Week 15 — One Market, Many Ties: A Global Reading — Traditional alternative (no AI)

Instructors: publish this instead of the adaptive version if you prefer, and unpublish or delete the adaptive one.

Assignment 14 of the term — work four short problems from the UN's 2024 migration figures, the course's dated cases, and the market's coded tally, read them as an anthropologist, choose the lenses that best explain one global tie at the market, and explain the week's ideas to a relative who doubts them.

This week you met globalization and colonialism, the world-system as a model, migration, transnational ties, and remittances, cultural heritage and repatriation, applied and public anthropology, and the course synthesis, which reads the running market through every lens. In this assignment you work four short problems, interpret each one, choose the lenses that best explain one global tie at the market, and explain this week's ideas to a relative who doubts them. This week's lecture tutorial, quiz, discussion, and Ethnography Workshop practise the same ideas from other angles. It builds on Week 6's forms of exchange, the market's coded tally, and the potlatch, on Week 2's acculturation, and on Week 1's holism.

The task

The week's shared material is Dataset G (real; the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs), Dataset H (real; the course's dated cases), and Dataset A, the illustrative market constructed for this course. From them:

• the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs counted about 304 million international migrants in 2024, 3.7 percent of the world's population, and an estimated 154 million in 1990, 2.9 percent of the world's population;
• the World Bank estimated that remittances to low- and middle-income countries would reach about 685 billion dollars in 2024; the course teaches that estimate in words, and you do no arithmetic on it;
• Canada banned the potlatch under the Indian Act from 1885 until 1951; the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act was signed in 1990; and UNESCO's Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage was adopted in 2003;
• on Visit 1 to the market, 50 exchanges were coded: 33 market exchange, 8 generalized reciprocity, 5 balanced reciprocity, 4 redistribution, and 0 negative reciprocity; two vendors mention sending money to relatives in another country every month.

A relative at a family dinner says, "Globalization means every place is turning into the same strip mall, and museums that give objects back are only being nice." Your job is to reply the way an anthropologist would, starting from a few plain numbers.

Work these four problems, showing your arithmetic:

1. The UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs counted about 304 million international migrants in 2024 and an estimated 154 million in 1990. How many million more international migrants were there in 2024 than in 1990?
2. Canada's potlatch ban was dropped in 1951, and UNESCO's Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage was adopted in 2003. How many years passed between the two?
3. On Visit 1 to the illustrative market, 33 of the 50 coded exchanges were market exchange. What percent of the coded exchanges was market exchange?
4. International migrants were 3.7 percent of the world's population in 2024 and 2.9 percent in 1990. By how many percentage points did the share change?

Beside each answer, add one brief interpretation:

• Problem 1: explain migration and transnational ties, and read the market's two vendors who send money home every month as an illustrative case of remittances; keep the World Bank's estimate in words.
• Problem 2: state the potlatch ban plainly as a documented colonial law, then explain repatriation as law for covered institutions in the United States, with the return of the 1921 potlatch regalia as a case.
• Problem 3: name the forms of exchange the tally recorded and explain why the vendors' monthly transfers sit outside it, then set unequal exchange in the world-system model apart from reciprocity between equals.
• Problem 4 (synthesis): explain why the change is written in percentage points. Then choose the two or three course lenses that best explain the two vendors' monthly transfers, justify the choice from the case, and say why one plausible alternative lens, such as redistribution or a rite of passage, fits less well.

Explain it to a non-expert

Your relative thinks globalization makes every place the same and that returning objects is only kindness. Write a 3–5 sentence message that explains globalization in everyday words; keeps it apart from homogenization with one example of a global good remade locally; explains that, for covered institutions in the United States, repatriation is required by law; and names one limit, such as that the market in this task is illustrative. Explain any technical term in everyday words. More than one good reply is possible.

For a different, ungraded example, imagine a teammate who says that "the captain's armband is only a strip of cloth." Model reply: "The armband is a sign everyone on the team has agreed marks the person who speaks for us to the referee. Nothing about the cloth itself gives that role; the meaning comes from the team's shared rules. That is why the same strip of cloth in a locker means nothing at all. One caveat: one team does not show how every league treats its captains."

Use that pattern for your relative, with your own wording and evidence.

Show your arithmetic. A reader should be able to reproduce every number you report from the figures in the problems without guessing which figures or steps you used.

Deliverables

Submit a single report containing:

• the four answers, each with the arithmetic shown and the brief interpretation the task names for that problem, including your lens choice for Problem 4;
• your message to the relative, keeping globalization apart from homogenization with one example, explaining repatriation as law, and naming one limit; and
• a one-line restatement of the figures you used, so your answers are reproducible.

Keep it to roughly one page. Clear and correct beats long.

Choose how you show it. Present your report as written text, or as a recorded audio or video explanation of about three minutes with a transcript, or as a labelled map of the market's lenses described in words with a short explanation. Every form is graded by the same scoring criteria. Submit in any accessible file type or as a link; a recorded response may be submitted as audio or video with a transcript, or as text.

How you'll be graded

The full analytic rubric is attached to this assignment in Canvas.

Academic integrity and AI use

This version is designed to be completed without AI: do the computations, the interpretations, and the writing yourself, without a chatbot or other AI tool. You may use a calculator or a spreadsheet for the arithmetic. State the potlatch ban as documented history, keep the World Bank's estimate in words, name people only by role, and do not borrow a detail about any real people from another source without citing it. Submitting AI-generated work as your own, or copying another student's work, is an integrity violation under the course policy.

After this assignment

This is the last assignment of the course. Week 16 holds the cumulative final. Its study guide, the Final Practice Exam, and the exam-prep tutorial help you review, and the synthesis move you practise here, choosing the lens that fits a case and saying why another fits less well, is the move to bring to every week's material as you prepare.

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