7 October 2016

Today after SSR, students responded to the following questions in a silent discussion:

• What is the relationship between art and society? To what extent does art mirror the values of society, educate society, or provide a release from the restrictions of society?

• Is it ethical to treat cultural forms like lucha libre or cockfighting as art?

• To what extent is it ethical to incorporate violence into entertainment?

• What is the role of violence in culture?

• To what extent is it possible to understand or “read” the meaning of a cultural form (lucha libre, cockfighting, drifting) when it is taken out of its cultural context?

• Geertz’s method for reading Balinese culture takes into account economics, psychology, history, sociology, philosophy, art criticism and literary criticism. What aspects of culture does he overlook? Who is privileged, and who is marginalized in his analysis? What would you add to his method to provide a more complete understanding of the form under analysis? Why?
  
  
  They identified a question they were interested in working with and a response from one of the silent discussion commenters, and with group members, they then developed a set of issues and questions they were interested in exploring in class discussion.
  
  
  Students then discussed the issues they were interested in considering. Notes from Period 3, Period 4, Period 6, and Period 7 are available here.
  
  
  During our next session, students will write in-class essays synthesizing their thoughts about the connections between Geertz's "Deep Play," Finnegan's "The Man Without a Mask," and the topics they discussed in class. Students should bring their copies of the essays, along with notes, to class. Dialogue Journals for the IRP are due at the next class session.