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English 101
Heuristics for Assignment Three

1. What is the key issue raised by the space you have been studying? Write a brief summary of the key point(s) you made in your first and second papers. Key issues will include the place/concept you looked at as well as the various stories told about it and your interpretations of those stories.

2. What are the dominant cultural narratives about this issue? Where and how are these narratives represented? Where and how do the narratives compete with one another? Where and how are they similar?

3. The next three parts of the assignment ask you to reflect on the fact that claims are always persuasive and that one group's "truth" is another groups' "critique."

What are the key components of this issue? Generate a list of these.
For example, if you examined the stories behind coffeehouses, you might then choose to divide the available arguments about that space into the following components: environmental, social, historical, economic, spatial, advertising, and so on. Or, if you examined the history of urban living, you might then choose to examine the contemporary "problems" of urban life and psychological perspectives.

In order to divide an issue into its component parts, you need to think about the various groups of people who would have an investment in the issue and then determine what their positions might be.
For example, if you were researching the effect that on-line communities have on our physical communities, you might look at the technical aspects, the sociologists' perspective (of larger cultural formations), the psychologist's perspective (on how on-line communities affect our sense of self), the economic perspective (how "free" are these communities?), the technophobes’ position (technology erases community), the technophiles’ position (technology enables us to have more communities), and so on.

4. Now research the components of the issue so that you can become as informed as possible.

Research the perspectives you defined in the previous question, looking at the ways the perspective of the writer changes what s/he focuses on and addresses. Pay attention to where you find the sources and who the audience might be and what their position on the topic might be.

Try to find varied perspectives even within a particular component. For example, try to find two economists who view the impact of a certain television show differently. Do not be satisfied with finding only one source for each component. You will want a rich array of perspectives both across components and within components.

Use the Internet and the library; talk to friends and relatives and those people who are closely involved with the issue. This assignment is best done collaboratively because each of you can research a particular component, become an "expert" on it and then share with the class what you have found. You will want to bring in copies of the articles and interviews as well as your summaries of the articles and make those available to anyone else working on this topic.

5. What are the various investments in this issue?

For example, why would Starbucks tell us the "history of coffee" on their website and how accurate would that history be? Would others interpret the history differently? Or why does Starbucks gloss over the environmental dangers of full-sun coffee growing, and how might an environmentalist be concerned by this? What investments are reflected in these positions? Generate a list of these investments.

6. Determine which lens (or combination of lenses) best helps you to the issue. Write up a description of the position from which you will evaluate the topic. Evaluate the issue from that lens by looking at the various components and point out how the components tie together to make this a complex, multiple issue. Evaluation is the act of deciding about the quality of an event, thing, idea or situation. Evaluation is determined by the views a particular community holds about what is right and wrong, fair and unfair and so on.

Analyzing Your Notes:

1. (Description of Issues) Do all of the components depict the issue in the same way? Do all those who write about the components address them in the same way? What are the similarities? What are the differences?

2. (Positions) In what ways does your informed position draw on other positions? What are the investments present in your position? Why are these investments correct or useful or ethical ones to have? How would you persuade others that these investments are important ones to have?

3. Are there tensions between the way the issue is represented in the culture at large and the information you found when you researched the components? Why do you think those tensions exist?