Overview
Field Research Project/Paper: Your field research Project/Paper on investigating a city or significant institution and its environmental consciousness should be 6-8 pages long, Times New Roman 12pt font, single-spaced, with an additional Bibliography of ten scholarly sources (peer-review) or relevant reports, with brief 2-3 sentence annotations for each entry. You are required to have in-text citations citing page numbers (e.g., Sexton, 2021, p. 71) from sources in your annotated bibliography. The paper is due on June 2 by 11:59pmand with bibliography is worth 20% of your overall grade in the course. You will submit your paper on the course website as a .doc or .pdf file. A program called Turnitin will check your paper for evidence of plagiarism. If you plagiarize, you should seriously question whether you should be in university.
This Field Research Project/Paper is designed to allow you to develop your own skills as a social scientific researcher, reflecting your active participant-observational research into some form of engagement this quarter in the greater LA scene, exploring an important regional institution (Heal the Bay, DWP, etc.) or socio-political entity (e.g., any of the 88 incorporated cities) and its relationship to the environment, society, and larger questions of relevance. These may explore issues that are political, scientific, or even religious with respective actors from different communities. This engagement may explore contemporary matters related to history, environmental harm, environmental justice, institutional accountability, sustainability science and action, as well as transitions that may include activist involvement in the political and/or social services sector. Students will need to begin their research project by the 3rd week of class. This is to help you get the most out of this experience. Students may work in a group of two or individually for this research. Every student must turn in separate individually-written research papers, even if working in a group for research. Group papers will need to be double the length (thus, 12 pages long), and group research must be approved by Dr. Sexton in Office Hours.
Research Project and Paper:
One very important aspect of social science research is observing various social settings. In this class you will conduct this research project and then complete a final research paper. You may conduct the field research on campus among on-campus religious groups that are actively meeting this quarter. You may do the field research as part of a group of no more than two people, but if you choose to do group work, your collective paper must be double the length. We will discuss this assignment further during the second week of class when you will pick your organizations for this assignment.
Research Paper format:
This paper should follow a general format of (1) Introduction to entity/organization with stated research question; (2) a background sketch of the history, geography, and observation of the entity/organization, and its particular development with regard to environmental awareness; (3) a presentation of field research findings; (4) a summary conclusion with recommendations for environmental justice.
Bibliography:
With the completed paper, you will need to include an annotated research bibliography with a short summary of each of the ten outside research sources. The brief summaries should be two-three sentences long describing the article, book, paper, or report and why the work is relevant to your project. You will need to make sure these sources are included in your research paper.