blackboard by 3 PM on Friday, March 10th; the second will be submitted after we finish Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies.
• The essay will be 3-5 double-spaced pages in length (1 inch margins, 12 point, Times New Roman font) and written in Microsoft Word; DO NOT convert it to a PDF before submitting it. 
• In the upper left hand corner of the header, type your name, the date, and the words "Mid-term Essay One" (this should be single spaced).
• Do not retype the question. 
• Write your answer in the first person (this means use the words "I" and "my"); refer to the style Freeman uses for guidance.
• Include a bibliography (use the Chicago Manual of Styleformat); refer to this link to familiarize yourself with it  http://www.americananthro.org/StayInformed/Content.aspx?ItemNumber=2044 
• Be sure to SPELL CHECK, GRAMMAR CHECK, AND REREAD YOUR ESSAY BEORE YOU TURN IT IN. I will take points off if it includes grammar and spelling mistakes that could have easily been corrected.
• Reading your essay out loud to yourself will help clarify ideas and catch errors.
• Write a straight-forward analysis; this means explain the terminology that you are using and why you are using it in a clear manner; for instance, "In this essay, I will …; This term describes/explains …". 
• Your essay should have a clear introduction, body paragraphs, and a conclusion. 
• Stay away from fancy sounding jargon and language; it is more impressive to be able to write about complex material in a clear and matter-of-fact way (even if some authors don't do it!!).
• This assignment will be checked for plagiarism using SafeAssign.

This broad question is meant to evaluate your understanding of the larger anthropological themes that have been discussed in the course thus far, and whether you have a comprehensive appreciation of the specific issues raised by Freeman’s book.  Your main sources for this question will be Welsch and Vivanco and Making and Faking Kinship. However, if they are relevant, feel free to include other sources that have been discussed in class this semester.

ESSAY QUESTION ONE  In their textbook, Welsch and Vivanco explain that the term globalization refers to a process “that illustrates how people create and change their cultures because of their connections with others. Not everybody participates equally in these diverse kinds of global connections, which means we also have to consider power relationships and social inequality (2016, 81).

In the ethnography, Making and Faking Kinship, Caren Freeman critically analyzes the effects of a marriage program introduced in 1990 by the South Korean government to address the shortage of rural brides. She writes,

Home to nearly two million ethnic Koreans or Chosonjok, northeastern China was viewed in the early 1990s as an ideal source of potential brides for South Korea’s bachelor farmers and, as I would later discover, for other men on the margins of South Korea’s marriage market, including unskilled workers, divorcees, widowers, and the disabled. Between 1990 … and 1998 … tens of thousands of Chosonjok women had stepped forward to fill the vacancies in South Korean households in villages, small towns, and cities throughout the peninsula (2011, 2).

Choose two to three examples from Freeman’s book, and any useful background information from Welsch and Vivanco (this includes definitions of terms) to analyze how culture, tradition, social institutions, the nation-state, and individuals all became entangled in the attempt to create kinship.  Specifically address the role that gender plays in this dynamic. How are power relationships and social inequality perpetuated and challenged by different actors (for instance, the South Korean government, the Chosonjok women, state employees and families in South Korea and/or China)? In your conclusion, relate your essay back to the process of globalization.