Real-world issues in Paper 2 Section A (eight broad themes identified by the IB) practice questions.

A candidate is preparing for the compulsory question in Paper 2 Section A, which is built around a real-world issue. Which combination must the answer bring together for that question?

• Two contrasting theoretical schools and one ethnography that has been criticised by both of them
• A real-world issue and a summary of two ethnographies chosen from different world regions
• A key concept, an area of inquiry and a real-world issue, supported by a named ethnography
• A real-world issue and the fieldwork the candidate carried out for the internal assessment

Answer: A key concept, an area of inquiry and a real-world issue, supported by a named ethnography

Section A is the one place where the parts of the course have to be visibly joined, so an answer that describes ethnography without naming a key concept forfeits marks. The internal assessment is assessed separately and is not evidence in a written paper.

A Section A answer on poverty retells Scheper-Hughes's material from a shantytown in north-eastern Brazil for two pages, then closes with a sentence stating that poverty is a serious problem in the world today. What is the main weakness of the answer?

• The choice of ethnography is inappropriate, since a single community cannot illustrate a global issue
• The answer cites no statistics on rates of poverty, which Section A requires of every response
• The material is dated, so a study published in the 1990s cannot address an issue of the present day
• The ethnography is narrated rather than used, since no key concept is brought in to organise it

Answer: The ethnography is narrated rather than used, since no key concept is brought in to organise it

Section A rewards the links between key concept, area of inquiry and real-world issue, so ethnography has to be used as evidence in an argument organised by a concept rather than retold; narration without a concept earns little however detailed it is. The other three objections invent requirements the paper does not make: a single well-chosen ethnography can illuminate a global issue, and no statistics or recent publication date are required.

A candidate writing on globalization argues that the spread of a single world market is making ways of life everywhere increasingly alike. Which response draws most directly on ethnographic work?

• Imported goods and media are appropriated locally and given meanings their producers did not intend
• Global trade is smaller in volume than the argument assumes, so its cultural effects stay limited
• Cultural difference is best protected by restricting the circulation of foreign goods and images
• Homogenization is real everywhere but works too slowly for a single period of fieldwork to register it

Answer: Imported goods and media are appropriated locally and given meanings their producers did not intend

Ethnographies of consumption and of media repeatedly show indigenization: the same commodity is put to different uses and carries different meanings in different settings. The point is not that global connection is weak but that reception is itself productive.

A candidate plans a Section A answer using Bourgois's fieldwork with men selling crack in East Harlem in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Which set of components is both correctly labelled and supported by that material?

• The key concept of inequality, the area of inquiry of conflict and the real-world issue of poverty
• The key concept of power, the area of inquiry of violence and the real-world issue of conflict
• The key concept of power, the area of inquiry of conflict and the real-world issue of violence
• The key concept of symbolism, the area of inquiry of belonging and the real-world issue of sustainability

Answer: The key concept of power, the area of inquiry of conflict and the real-world issue of violence

Inequality is an issue rather than one of the nine key concepts, and conflict is an area of inquiry rather than an issue, so options that swap the labels fail before the ethnography is even weighed. Bourgois's material on respect under structural exclusion supports power, conflict and violence.

A candidate answering on climate change as a real-world issue supports the argument entirely with figures on emissions and with quotations from news reports. An examiner would identify the principal weakness of the answer as

• the figures cited are likely to have been superseded by the time the answer is marked, and an examiner is obliged to disregard any figure that is out of date
• the question does not permit any material drawn from outside the course
• no ethnographic material is used, so nothing in the answer could only have come from anthropology
• the issue is too large to be addressed within the time available for the question

Answer: no ethnographic material is used, so nothing in the answer could only have come from anthropology

Every answer in this section has to show what fieldwork adds: how particular people in a particular place experience, explain and act on the issue. Statistics may frame the discussion, but a paper made of them is an essay any subject could have written.

A candidate writing on migration supports the argument with two ethnographies, both carried out in the same country within the same decade and both concerned with young men leaving for work. The limitation this creates for the answer is that

• using two studies is always weaker than building the answer on a single case examined in depth
• the two cases cannot show whether the pattern holds elsewhere or among people in other positions
• ethnographies conducted in the same decade may not be cited together in an examination answer
• material about young men is not admissible as evidence about migration in this part of the course

Answer: the two cases cannot show whether the pattern holds elsewhere or among people in other positions

Two examples chosen from the same region, period and category effectively supply one case twice. Selecting a second case that differs on some dimension — place, period, or who is moving — is what allows a candidate to say which features of the first are general.