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Thinka May 2023 SL IB Diploma Programme-Style Mock — Social and Cultural Anthropology

30 PastPaper.marks90 PastPaper.minutes2023
An original Thinka practice paper modelled on the structure and difficulty of the May 2023 SL IB Diploma Programme Social and Cultural Anthropology paper. Not affiliated with or reproduced from IB.

Section A

With reference to ethnographic material from one area of inquiry you have studied, discuss how culture or power or social relations helps you to understand one of the given real-world issues.
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PastPaper.question 1 · Extended Response
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With reference to ethnographic material from one area of inquiry you have studied, discuss how the concept of either *power* or *social relations* helps us to understand the real-world issue of **environmental degradation**.
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PastPaper.workedSolution

An excellent response will clearly choose one concept (e.g., power) and apply it to a specific ethnographic study within an area of inquiry (such as Development or Production, exchange and consumption).

**Example using 'Power' and the ethnography *Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection* by Anna Tsing:**
- **Introduction**: Define power (e.g., as structural, relational, or discursive) and outline how it shapes environmental degradation in the context of resource extraction. Introduce Tsing's ethnography set in the Meratus Mountains of Kalimantan, Indonesia.
- **Conceptual Application**: Explain how global capitalist power structures, state forestry policies, and local realities collide ('friction'). Power is not just top-down; it is negotiated, resisted, and enacted through diverse actors (state officials, corporate developers, nature lovers, and local Meratus Dayaks).
- **Ethnographic Evidence**: Show how state power historically declared indigenous lands as 'state forest,' delegitimizing local forest management. Analyze how corporate power, supported by military or state enforcement, led to massive deforestation and ecological damage through logging and coal mining.
- **Analysis**: Demonstrate how environmental degradation is not an accidental byproduct but is actively produced through these asymmetric power relations where marginalized groups lose control over their environments.
- **Conclusion**: Summarize how analyzing power reveals that environmental degradation is deeply political, tied to questions of sovereignty, global capitalism, and local disenfranchisement.

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**Marks 1–3**: The response is descriptive and shows limited understanding of the chosen concept or real-world issue. Ethnographic material is absent, irrelevant, or highly superficial.

**Marks 4–6**: The response shows some understanding of the chosen concept (power or social relations) and environmental degradation. Ethnographic material is identified but largely described rather than analyzed.

**Marks 7–9**: The response demonstrates a solid understanding of both the concept and the real-world issue. Ethnographic material is integrated, and there is a clear attempt to analyze how the concept helps us understand environmental degradation.

**Marks 10–12**: The response is well-structured and analytical. The chosen concept is clearly defined and consistently applied to the ethnographic case study. The essay successfully explores the nuances of environmental degradation through this conceptual lens.

**Marks 13–15**: The response is highly sophisticated and critical. It offers a nuanced conceptual definition and provides detailed, rich ethnographic evidence. The argument is balanced, reflexive, and evaluates different perspectives, demonstrating a deep anthropological understanding of the political or social dimensions of environmental degradation.

Section B

Answer one question from the two remaining areas of inquiry you have studied. You must use specific and clearly identified ethnographic illustrations.
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PastPaper.question 1 · extended response
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With reference to at least one ethnographic illustration, discuss how healing practices both reflect and reinforce wider social inequalities.
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PastPaper.workedSolution

An excellent response should be structured as follows:

### Introduction
* Define key anthropological concepts: healing practices, medical pluralism, structural violence, medicalization, and social inequality.
* Formulate a clear thesis statement: Healing practices do not exist in a vacuum; they reflect wider socio-economic inequalities and active tools of state or class control that reinforce these hierarchies.
* Introduce the chosen ethnographic illustration(s) (e.g., Paul Farmer’s *Pathologies of Power*, Nancy Scheper-Hughes's *Death Without Weeping*, or Seth Holmes's *Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies*).

### Body Paragraph 1: Reflecting Inequalities (Access and Epidemiology)
* Analyze how structural inequalities determine who gets sick and who gets healed.
* Detail how the distribution of health resources and the prioritisation of certain medical technologies reflect global and local capitalism.
* *Ethnographic Application*: Use Farmer’s analysis of tuberculosis and HIV in Haiti to demonstrate how water scarcity, poverty, and political instability render poor populations vulnerable, showing how their lack of access to effective treatment directly reflects their marginalized social position.

### Body Paragraph 2: Reinforcing Inequalities (Medicalization and Control)
* Explore how dominant biomedical systems or traditional healing structures can pathologize marginalized groups, thereby justifying their subjugation.
* Explain how medicalizing social problems (treating political/economic issues as individual biological failures) diverts attention from the root causes of suffering.
* *Ethnographic Application*: Use Scheper-Hughes's study of Northeast Brazil, where the hunger of impoverished sugar plantation workers is diagnosed as 'nervos' (bad nerves) and treated with tranquilizers rather than food or land reform, effectively pacifying dissent and reinforcing the oligarchic class structure.

### Body Paragraph 3: Intersecting Identities and Medical Bias
* Discuss how intersecting axes of inequality (e.g., gender, race, and legal status) manifest in clinical interactions.
* *Ethnographic Application*: Use Seth Holmes’s work on Triqui migrant farmworkers in the United States, showing how clinical staff naturalize the physical pain of indigenous Mexican laborers as a product of 'normal' bodily adaptation to manual work, thereby reinforcing their lower status in the agricultural hierarchy.

### Conclusion
* Summarize how health, illness, and healing are fundamentally political.
* Reiterate that while healing aims to alleviate suffering, its structural organization often reproduces the very inequalities that cause illness in the first place.
* Offer a final analytical thought on how acknowledging these dynamics is necessary for achieving true health equity.

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### Markbands

* **13–15 Marks**:
* The essay shows an excellent, nuanced understanding of the relationship between healing practices and social inequalities.
* The chosen ethnography is highly appropriate, detailed, and seamlessly integrated to support a sophisticated, critical argument.
* Conceptual framework (such as structural violence, medicalization, or biopower) is applied accurately and insightfully.
* The response is highly organized, well-structured, and explicitly addresses both aspects of the prompt: how practices *reflect* and *reinforce* inequalities.

* **10–12 Marks**:
* The essay demonstrates a clear and detailed understanding of the relationship between healing and inequality.
* A relevant ethnographic illustration is used effectively, with good descriptive detail and analysis.
* Relevant anthropological concepts are used correctly to support the argument.
* The writing is structured and analytical, though it may occasionally prioritize description over deeper critical evaluation.

* **7–9 Marks**:
* The essay shows a good general understanding of the topic.
* The ethnographic illustration is present and relevant, but may lack depth or contains some descriptive passages that are not fully connected to the analytical argument.
* The essay tends to focus more on either 'reflecting' or 'reinforcing' inequalities rather than balancing both.

* **4–6 Marks**:
* The essay shows limited or superficial knowledge of the area of inquiry.
* The ethnographic illustration is generalized, poorly integrated, or largely descriptive.
* Concepts are either missing, poorly understood, or applied in a tokenistic manner.

* **1–3 Marks**:
* The essay is highly generalized, showing little or no understanding of medical anthropology.
* There is little to no reference to ethnographic material, or the reference is highly inaccurate.

* **0 Marks**:
* The work does not reach any of the standards described above.

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