Modern Times

Artifact Project

Interview Project

Anthropology of Truths

Part I - Common Knowledge

Part II - Sources

Part III - Cultures of Truths

Pick four sites or sources of information about your topic.

Each one can itself be multiple depending on its depth:

e.g.: a web site (not just one page); a set of medical encyclopedias; one long investigative news TV show (or a set of short segments); a set of newspaper articles (located through NEXIS); one or a set of medical journal articles (located through MEDLINE); interviews (one or more)

Only two can be web sites.

For each site/source:

1. Sources for it: Where is the information? Who has access to it? How easy is the access (who doesn’t have access to it)? Who writes about it? What can/could you find out about these questions, and how?

2. Actors: What kinds of actors are narrated in this site/source?

Are people described individually, or in groups? What kinds of groups? Scale of groups: communities or nations, activists or social movements, whole companies or managers at companies, government or executive branch or president’s men. Are these groups pre-existing, grouped by the narrative, made by external forces (GWS); do they have spokespeople or representatives? What are the limits of these groupings?

Fictive persons: Are corporations, institutions, governments, non-profits given agency? How, at what scale, why not specific persons or groups of persons?

Non-humans: What agency is attributed to laws, patents, accounts, studies, things, animals, commodities, money, and so on? What about culture, traditions, ethnicity, gender, race, age, religion, etc.?

3. Evaluate the site/source: What is being said? What isn’t being said? How is it narrated? Whom is it narrated to (someone who is presumed not to know anything, someone who doesn’t care about certain things but does care about others)? Which actors are key actors? Which actors aren’t included? What kind of story is being told? Is it a romance, comedy, tragedy, irony, conspiracy?

In your opinion, what are the strengths and weaknesses of this source? Do you believe it? Do you not believe it? How do you situate it? Would you see it differently if you had a different kind of involvement with your topic (if you had ADD for instance)?