Reference no: EM133544514

Culture, Equity and Diversity

Learning Outcome 1: Analyse how disparate societal and individual values and attitudes, past and current, towards difference, impact on individuals, families and communities using sociological perspectives.

Learning Outcome 2: Discuss how gender operates in personal and social contexts to consider impacts on gender inequality in both the past and present.

Instructions
This assignment has two parts:

Part A
Closely read one of the articles provided below and write an analysis in which you identify which value positions (excluding, fixing, ignoring and/or valuing) are taken by the author and by commentators within the article. Justify your interpretation of the text. (Please look carefully at the supporting material including examples below).

Part B)
Write a letter to the editor of a newspaper to refute the arguments made in the first article and propose an alternative position based on valuing difference and diversity. Here you should also refer to ideas of relationality and inclusivity.

Both your close reading and letter to the editor should draw on theories and ideas used throughout the semester and reading from the unit as well as some wider reading. Although references are not a convention of letters generally, you are expected to provide both in-text and end-text references for this assignment.

Part A
1) Choose one of the articles provided for your close reading.
2) Read through the article and see if you can identify some of the issues being discussed. Make a list of them. What is the article arguing? What is the ‘story' being told here? Notice the language used -what words come up often? How is language being used to convince the reader?
3) Research the issue to which this article relates, and make sure you have a clear understanding of the issues involved, the different ways that the media and others have approached the article. Find articles that represent other views on the issue. Make sure your understanding is well-grounded and factual, and that you're making use of your analytical skills when finding other material on this.
4) In your research, identify some of the dominant themes, stories or ways of thinking about the main actors/identities in the article. Do these relate to a fixing, ignoring or excluding discourse? How do alternative narratives that you've found work to value difference? Make a note of all of these.
5) Return to your article. Go through the article to find evidence (actual words and sentences) of the dominant discourses and stories about people/places/events/communities that are present in the article. Highlight and colour code them (eg if the sentence is an example of heternormativity, use green. If it is an example of a paternalist fixing narrative, use orange etc).
6) Use these sentences to construct a close reading of the article, in which you identify the dominant discourses/stories and value positions that are being called upon to justify the argument. In your close reading, make an argument that the article is making use of particular value position/s. You should use quotes from the article to demonstrate how they are supporting your claim that the article is (for example) using fixing discourses, and you MUST explain why the sentence you use demonstrates this. Why is this sentence significant? What does it tell us about the values that underpin the article/argument? (It is not enough to simply say that the sentence shows the use of a fixing discourse without explaining how!).
7) Your close reading should make at least 4 points (ie 4 paras) that are well supported with evidence from the article as well as other sources from the unit and outside.

Part B
1) Write a letter to the editor of a newspaper to refute the arguments made in the first article and instead propose a position based on valuing difference and diversity. Here you should also refer to ideas of relationality and inclusivity.
2) Your response should address the precise claims and issues made within the initial argument and refute them based on a position of valuing difference.
3) Your response should reference material from the unit and also material from your wider research for part A. Think here about the use of reputable sources.
4) If applicable or relevant, your response may also outline a service provision model, vision or response to the issue that supports social justice/valuing diversity.

You MUST use references in both parts and these should be from theories and ideas used throughout the semester as well as some wider reading. You should use a minimum of 5 references.