Contemporary Society Spring : Essay Writing

Internal Code : MAS4287

Essay Writing Assignment

Questions : 1. Is your body a pawn in a power game? What makes your body particularly suited to manipulation as part of the way that power operates in a modern free society?Compare and contrast media coverage of the cultural debate around Kim Kardashian’s body shape. Support your argument paying particular attention to cultural rules and what is considered societally desirable. 2. Do you think that studying language is important in understanding contemporary society? Respond to this statement by comparing and contrasting race relations in Australia over the last ten years, particularly in relation to race and ethnicity. Analyse two or three specific examples, from the broader society and/or from your own experience, to support your position. 3. Social taboos have less to do with processes of logic or threats to society and more to do with the control of subjects within an ideological structure. Power, in other words. Compare and contrast using the specific example of tattoo usage in contemporary society compared with previous eras. Answer this question using specific class-based ink examples from contemporary society. 4. Roller derby has frequently been considered an ‘alternative’ sport, but ‘alternative’ to what? Compare and contrast roller derby with the sport of dressage riding, exploring what this comparison tells us about ideas of class and class relations in Australia. 5. A University of Newcastle historian, Professor Lyndall Ryan, has produced a comprehensive map of the Australian Frontier Wars. Compare and contrast the Maria Massacre on the 25 th of July 1840, which was culturally sanctioned, with the Coniston Massacre on the 14 th of August 1928, which was sanctioned by the Northern Territory’s Government Resident.