ECON 321 SPRING 2022 – PROJECT STEP 1
ECON 321 SPRING 2022 – PROJECT STEP 1
TO BE SUBMITTED VIA BRIGHTSPACE BY 11:59 PM ON FEBRUARY 14, 2022
Name (First, Family)
Last 3 digits of Student ID#
TO SPEED UP MARKING, PLEASE ANSWER THE QUESTIONS IN THE FORMS AND SPACES PROVIDED.
By submitting this assignment you agree to the following honor code, and understand that any violation of the honor code may lead to penalties including but not limited to a non-negotiable mark of zero on the assignment:
Honor Code: I guarantee that all the answers in this assignment are my own work. I have cited any outside sources that I used to create these answers in correct APA style.
Marking scheme – Make sure you answer all the questions before handing this in!
ASSIGNMENTS WILL BE MARKED AS SUBMITTED.
CHECK YOUR FILE UPLOADS!
Question Out of
Q1 a 5
b 5
c 5
Q2 a 75
b 75
c 75
Average 75
Subtotal Q1 + Q2 90
Communication 10
Total 100
Question 1: “Give me something to sing about”
So, what’s this research project about? You’ll be researching the impact of an event of your choice on Canada’s economic history. Your final report will have the form of a narrative, with a beginning, a middle, and an end. Very roughly: Beginning: “Once upon a time…” Middle: “And then…” End: “The world changed in this way…” To that you’ll eventually add a short appendix explaining the economics behind your story. In this first step, you are just choosing a topic and getting started with putting your sources together.
After the final step is finished (during the exam period), you will have a newspaper-article style economic history narrative, suitable for reading by members of the general public untrained in economics – plus a small appendix that will let such readers know they’ve actually learned economics by reading the article, and explain it to them.
Unless you object, after the end of term I will take the class’s articles and combine them into a sourcebook that you can share with friends, family, Twitter, etc. This sourcebook will be similar to the ones in the Bookshelf, and I’ll write a short introduction to each article, as well. (If you object to your article being included in this sourcebook, I will of course respect your wishes.)
That’s all in the future, though. For now – baby steps.
1.a.
Choose a ‘Springboard’ Article (5 marks): There are about three dozen completely free sourcebooks on various topics in Canada’s economic history in the ‘Bookshelf’ section. Skim through sourcebooks you find interesting, and find an article that you want to use as a basis for your investigation. You’re not going to be writing just about this article – you’re going to use the questions it inspired in you to guide your research. For example, reading an article about a legal opium factory in 1880s Victoria may make you wonder why opium was legal, when it became illegal and why, who the opium producers and consumers were, and so on.
Instead of a formal APA citation, since you’re just going to be using an article from one of the sourcebooks in the bookshelf, it’s enough to name the sourcebook, the article, and the pages it’s on.
Sourcebook Name:
The Chinese Immigration Problem (1924)
Article Name:
The Chinese Immigration Problem (1924)
Pages of the sourcebook on which the article is found:
1-3
1.b
(5 marks) Why did you choose this article? Why is it of interest to you? (As long as you write something relevant and honest, there is no wrong answer to this question, but communicating well in this section can contribute to a high communication mark.)
[I chose this article because I am Chinese and I feel I may have a deeper empathy for this topic, and as an international student so I have an understanding of the immigration side of things, which is why I am interested in this article.]
1.c
You probably went through several articles before finding one that you want to stick with. What was an article that you considered using as your springboard, but later decided against? Why did you decide against it?
(1 mark) Article you considered, but ended up not choosing:
The Chinese Question in 1890s B.C.
(2 marks) What initially interested you about it:
[I was interested in this article at the very beginning because I am interested in all TOPIC about China, plus I live in B.C. For example, “Chinese and money” in the article is both related to our economy and to my home country.]
(2 marks) Why you ended up not choosing it:
[The reason I didn’t choose this article was because I found another article “The Chinese Immigration Problem (1924)” and I was more interested in the immigration aspect, so in the end I gave up on this article.]
Question 2: “It’s time to get things started”
2.a
Write a 3-2-1 report on the article you chose, in the usual fashion. (This will be marked out of 12, as usual, then the mark out of 12 will be converted into a mark out of 75 by multiplying by 75/12.)
Hint: It’s natural that students will tend to choose articles they feel they understand completely. What do you write for the ‘2’ part of the 3-2-1 report, then?
That’s where the alternate interpretation, ‘2 things you felt were missing from the article’ can be very useful – especially since these things may inspire the start of your investigation.
For example, suppose your article is one in which the Newfoundland government explains the reasoning behind a Bait Act that it is going to pass in the next few months (from the point of view of the time when the article was written). A natural thing to notice is ‘missing’ is what happened next. Did the Bait Act work? Did things go like the Newfoundland government expected? Why or why not? And so on.
2.b
What do you hope to learn from your research?
(For example, if your article is on a tragedy that happened because of lacking dower laws in 1910s British Columbia, you may want to find out why dower laws were lacking, why that situation eventually changed, or if it didn’t change, why we don’t see tragedies like that any more.)
[My article of choice is about Chinese immigrants in Canada and the Chinese Exclusion Act which was implemented in the 1930s. By carrying out this research, I hope to discover the reality behind the exclusion Act, why the Chinese community failed to fit into Canadian society, and identify a few pointers that could help solve the problem of immigration without complete exclusion.]
2.c
Why are you interested in learning this (and potentially sharing it with other people)?
(For example, if your article inspired you to research why Chinese workers in 19th century British Columbia were paid much lower wages than white workers for the same work, and why that took decades to change even slightly, you might be interested in learning that because you’re interested in the wage cap that exists in 21st century Canada between people the labour force sees as women, and people the labour force sees as men, and looking at an earlier example of a group being paid less than another one for the same work may help you understand what is happening today.)
[ I am interested in learning the stipulated lessons because globalization is increasingly on the rise and with increased globalization comes immigration. Therefore, the problem presented in the article is highly likely to recur hence I feel the need to learn from the mistakes made by the then administrators.]
