fakes - School of Social and Political Science

University of Edinburgh
School of Social & Political Science
Social Anthropology
2014-2015
FAKES: THE ANTHROPOLOGY OF COUNTERFEIT, IMITATION
AND DISGUISE
(SCAN10061)
Key Information
Course Organiser
Dr Jacob Copeman
 650 6860
Email: Jacob.copeman@ed.ac.uk
Room 5.25
Chrystal MacMillan Building, George Square
Guidance & Feedback Hours: Mondays 11.00 – 13.00
Location
Semester 2
Mondays, 11.10 – 13.00
Room G.04, Medical School
Course Secretary:
Lisa Kilcullen
Email: l.kilcullen@ed.ac.uk
Undergraduate Teaching Office, Ground Floor, Chrystal
MacMillan Building
Assessment
deadlines


Padlet Exercise: 12 noon on Tuesday 10 February 2015
Essay: 12 noon on Tuesday 21 April 2015
Course Outline
From ‘imposter’ gurus in India to fake branded goods in markets and bazaars in Indonesia,
to measures to inhibit and detect student (and academic) plagiarism in UK universities, to
identity theft and the assumption of ‘fake’ identities online, to WHO measures to combat the
rise of counterfeit medications, anxieties about fakes, copying and ‘counterfeit’ are
dramatically visible and form the basis of innumerable moral panics in a remarkable array of
local and global contexts. Yet hoaxes and acts of disguise and imitation are by no means
always valued negatively, and may be employed in the service of ‘truth’, as with the (not
uncontroversial) use of placebo medicines in clinical trials and dramatic impersonations that
are essential for reaching climactic points of revelation of truth and transformation. This
course introduces students to anthropological approaches to acts and accusations of
copying, fakery and disguise in a variety of ethnographic contexts.
Course Outline continued
The history of such concerns, and of the notion of authenticity, will be considered (e.g.
historical forgeries) as well as bodily, religious, brand-based, Internet and medical varieties
of (imputed) fakery. If anthropologists once considered themselves, to some extent,
adjudicators of cultural authenticity, few of them would now deny that authenticity is itself a
cultural construct. This course will address the theoretical literature on fakes and imitation
that has emerged in light of this realisation and focus on ways in which it has been applied in
a variety of ethnographic contexts.
Course Objectives
Students who complete the course will have:

Better appreciation of the importance of fakes, copying and disguise as a topic in
social anthropology and more widely in the social sciences.

A substantive knowledge and understanding of a selection of important historical
and social issues with regard to ideas about and practices of copying, and of the
contending viewpoints and claims on these issues;

Better awareness of the evidence concerning the social implications of fakes,
copying and disguise in diverse contexts worldwide, and of the gaps in
understanding and evidence that need to be addressed

An enriched understanding of the evolution of the study of authenticity/inauthenticity
as cultural categories through appreciating the ways in which they have been
subjected to scholarly analysis for the past 25-30 years.

The ability to identify and characterise key approaches from social anthropology,
from other social science disciplines, and from interdisciplinary fields like cultural
studies and science and technology studies to understanding and evaluating issues
concerning the anthropology of fakes, copying and disguise as a subfield, and
identify advantages, problems and implications of these approaches;

Developed their skills
(i)
in finding and using arguments and information, especially with regard to
online sources and presentation (see below: Assessment Information);
(ii) in critically evaluating such material; and
(iii) in essay writing and seminar presentation.
Course format and requirements
The course consists of a weekly two-hour session. The first hour of the session will usually
be a formal lecture. The format of the second hour of the session will vary but may include;
class discussions, small group work or tutorial activities. All students are expected to
attend and to consult at least two readings (or other materials as directed by the lecturer)
prior to the session in order to participate fully in the debates and activities.
Assessment
Students will be assessed by:
(i)
(ii)
(iii)
Padlet exercise (1000 – 1500 words) due on Tuesday10 February 2015; this carries
a weighting of 30% towards the final overall mark for the course
An essay (2500 – 3000) words due on Tuesday 21 April 2015; this carries a
weighting of 60% towards the final overall mark for the course
Class participation; this carries a weighting of 10% towards the final overall mark for
the course
1.
The Padlet exercise
30% of the course mark will be assessed by a written and multimedia exercise of 1,0001,500 words.
This exercise is designed to help you to connect themes and issues covered in the course
to wider anthropological debates and to critically reflect on a range of media sources that
talk about and represent fakes and issues of imitation in different ways.
The exercise is also designed to help you to think critically about the kinds of media
representations of fakes that we will be looking at from time to time during the course.
There are two main elements of this exercise:
(i)
Creating your wall and adding news stories and other examples from the web (e.g.
YouTube clips) and then
(ii) Writing your own short summaries and reflections on those stories and examples on
your wall.
Create your own wall
For this assessment we will be using Padlet: http://padlet.com/
Padlet is basically an online notice board that allows you to collect links to a variety of
video, audio, image and text based web sources.
For the assessment you are required to create a wall that has a set of links relating to the
themes of the course.
The first thing you need to do is to create your own wall. It’s very simple: Go to the Padlet
website here: http://padlet.com/





Select ‘LOGIN OR SIGN UP from the top right hand corner of the screen
Select SIGN UP and sign up using your ed.ac.uk account
On the Home Screen select ‘Build a wall’
You will be asked to give your wall a title and description.
Please use your UUN as a wall title (so I can mark it anonymously)
You are now ready to start posting to your wall.
For each link that you post add a short bit of text to describe the link – you can post link to
websites, audio files, images and videos (basically anything you can find online).
Then add a few lines (or a short paragraph) reflecting on how the item links to themes and
concepts on the course.
For the assessment you will be required to regularly add links to your wall that relate to
the course themes.
Your wall will be assessed under the following criteria:








Does it demonstrate regular posting of content - evidence of new material every
week and not all wall posts added just before the assessment is due?
Does it demonstrate regular and reasonably varied postings from a range of
sources?
Are your postings indicative of a good level of engagement with the course themes?
Does the assignment show a critical engagement with the content of the course?
Does it demonstrate breadth of understanding of the concepts covered?
Does it demonstrate knowledge of and use of the literature?
Have relevant key references been used?
Have relevant wall posts been drawn on and coherently integrated into the analysis?
Examples:
My wall is an example of the kind of thing that you are expected to create and will give you
an idea of the kinds of things that you might want to post. You can access it here:
http://padlet.com/jacob_copeman/30mljpcn82dx
I will talk more about the wall exercise during the first seminar session but throughout the
course please feel free to ask any questions that you have about this part of the
assessment.
I hope that you will have posted regularly to your wall using a variety of sources covering
a variety of themes. In a short piece of written work like this it would be impossible to cover
all of the concepts that the course looks at so I would strongly encourage you to select
one or two main themes from your wall and focus your reflection and discussion on these.
The main things you are trying to do in the short comments and reflections are:





To provide a summary description of the relevant links on your wall
To interpret your examples e.g. explain what you think is interesting about them and
what concept(s) you think they represent or illustrate and how.
To reflect on how it is relevant to the course theme(s) and explain how they add to
the debates we have considered.
To illustrate how they relate to relevant literature.
To consider what biases exist in the sources that you have selected to look at from
your wall?
2.
Essay
60% of the course mark will be assessed by an essay of 2,500-3,000 words.
The assessment must be submitted by 12.00 noon on Tuesday 21 April 2015
SELECT FROM ONE OF THE FOLLOWING ESSAY TITLES (use ethnographic
material to support your arguments).
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
Can a religion be ‘fake’?
‘Fakery appears as the margin, the horizon against which a moral center is clarified’
(Shipley). Discuss.
In what ways might fakes and frauds be understood to be in the service of truth?
To what extent might it be misleading to talk about ‘cultures of copying’?
‘Fakes are fakes only in the eyes of certain people, fakes are present only for some
people, fakes happen and die out’ (Craciun). Discuss with reference to fake branded
goods.
‘The social being, in the degree that he is social, is essentially imitative
and…imitation plays a role in societies analogous to that of heredity in organic life
or that of vibration among organic bodies’ (Tarde). Discuss.
It is a truism that ‘The internet can be a tough place to distinguish fact from fiction’.
Why is this so and what can anthropological concepts contribute to analysis of it?
Critically assess van de Port’s argument concerning the ‘recruitment of the body and
the sensorium in fantasy scripts that…produce a sensation of the real’.
In what ways might ethnographic case studies call into question the binary logic of
the original and the copy?
How might anthropological theory shed light on the contentious, flexible and fluid
‘boundaries’ between science and non-science (or pseudo-science)?
Students may also suggest their own essay titles if there is a specific area they
would like to research. THIS MUST BE DONE IN CONSULTATION WITH THE
COURSE ORGANISER. ESSAYS WHOSE TITLE HAS NOT BEEN AGREED WILL
NOT BE MARKED.
Communications You are strongly encouraged to use email for routine communication with lecturers. We
shall also use email to communicate with you, e.g., to assign readings for the second hour
of each class. All students are provided with email addresses on the university system, if
you are not sure of your address, which is based on your matric number, check your
EUCLID database entry using the Student Portal.
This is the ONLY email address we shall use to communicate with you. Please note that
we will NOT use ‘private’ email addresses (such as Yahoo or Hotmail). It is therefore
essential that you check your university email regularly, preferably each day.
Lecture Summary
Session
Date
Lecture
1
12.01.2015
Introduction: Fake Theory
2
19.01.2015
Fake Goods
3
26.01.2015
Fake Documents
4
02.02.2015
Fake Science (Matjaz Vidmar)
5
09.02.2015
Fake Religion
16 – 20 February: Innovative Learning Week
6
23.02.2015
Fake Medicine
7
02.03.2015
Internet Fakes
8
09.03.2015
Fake Bodies
9
16.03.2015
Piracy
10
23.03.2015
Forgery
11
30.03.2015
Reading Week & Office Drop-in Session (re: essay
writing)
General and Further Readings
* Hayden, C. 2010. ‘The proper copy: the inside and outside of domains made public’.
Journal of Cultural Economy 3, 1: 85-102.
* Sundaram, R. 2009. Pirate modernity: media urbanism in Delhi. Delhi: Routledge.
* Goffman, Erving. 1971. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Harmondsworth:
Penguin.
* Taussig, Michael. 1993. Mimesis and alterity: a particular history of the senses. New
York: Routledge.
* Lin, Yi-Chieh Jessica. 2011. Fake Stuff: China and the Rise of Counterfeit Goods. New
York: Routledge.
* Chidester, D. 2005. Authentic fakes: religion and American popular culture. Berkeley,
CA: University of California Press.
* Lindholm, Charles. 2007. Culture and Authenticity. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
* Fleming, Chris and John O'Carroll. 2010. ‘The Art of the Hoax’. Parallax 16, 4: 45-59.
* Duschinski, H. 2010. ‘Reproducing regimes of impunity: fake encounters and the
informalization of everyday violence in Kashmir Valley’. Cultural Studies 24, 1: 110132.
* Cox, R. (ed.) 2008. Japan and the culture of copying. London: Routledge.
* Guha-Thakurta, T. 2009 ‘Careers of the copy: traveling replicas in colonial and
postcolonial India’. Paper presented at the Annual Conference of the Association of
Social Anthropologists of the U.K. and Commonwealth, ‘Archaeological and
Anthropological
Imaginations’,
Bristol
University,
April
8,
2009.
http://www.theasa.org/publications/firth.shtml#firth09
* Doniger, Wendy. 2003. ‘Masquerading as oneself: A revealing study of selfimpersonation in literature’. The Religion and Culture Web Forum.
http://divinity.uchicago.edu/sites/default/files/imce/pdfs/webforum/042003/comment
ary.pdf
1.
Introduction: Fake Theory
* Baudrillard, Jean. 1988. ‘Simulacra and simulations’. In Selected writings of Jean
Baudrillard. Edited by Mark Poster. Cambridge: Polity.
* Goffman, Erving. 1971. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Section on
‘Misrepresentation’ in Chapter 1, and Chapter 4. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
* Taussig, Michael. 1992. ‘Physiognomic aspects of visual worlds’. Visual Anthropology
Review 8, 1: 15-28.
* Lindholm, Charles. 2013. ‘The rise of expressive authenticity’. Anthropological Quarterly
86, 2: 361-395.
* Tarde, Gabriel. 1903. The laws of imitation. Chapter 3. Translated by Elsie Clews
Parsons. New York: Henry Holt. http://sts.ucdavis.edu/summer-workshop/worshop2008readings/Tarde%201962%20The%20laws%20of%20imitation%20Chapter%203.p
df
* Pels, Peter. 1999. ‘Professions of Duplexity: A Prehistory of Ethical Codes in
Anthropology’. Current Anthropology 40, 2: 101-136.
* Huggan, Graham. 1994. ‘Anthropologists and Other Frauds’. Comparative Literature 46,
2: 113-128.
2.
Fake Goods
Lecture:
* Newell, S. 2013. ‘Brands as masks: public secrecy and the counterfeit in Côte d’Ivoire’.
Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.), 19: 138-154.
* Lin, Yi-Chieh Jessica. 2011. Fake Stuff: China and the Rise of Counterfeit Goods. New
York: Routledge.
* Phillips, Tim. 2005. Knockoff: The Deadly Trade in Counterfeit Goods: The True Story of
the World's Fastest Growing Crimewave. London: Kogan Page.
Tutorial:
* Brandtstadter, S. 2009. ‘Fakes: fraud, value-anxiety and the politics of sincerity’. In Karen
Sykes (ed.) Ethnographies of moral reasoning: living paradoxes of a global age. New
York: Palgrave Macmillan.
* Crăciun, M. 2012. ‘Rethinking fakes, authenticating selves’. Journal of the Royal
Anthropological Institute 18, 4: 846–863.
3.
Fake Documents
Lecture:
* Bubandt, N. 2009. ‘From the enemy’s point of view: violence, empathy, and the
ethnography of fakes’. Cultural Anthropology 24, 3: 553-588.
* Srivastava, S. 2012. ‘Duplicity, intimacy, community: an ethnography of ID cards, permits
and other fake documents in Delhi’. Thesis Eleven 113, 1: 78-93.
Tutorial:
* Navaro-Yashin, Y. 2007. ‘Make-believe papers, legal forms and the counterfeit: affective
interactions between documents and people in Britain and Cyprus’. Anthropological
Theory 7, 1: 79-98.
* Reeves, M. 2013. ‘Clean fake: authenticating documents and persons in migrant
Moscow’. American Ethnologist 40, 3: 508–524.
4.
Fake Science (Matjaz Vidmar)
Lecture:
* Gieryn, Thomas F. 1983. ‘Boundary-Work and the Demarcation of Science from NonScience: Strains and Interests in Professional Ideologies of Scientists’. American
Sociological Review 48 (6): 781–95.
* Biagioli, Mario. 2014. ‘Plagiarism, Kinship and Slavery’. Theory, Culture & Society.
* Bohannon, John. 2013. ‘Who’s Afraid of Peer Review?’ Science 342 (6154): 60–65.
Tutorial:
* Thagard, Paul R. 1978. ‘Why Astrology Is a Pseudoscience’. PSA: Proceedings of the
Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association (January): 223–34.
* Resnik, David B. 2012. ‘Editorial: Plagiarism: Words and Ideas’. Accountability in
Research 19 (5): 269–72.
* Müller, M. J., B. Landsberg, and J. Ried. 2014. ‘Fraud in Science: A Plea for a New
Culture in Research’. European Journal of Clinical Nutrition 68 (4): 411–15.
Further Readings:
* Ashman, Keith, and Phillip Barringer. 2005. After the Science Wars: Science and the
Study of Science. London: Routledge.
* Calvert, Jane, Pablo Schyfter, Alistair Elfick, and Drew Endy. 2014. Synthetic
Aesthetics: Investigating Synthetic Biology’s Designs on Nature. Boston: MIT
Press.
* Fritze, Ronald H. 2009. Invented Knowledge: False History, Fake Science and PseudoReligions. London: Reaktion Books.
* LaFollette, Marcel Chotkowski. 1992. Stealing Into Print: Fraud, Plagiarism, and
Misconduct in Scientific Publishing. Berkeley: University of California Press.
5.
Fake Religion
Lecture:
* Copeman, Jacob. 2012. ‘The mimetic guru: tracing the real in Sikh-Dera Sacha Sauda
relations’. In J. Copeman & A, Ikegame (eds.) The guru in South Asia: new
interdisciplinary perspectives. London: Routledge. Electronic Resource.
* Alberts, Thomas. 2008. ‘Virtually real: Fake religions and problems of authenticity in
religion’. Culture and Religion 9, 2: 125-139.
* Irons, William. 2001. ‘Religion as a hard-to-fake sign of commitment’. In Evolution and
the capacity for commitment, edited by R. M. Nesse, pp. 292-309. New York:
Russell Sage Foundation. http://www.williamirons.net/wpcontent/uploads/2011/06/Religion-as-a-Hard-to-Fake-Sign-of-Commitment.pdf
Tutorial:
* Chidester, D. 2005. Authentic fakes: religion and American popular culture. Berkeley,
CA: University of California Press. Any or all of this but Chapter 10 in particular.
* Shipley, Jesse. 2009. ‘Comedians, pastors, and the miraculous agency of charisma in
Ghana.’ Cultural Anthropology 24, 3: 523–552.
16 – 20 February 2015 – Innovative Learning Week
No Lectures
6.
Fake Medicine
Lecture:
* Hayden, Cori. 2008. ‘No patent, no generic: Pharmaceutical access and the politics of
the copy’. In Contexts of Invention, edited by Mario Biagioli et al. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
https://cbse.soe.ucsc.edu/sites/default/files/nopatent_0.pdf
* Miller, Franklin G. et al. 2005. ‘Deception in research on the placebo effect’. PLoS
Medicine 2, 9: 853-859. Accessible at
http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pmed.002
0262
* Muela, Susanna Hausmann et al. 1998. ‘Fake malaria and hidden parasites. The
ambiguity of malaria’. Anthropology & Medicine 5, 1: 43-61.
Tutorial:
* Dongen, E. 2002. ‘Theatres of the lie: “crazy” deception and lying as drama’.
Anthropology & Medicine 9, 2: 135-151.
* Davis, E. A. 2010. ‘The anti-social profile: deception and intimacy in Greek psychiatry’.
Cultural Anthropology 25, 1: 130–164.
7.
Internet Fakes
Lecture:
* Burbules, N. 2002. ‘Like a version: playing with online identities’. Educational
Philosophy and Theory 34, 4: 387-393.
* Marx, Gary. 1999. ‘What's in a Name? Some Reflections on the Sociology of
Anonymity’. The Information Society: An International Journal. 15, 2: 99-112.
* Blommaert, Jan and Tope Omoniyi. 2006. ‘Email Fraud: Language, Technology, and
the Indexicals of Globalisation’. Social Semiotics 16, 4: 573-605.
Tutorial:
* Whitty, M.T. & A. Joinson. 2009. Truth, lies and trust on the Internet. New York:
Routledge. Chapter 6 ‘Online deception, fraud, spam and cons’, & Chapter 8
‘Cheating with a mouse: Online infidelity’.
* Wallace, Patricia. 1999. The Psychology of the Internet. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press. Chapter 3 ‘Online masks and masquerades’. Electronic
Resource.
8.
Fake Bodies
Lecture:
* Jackson, S. and S. Scott. 2007. ‘Faking like a woman? Towards an interpretive
theorization of sexual pleasure’. Body & Society 13, 2: 95-116.
* Jagose, Annamarie. 2010. ‘Counterfeit pleasures: fake orgasm and queer agency’.
Textual Practice 24, 3: 517-539
* Hoek, L. 2013. ‘Blood splattered Bengal: the spectacular spurting blood of the
Bangladeshi cinema.’ Contemporary South Asia 21, 3: 214–229.
* Copeman, Jacob and Alice Street. 2014. ‘The Image After Strathern: Art and
Persuasive Relationality in India’s Sanguinary Politics’. Theory, Culture & Society
31, 2 & 3: 185-220.
Tutorial:
* van de Port, Mattijs. 2011. ‘(Not) made by the human hand: media consciousness and
immediacy in the cultural production of the real’. Social Anthropology 19, 1: 74–89.
* Willerslev, Rane. 2004. ‘Not animal, not not-animal: hunting, imitation and empathetic
knowledge among the Siberian Yukaghirs’. Journal of the Royal Anthropological
Institute 10, 3: 629–652.
9.
Piracy
Lecture:
* Larkin, B. 2004. ‘Degraded images, distorted sounds: Nigerian video and the
infrastructure of piracy’. Public Culture 16, 2: 289-314.
* Pang, L. 2008. ‘“China who makes and fakes:” a semiotics of the counterfeit.’ Theory,
Culture & Society 25, 6: 117-140.
* Sundaram, R. 2009. Pirate modernity: media urbanism in Delhi. Delhi: Routledge.
Chapter 3.
Tutorial:
* Dent, A.S. 2012. ‘Introduction: understanding the war on piracy, or why we need more
anthropology of pirates’. Anthropological Quarterly 85, 3: 659-672.
* Dawdy, S.L. & J. Bonni. 2012. ‘Towards a general theory of piracy’. Anthropological
Quarterly 85, 3: 673-699.
10. Forgery
Lecture:
* Lessing, A. 1965. ‘What is wrong with a forgery?’ Journal of Aesthetics and Art
Criticism 23, 4: 461-471.
* Dutton, Denis. 2003. ‘Authenticity in Art’. In The Oxford Handbook of Aesthetics, edited
by Jerrold Levinson. New York: Oxford University Press.
http://www.denisdutton.com/authenticity.htm
* Meyer, Leonard B. 1983. ‘Forgery and the Anthropology of Art’. In The Forger's Art.
Forgery and the Philosophy of Art, edited by Denis Dutton.
* Gamble, Lynn H. 2002. ‘Fact or forgery: Dilemmas in museum collections’. Museum
Anthropology 25, 2: 3–20.
Tutorial:
* Dutton, Denis. 1998. ‘Forgery and Plagiarism’. Encyclopedia of Applied Ethics, edited
by Ruth Chadwick. 4 vols. San Diego: Academic Press.
http://www.denisdutton.com/forgery_and_plagiarism.htm
* Bowden, R. 1999. ‘What is wrong with an art forgery? An anthropological perspective’.
The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 57, 3: 333-343.
11. Reading Week & Office Drop-in Session (re: essay writing).
APPENDIX 1 – SUBMISSION & ASSESSMENT INFORMATION
Word Count Penalties
Long Essay:
Your long essay should be a maximum of 2500 - 3000 words (excluding bibliography).
Essays above 3000 words will be penalised using the Ordinary level criterion of 1 mark for
every 20 words over length: anything between 3000 and 3020 words will lose one mark,
between 3000 and 3040 two marks, and so on.
You will not be penalised for submitting work below the word limit. However, you should
note that shorter essays are unlikely to achieve the required depth and that this will be
reflected in your mark.
ELMA: Submission and return of coursework
Coursework is submitted online using our electronic submission system, ELMA. You will
not be required to submit a paper copy of your work.
Marked coursework, grades and feedback will be returned to you via ELMA. You will not
receive a paper copy of your marked course work or feedback.
For information, help and advice on submitting coursework and accessing feedback,
please see the ELMA wiki at:
https://www.wiki.ed.ac.uk/pages/viewpage.action?title=ELMA&spaceKey=SPSITWiki
Further detailed guidance on the essay deadline and a link to the wiki and submission
page will be available on the course Learn page. The wiki is the primary source of
information on how to submit your work correctly and provides advice on approved file
formats, uploading cover sheets and how to name your files correctly.
When you submit your work electronically, you will be asked to tick a box confirming that
your work complies with university regulations on plagiarism. This confirms that the work
you have submitted is your own.
Occasionally, there can be technical problems with a submission. We request that you
monitor your university student email account in the 24 hours following the deadline for
submitting your work. If there are any problems with your submission the course secretary
will email you at this stage.
We undertake to return all coursework within 15 working days of submission. This time is
needed for marking, moderation, second marking and input of results. If there are any
unanticipated delays, it is the course organiser’s responsibility to inform you of the
reasons.
All our coursework is assessed anonymously to ensure fairness: to facilitate this
process put your Examination number (on your student card), not your name or
student number, on your coursework or cover sheet.
Return of Feedback:
Feedback for coursework will be returned online via ELMA the following dates:
Padlet Exercise = 03.03.2015
Essay = 12.05.2015
The Operation of Lateness Penalties
Unlike in Years 1 and 2, NO EXTENSIONS ARE GRANTED WITH RESPECT TO THE
SUBMISSION DEADLINES FOR ANY ASSESSED WORK At HONOURS LEVEL.
Managing deadlines is a basic life-skill that you are expected to have acquired by the time
you reach Honours. Timely submission of all assessed items (coursework, essays, project
reports, etc.) is a vitally important responsibility at this stage in your university career.
Unexcused lateness can put at risk your prospects of proceeding to Senior Honours and
can damage your final degree grade.
If you miss the submission deadline for any piece of assessed work 5 marks will be
deducted for each calendar day that work is late, up to a maximum of five calendar days
(25 marks). Thereafter, a mark of zero will be recorded. There is no grace period for
lateness and penalties begin to apply immediately following the deadline. For example, if
the deadline is Tuesday at 12 noon, work submitted on Tuesday at 12.01pm will be marked
as one day late, work submitted at 12.01pm on Wednesday will be marked as two days
late, and so on.
Failure to submit an item of assessed work will result in a mark of zero, with potentially
very serious consequences for your overall degree class, or no degree at all. It is therefore
always in your interest to submit work, even if very late.
Please be aware that all work submitted is returned to students with a provisional
mark and without applicable penalties in the first instance. The mark you receive
on ELMA is therefore subject to change following the consideration of the Lateness
Penalty Waiver Panel (please see below for further information) and the Board of
Examiners.
How to Submit a Lateness Penalty Waiver Form (LPW)
If there are extenuating circumstances beyond your control which make it essential for you
to submit work after the deadline you must fill in a ‘Lateness Penalty Waiver’ (LPW) form
to state the reason for your lateness. This is a request for any applicable penalties to be
removed and will be considered by the Lateness Penalty Waiver Panel.
Before submitting an LPW, please consider carefully whether your circumstances are (or
were) significant enough to justify the lateness. Such circumstances should be serious
and exceptional (e.g. not a common cold or a heavy workload). Computer failures are not
regarded as justifiable reason for late submission. You are expected to regularly back-up
your work and allow sufficient time for uploading it to ELMA.
How to Submit a Lateness Penalty Waiver Form continued
You should submit the LPW form and supply an expected date of submission as soon as
you are able to do so, and preferably before the deadline. Depending on the
circumstances, supporting documentation may be required, so please be prepared to
provide this where possible.
LPW forms can be found in a folder outside your SSO’s office, on online at:
http://www.sps.ed.ac.uk/undergrad/on_course_students/assessment_and_regulations/c
oursework_requirements/coursework_requirements_honours
Forms should be returned by email or, if possible, in person to your SSO. They will sign
the form to indicate receipt and will be able to advise you if you would like further guidance
or support.
Please Note: Signing the LPW form by either your SSO or Personal Tutor only indicates
acknowledgment of the request, not the waiving of lateness penalties. Final decisions on
all marks rest with Examination Boards.
There is a dedicated SSO for students in each subject area in SPS. To find out who your
SSO is, and how to contact them, please find your home subject area on the table below:
Subject Area
Name
SSO
Politics
Ruth
Winkle
International
Relations
Social
Anthropology
Social Policy
Social Work
Sociology
Sustainable
Development
of
Email
Phone
Office
Room 1.11,
0131 650 Chrystal
ruth.winkle@ed.ac.uk
4253
MacMillan
Building
Room 1.10,
Rebecca
0131 651 Chrystal
rebecca.shade@ed.ac.uk
Shade
3896
MacMillan
Building
Room 1.04,
Vanessa
0131 650 Chrystal
vanessa.feldberg@ed.ac.uk
Feldberg
3933
MacMillan
Building
Room 1.08,
Louise
0131 650 Chrystal
L.Angus@ed.ac.uk
Angus
3923
MacMillan
Building
Room 1.07,
Jane
0131 650 Chrystal
jane.marshall@ed.ac.uk
Marshall
3912
MacMillan
Building
Room 1.03,
Karen
0131 651 Chrystal
Karen.Dargo@ed.ac.uk
Dargo
1306
MacMillan
Building
Room 1.09,
0131 650 Chrystal
Sue Renton sue.renton@ed.ac.uk
6958
MacMillan
Building
If you are a student from another School, you should submit your LPW to the SSO for the
subject area of the course, Vanessa Feldberg.
Plagiarism Guidance for Students: Avoiding Plagiarism:
Material you submit for assessment, such as your essays, must be your own work. You
can, and should, draw upon published work, ideas from lectures and class discussions,
and (if appropriate) even upon discussions with other students, but you must always make
clear that you are doing so. Passing off anyone else’s work (including another student’s
work or material from the Web or a published author) as your own is plagiarism and will
be punished severely.
When you upload your work to ELMA you will be asked to check a box to confirm the work
is your own. ELMA automatically runs all submissions through ‘Turnitin’, our plagiarism
detection software, and compares every essay against a constantly-updated database,
which highlights all plagiarised work. Assessed work that contains plagiarised material
will be awarded a mark of zero, and serious cases of plagiarism will also be reported to
the College Academic Misconduct officer. In either case, the actions taken will be noted
permanently on the student's record.
For further details on plagiarism see the Academic Services’ website:
http://www.ed.ac.uk/schools-departments/academicservices/students/undergraduate/discipline/plagiarism
Data Protection Guidance for Students:
In most circumstances, students are responsible for ensuring that their work with
information about living, identifiable individuals complies with the requirements of the Data
Protection Act. The document, Personal Data Processed by Students, provides an
explanation of why this is the case. It can be found, with advice on data protection
compliance and ethical best practice in the handling of information about living, identifiable
individuals, on the Records Management section of the University website at:
http://www.ed.ac.uk/schools-departments/records-management-section/dataprotection/guidance-policies/dpforstudents
APPENDIX 2 – GENERAL INFORMATION
Learning Resources for Undergraduates:
The Study Development Team at the Institute for Academic Development (IAD) provides
resources and workshops aimed at helping all students to enhance their learning skills
and develop effective study techniques. Resources and workshops cover a range of
topics, such as managing your own learning, reading, note making, essay and report
writing, exam preparation and exam techniques.
The study development resources are housed on 'LearnBetter' (undergraduate), part of
Learn, the University's virtual learning environment. Follow the link from the IAD Study
Development web page to enrol: www.ed.ac.uk/iad/undergraduates
Workshops are interactive: they will give you the chance to take part in activities, have
discussions, exchange strategies, share ideas and ask questions. They are 90 minutes
long and held on Wednesday afternoons at 1.30pm or 3.30pm. The schedule is available
from the IAD Undergraduate web page (see above).
Workshops are open to all undergraduates but you need to book in advance, using the
MyEd booking system. Each workshop opens for booking 2 weeks before the date of the
workshop itself. If you book and then cannot attend, please cancel in advance through
MyEd so that another student can have your place. (To be fair to all students, anyone who
persistently books on workshops and fails to attend may be barred from signing up for
future events).
Study Development Advisors are also available for an individual consultation if you have
specific questions about your own approach to studying, working more effectively,
strategies for improving your learning and your academic work. Please note, however, that
Study Development Advisors are not subject specialists so they cannot comment on the
content of your work. They also do not check or proof read students' work.
To make an appointment with a Study Development Advisor, email iad.study@ed.ac.uk
(For support with English Language, you should contact the English Language Teaching
Centre).
Discussing Sensitive Topics:
This course will address some topics that you might find sensitive or, in some cases,
distressing. You should read this handbook carefully and if there are any topics that you
may feel distressed by you should seek advice from the course convenor and/or your
Personal Tutor.
For more general issues you may consider seeking the advice of the Student Counselling
Service, http://www.ed.ac.uk/schools-departments/student-counselling