As diligent students, you have been keeping up with the schedule in the syllabus, and completed the readings for this week, and watched the video embedded in one of those readings. I bet you are feeling uneasy that I have not given you work, and I shall address that right here and right now!
The readings for this week are all related to understanding some of the environmental aspects of trade and transport, with food as case study. These materials will set the stage for the final paper you have to work on.
However, though the final paper is due only by 9:00 am on the Wednesday of Finals Week, I want you start thinking about that right now. (In fact, you should be in a similar stage in other classes too where a final paper is required.) We will work with the following schedule (a ten-step program!) with respect to how you will work on the paper:
- Step 1: Complete all the readings listed in the syllabus--the readings and the video related to "food miles"
- Step 2: Think about what you have read and watched. Not just for a minute or two, but for a couple of days. (Ideally by now you would have completed the readings, and so you are already in the thinking stage)
- Step 3: Given what you read, now think about a potential thesis that you can defend in a final term paper
- Step 4: Draft, and re-draft, and fine-tune, a 50- to 100-word paragraph where you present the "abstract" for the paper--the "thesis"
- Step 5: Email me (not the class) the abstract before Tuesday noon of next week.
- Step 6: Even as you wait for my feedback on your idea for the paper, you start collecting additional reference materials that will help you put together convincing arguments. In the final paper, while you will definitely refer to the materials I have listed in the syllabus, you will need at least three additional credible and authoritative analytical references. Do not merely pick three--you may have to scan through a few before you can zoom into at least three that best fit your thesis topic.
- Step 7: Pay attention to my feedback on your thesis statement
- Step 8: By Tuesday noon of "Dead Week" email me the revised abstract and the list of references.
- Step 9: Email me the final paper by Wednesday morning of Finals Week
- Step 10: Celebrate St. Patrick's Day :)
The focus will be only on the ideas and arguments. In other words, do not provide a laundry-list of sorts of what you are going to do. The following is an example--well, actually the abstract of a paper that I am on schedule to present at the upcoming annual meeting of the Association of American Geographers.
Abstract:
"Volunteer tourism" is exactly what it means: tourists heading to far away places not to kick back in the sun and the sands but to volunteer their services. Volunteer tourism, or sometimes referred to simply as "voluntourism", has even been described as "a kind of mini version of the Peace Corps." While a very small aspect of global tourism, it is a fast growing segment in the travel industry, so much so that Travelocity even launched a "Travel for Good" program in 2006 in order to lure customers who were likely to take volunteer vacations. Volunteer tourism becomes significant for at least one reason that they are geographically localized. Africa attracts a significant percentage of voluntourists primarily because of the nature of the problems that appear to impede growth and development in many countries. As one can imagine, the efforts of celebrity volunteers focusing their attention on Africa has also catalyzed voluntourism there. However, the question of how much volunteer tourism benefits the local community has not been systematically examined—neither in the popular media nor within the academic contexts. In this project, I will discuss the local, community-level, benefits generated through volunteer tourism by using Pommern, in Tanzania, as a case study.
