Assessment and Feedback Details – Assignment-2
Assignment-2: 50%, 2000-words
For assignment-2, you may choose to write a major essay (option-A), or to write two shorter pieces (option-B). Choose either option-A, or option-B (not both).
Option-A: Major essay – 2,000-words (50%)
1. The demands of emotional labour are often seen as damaging to workers, but the reality is much more complex. Using qualitative studies of emotional labour, investigate the costs, benefits, and challenges involved in this kind of work, and its significance for society.
As you know, emotional labour is required of an increasingly broad range of professional and non-professional workers, including flight attendants, police, people in the legal professions, teaching, call centre work, hospitality, retail, nursing, social work, personal care, and child care, just to name some of them. Depending on your interests, you might decide to focus on one occupation (e.g. flight attendants), a category of occupations (e.g. health-care; welfare); or a range of different occupations.
Your discussion should show your understanding of the following concepts:
Emotional labour
Emotion work/ emotion management
Emotion norms/feeling rules
Socialisation
Identity work
Status/ status hierarchies
Gender
Social structure
Referencing
Please consult the Library Referencing Guide for examples of how to reference books, articles and chapters from edited collections etc. both in the body of your work and in the reference list itself:
http://www.lib.latrobe.edu.au/referencing-tool/
Use either Harvard or APA 6 referencing styles.
Just a reminder — In-text referencing:
All direct quotes from reference material must be enclosed in double quotes (so TURNITIN recognizes them as quotes) > otherwise, if you use single quotes TURNITIN won’t recognize the excerpt as a quote and will add it to your similarity index!
• You must always cite page numbers of direct quotes, e.g. “The cat sat on the mat” (Smith 1970, p. 3).
• Please note, too, if the in-text reference is at the end of the sentence, the full-stop goes outside the closing bracket, not before the opening bracket (see above)!
Number of references
On the question of how many sources to study, I would expect a minimum of 10 in second-year for a 2,000-word essay worth 50% of your grade. Their inclusion as source material will be judged on how well they earn their place in your essay. In other words, you are expected to use reference material to further your discussion, not just to get to a required number of references! Source material can help you to show your command of particularly abstract concepts such as self-identity but usage should be followed by discussion. Simply ‘plonking’ thin or woolly references to significant ideas may be seen as mere ‘window dressing’ or as regurgitation. So your reason for using a reference should be specific and purposeful.
***Please note that lecture notes are not included as part of the 10 sources!
On including personal and anecdotal material
You are encouraged to draw on personal experience and observations, where possible, to ground your discussion of all topics i.e. to ‘ground’ concepts and arguments in exemplary cases. However, be mindful though that the safest way to use stories and vignettes is to be as brief as possible so that you do not get carried away with your attachment to the story at the expense of seeing it as a way of showing your theoretical understanding. Brief vignettes may be used throughout the essay or one larger vignette (say around 200 words) might be used to kick off the essay if it contains several strands that can be shown as examples of particular theories and concepts.
On using the personal pronoun ‘I’
Again be judicious. Use ‘I’ to clearly show your hand in your work i.e. when you state an informed opinion or make a conclusion. Avoid saying “I feel”. Best to say “I consider” or “I suggest”.
Essay Structure
The structure of your work is important. An essay should be coherent, that is, there should be a degree of integration or ‘flow’ running through the ideas you present. An essay is organised in 3 parts:
An introduction introduces the question or social issue and how you plan to discuss it sociologically. For example, you might include the following elements in your introduction:
Introduce the question/ social issue
State the areas that you want to focus on