MIDTERM PAPER ASSIGNMENT
Due Monday 10/10. Email to alice.nye@salve.edu no later than 10pm.
5-6 pages, double spaced, Times New Roman, 12 pt font, 1 inch margins
PART 1: Archaeology
You are to save all garbage that you accumulate for a 2-day period. You do not have to carry all of your trash with you for the entire time. You can save the full trash collection in a place of your choosing, but you must find a way to keep your trash with you until you can deposit it in your 2-day trash collection. (This will likely elicit responses from companions ranging from laughter to confusion to disgust. You can discuss this in Part 11). On the third day, you are to write down from memory what you used during those two days (what you ate, drank, purchased, etc.). After completing this use journal, go back through your trash. Sort it and catalogue it.
When you have completed the trash catalogue, follow the quantitative methods of William Rathje and his colleagues on the Garbage Project to fill in the gaps in your use journal. What are the discrepancies between what you reported using and what the catalogue suggests that you actually used? Draw on the reading to discuss these discrepancies.
This section of your analysis should be roughly 1-2 pages.
PART 11: Material Culture and Symbolic Behavior
For the second part of this assignment, I want you to take something from your own trash collection and transform its value through reuse or find something through scavenging – in the dumpster, trash can, leftover cafeteria trays – or that is considered “matter out of place” – an object on the floor or street, for example. It must have first been in the trash or be touching some area in which it might be designated as trash or as filth. Ideally, you will do this in a public space or at least with an audience of one or two people.
In writing, outline the process of transforming the garbage or filth into something of value to be used or consumed. Then, draw on Joshua Reno and Mary Douglas (and any additional authors that we have read) to discuss (a) how this reuse of an object reflected back on you and your social status in some way, and (b) how your own and other people’s responses to this reuse may have reflected more general social boundaries and the ways that people police them (for example, using danger, stigma, or contagion to encourage conformity or ritual purification to reinforce these boundaries). This discussion could also include an analysis of people’s responses to Part 1 in which you kept all of your trash with you instead of discarding it and distancing yourself from it. For both (a) and (b), draw explicitly on questions of gender, class, and boundaries around pollution/impurity in relation to the readings.
This section of your analysis should be roughly 3-4 pages.
