Skills practice questions.

In Paper 1 the first question is worth four marks and asks candidates to describe a named concept and apply it to the passage. A candidate writes a full and accurate description of the concept but never mentions the passage. The most likely outcome is that the answer

• receives the description marks and loses the marks for application
• receives full marks, since an accurate description demonstrates the required knowledge
• receives nothing, because this question can only be answered out of the passage itself
• is credited under question 2 instead, as it treats a concept without using the stimulus

Answer: receives the description marks and loses the marks for application

Four-mark questions of this kind carry roughly two marks for the concept and two for its accurate use on the material in front of the candidate. Half the marks are lost by the commonest habit of all, writing the definition and stopping.

A ten-mark question in Paper 1 asks the candidate to write about the concept in the passage with reference to other ethnographic material. A candidate answers using the passage alone. The answer is limited because

• the passage is too short to support ten marks of writing on its own
• the marks sit in the move beyond the passage to a second, named case
• candidates may not return to the passage once it has been used in the earlier questions
• an examiner cannot credit any point that has already been made in an earlier answer

Answer: the marks sit in the move beyond the passage to a second, named case

The ten-mark questions test whether a candidate can set the unseen material beside ethnography studied during the course. Staying inside the passage repeats the work of question 2 at greater length.

At higher level only, the ten-mark question in Paper 1 carries the additional instruction to make reference to theory; the standard level wording of the same question does not. A higher level candidate who has already used the passage and one further case can best meet that instruction by

• adding the year, fieldsite and publisher of each ethnography used, so that the sources can be checked
• listing the main schools of anthropological thought in the order in which they emerged
• replacing the second ethnographic case with an account of a named theorist's career
• naming a theoretical perspective and showing what it makes visible in the material

Answer: naming a theoretical perspective and showing what it makes visible in the material

Theory is credited when it is put to work on the case, so the perspective has to be named and then used to read the evidence. A list of schools or a theorist's biography adds nothing, and at standard level nothing is lost by leaving theory out, because the standard level wording does not ask for it.

A candidate plans an answer that sets Malinowski's account of Trobriand kula voyages, published in 1922, beside Bourgois's account of street-level dealing in East Harlem based on fieldwork in the late 1980s. Which opening move turns this into a comparison rather than two summaries?

• Deciding which of the two pieces of fieldwork was carried out under better conditions
• Naming one question both cases are asked to answer, such as what exchange does to relationships
• Describing the earlier case in full before giving the later one exactly the same amount of space
• Choosing the case the candidate knows better and treating the other as background material

Answer: Naming one question both cases are asked to answer, such as what exchange does to relationships

A comparison needs a stated axis: the question that both cases are made to answer. Without it, equal coverage produces two accounts side by side and nothing is being held constant for the difference between them to show against.

In an essay comparing two ethnographies of illness, a candidate writes three sections, each opening with a claim about how sickness is explained and then drawing evidence from both cases. This structure is

• point by point, which keeps the two cases in contact throughout
• case by case, since both ethnographies appear in every one of the three sections
• chronological, because the earlier fieldwork is presented before the later fieldwork
• thematic in name only, as nothing can be compared until each case has been described in full

Answer: point by point, which keeps the two cases in contact throughout

Point-by-point organisation puts the analytical claim first and the cases underneath it, so the comparison happens in every paragraph. Case-by-case organisation is legitimate but has to carry an explicit comparative section, or the reader is left to do the work.

In an essay comparing two accounts of exchange, a candidate writes that the kula voyages Malinowski described in the Trobriands in the 1910s 'are basically a stock exchange for shell valuables'. As a comparative move this is weak because

• a comparison has to be drawn between two ethnographies, and an institution of the present day is not one
• Malinowski's fieldwork is too early to be set beside anything described in the present day
• it asserts a resemblance instead of asking one question of both cases and examining each against it
• the objects exchanged differ in value, so the two cases have no common measure

Answer: it asserts a resemblance instead of asking one question of both cases and examining each against it

An analogy states that one case resembles another and stops there; a comparison names the question — here what an exchange does to the relationship between the parties — and examines each case against it, so that the differences count as findings. Malinowski's own point was that kula is not trade, which the analogy erases.