Questions and Topics We Can Help You To Answer:
Paper Instructions:

This is the work for an anthropology course:Secrecy and Statecraft. Here is some background information for this course:
This course explores secrecy regimes and cultures in democratic and totalitarian societies. It focuses on the issues of secrecy and power, state security, propaganda, conspiracy, censorship, control and surveillance, and resistance. By exploring various media from secret files to spy films, we will aim to understand how the secret regimes are constituted and how they interconnect with people’s everyday lives through policy and popular culture. We will produce secret ink and KGB reports and analyze most recent secrecy scandals. The case studies include the Soviet Union, socialist Eastern Europe, Central America, and the USA.


Part A: Define the terms and explain their significance in a short paragraph (5-7 sentences) (why is it important, why we have to know about it, what implications it may have, etc.) (5 points each). You will have to define 6 concepts. Please make sure to use the concepts in the related reading to define them. If you only provide the general definitions, you will not get points.


1. Nuclear Technoaesthetics (From Masco's reading)



2. Assemblages (From Masco's reading)



3. Conspiracy (From Borenstein's reading)



4. Covert Sphere (From Melley's reading)



5. Spectacles of Secrecy (From Melley's reading)



6. Doppleganger (From Verdery's book, “My life as a spy”)


Part B: Answer two essay questions (respond to all parts of the questions). 1-2 pages single spaced. Do not repeat information and use different examples in each question. (35 points each)

1. What is secrecy, how does it function, and how has it been used as a tool of war (K. Macrackis) and the state control (use examples from T. Melley, “Citizenfour” (film on Snowden), and “Lives of Others”(film in 2006))? Your answer has to show what have you learned about secrecy and statecraft in the first half of the semester. You can draw on all course materials in your answer.


2. Why did K. Verdery call her book “My life as a spy”? What did you learn about anthropology and ethnography from K. Verdery’s book? How did surveillance shape her research, writing, relationships? Who informed on Verdery, how were they recruited (was it possible not to be recruited?), why people informed on Verdery, and how Verdery and informers influenced each other’s lives? Why did she argue that the practice of anthropology is similar to spying?