STS.002 | Spring 2016 | Undergraduate

Finance and Society

Assignments

STS.002 is a CI-H course, so exercising and improving your written communication skills is a major goal of the course.

Due Dates

Paper 1: Due class 8

Paper 2: Due class 15

Rewrite of Paper 1 or 2: Due class 22

Paper 3: Due class 26

Lateness and Extensions

All papers will be due on the due date. Late papers will be penalized one-third grade (e.g. from B+ to B) if turned in after the deadline, and then an additional one-third grade every 12 hours thereafter.

Citations

The essential goal of academic writing in the humanities and social sciences is using evidence to formulate an argument. One of the key tasks of this CI-H course is learning how to appropriately use evidence from primary and secondary sources. Properly citing your evidence is critical for several reasons. By showing the precise source of your evidence, your citations act as part of your argument. (Think of it like a court case: Your citations establish the “chain of custody” of the evidence you use). Further, your citations provide useful information for readers who might be interested in exploring the topic further. Finally, your citations show proper recognition to the work of previous scholars and help protect you from academic dishonesty (including plagiarism). Because proper citation is a major expectation of this assignment, you can expect to have your grade lowered if you fail to cite your evidence properly.

For all papers in this course, you are required to properly cite all evidence in your paper using “Chicago”-style footnotes. In general, you should provide citations whenever you:

  • Use a direct quotation from another source.
  • Paraphrase a statement or idea from another source.
  • Discuss, draw upon, or a debate an argument made in a secondary source.
  • Cite a piece of factual evidence that you have drawn from another source that is not “common knowledge.” (In general, you should err on the side of caution: Unless you have come across a specific piece of evidence in multiple different sources, provide a citation!)

When using footnotes, you should cite your evidence by providing a superscript at the end of the sentence, after all relevant punctuation. The first time that you cite from a specific source in your paper, please provide a full citation for the source, following the guidelines below. Subsequently, you can use a short-form citation, consisting just of the author’s last name, an abbreviated title, and the page number. For example: Chancellor, Devil, 38. For further information on citation practices, please see the Chicago Manual of Style citation guide.

Examples for Full Citations

Book, one author:

Pollan, Michael. The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals. Penguin, 2006, pp. 99–100.

(Short-form: Pollan, Omnivore’s Dilemma, 99.)

Book, two or more authors:

Ward, Geoffrey C., and Ken Burns. The War: An Intimate History, 1941–1945. Knopf, 2007, p. 52. ISBN: 9780307262837.

(Short-form: Ward and Burns, The War, 52.)

Book, with additional editor, translator, compiler:

Trenchard, John, and Thomas Gordon. Cato’s Letters or Essays on Liberty, Civil and Religious, and Other Important Subjects : Four Volumes in Two Vol. 1. Edited by Ronald Hamowy. Liberty Fund, 1995, pp. 40–63. ISBN: 9780865971295.

Chapter or part of a book:

Kelly, John D. “Seeing Red: Mao Fetishism, Pax Americana, and the Moral Economy of War.” In Anthropology and Global Counterinsurgency. Edited by John D. Kelly et al. University of Chicago Press, 2010, p. 67. ISBN: 9780226429946.

Journal Article:

Weinstein, Joshua I. " The Market in Plato’s Republic." Classical Philology 104, no. 4 (2009): 439–58.

Article in a newspaper or popular magazine:

Mendelsohn, Daniel. “But Enough About Me.” The New Yorker, January 2010, p. 68.

Film:

A Corner in Wheat. Directed by D. W. Griffith. Black & White, 14 mins. 1909. (American Mutoscope and Biograph Company)

Due Date: Class 8.

Length: 900–1,200 words, double-spaced with standard margins (1in) and font (12pt).

Grade: 10% of your final course grade.

Setting The Scene

In early 1720, the British Parliament approved an innovative project by the South Sea Company to restructure Britain’s mounting National Debt. The South Sea Company, founded in 1711, was a large joint-stock company that was involved in two main lines of business: Lending money to the British government and overseas trade with Spanish America—in particular, the trade in African slaves. In 1720, the Company proposed to buy up roughly three-quarters of all of the outstanding “annuities” that constituted Britain’s National Debt, and exchange those annuities for new South Sea Company stock. This “South Sea Scheme” gave the Company access to an unprecedented amount of new capital; many in the British public believed the Company was going to generate previously unimaginable profits. The Scheme went into effect in the spring of 1720, and over the ensuing months investors clamored to buy the enchanting stock. Prices for South Sea Stock surged to over £1,000 per share by mid-summer, about 7 times the price of the stock at the beginning of the year. Beginning in September, though, the price began to sag. By the end of the year, it had collapsed completely, to under £200 per share, or more than 80% below its peak.

This “South Sea Bubble” was the first major crisis that had transpired in the young London stock market. It was a profoundly unsettling event for many in Britain, who struggled to understand how the price of a paper object like South Sea stock could rise and fall so dramatically. The Bubble shook the public’s faith in the new financial innovations that had arisen in Britain over the previous half-century and in the government that approved the fateful scheme. Many Britons lost tremendous fortunes when the Bubble popped. In the wake of the Bubble, they demanded answers and demanded justice. Starting in late 1720, many different observers tried to explain what went wrong, offering those explanations in newspaper articles, pamphlets, Parliamentary speeches, poems, books—even playing cards.

Assignment

For this assignment, you will read excerpts from five different primary sources written by people who experienced the South Sea Bubble firsthand. Your objective in this paper is to draw upon these primary sources in order to answer the following question: How did people who lived through the South Sea Bubble explain that bizarre financial event?

In crafting your argument, you should draw upon at least two different primary sources, including at least one of the three texts that we did not read and discuss directly in recitation. (So: At least one of the “Secret History,” Timothy Telltruth, or Adam Anderson texts). You may draw upon as many of the five texts as you wish, but you are not required to use more than two. In addition, you can use any of the other course readings or material from lectures in order to inform your discussion. You should not do any outside research for this paper. Your paper should be grounded in your own analysis of the five selected primary sources.

This paper is fundamentally an exercise in historical analysis. Your goal is to explain how people in 1720 thought about what went wrong. Using the primary source text, try to put yourself in the position of someone living in 1720, who had never experienced a “bubble” before, and for whom the stock market itself was a new and strange thing. What did they think went wrong in 1720? Were they angry about it? Why? What upset them the most? Who or what did they think was responsible? What did they think should be done in response to the crisis? Note: Your goal is not to explain what happens during financial crises in general. Your paper should not discuss what you think “really happened” in 1720, only what people who lived at the time thought happened.

Primary Source Texts

The five primary source texts that you will use in this paper are as follows.

  1. Swift, Jonathan. The Bubble: A Poem (PDF). Printed by Benj. Tooke, 1721.
  2. Trenchard, John, and Thomas Gordon. Cato’s Letters or Essays on Liberty, Civil and Religious, and Other Important Subjects : Four Volumes in Two Vol. 1. Edited by Ronald Hamowy. Liberty Fund, 1995, pp. 40–63. ISBN: 9780865971295.
  3. Telltruth, Timothy. Matter of Fact, or, The Arraignment and Tryal of the Di—rs of the S—S—Company (PDF). Printed for John Applebee, W. Boreham, and A. Dodd, 1720. (selections)
  4. “The Secret History of the South Sea Scheme.” (PDF) In A Collection of Several Pieces of Mr. John Toland, Now First Publish’d from His Original Manuscripts…, Vol. 1. Printed for J. Peele, 1726, pp. 404–47. (selections)
  5. Anderson, Adam. An Historical and Chronological Deduction of the Origin of Commerce, from the Earliest Accounts to the Present Time (PDF - 1.2MB), vol. 1. Printed for A. Millar et al., 1764, pp. 284–97.

Due Date: Class 15.

Length: 1, 200-1,500 words, double-spaced with standard margins (1in) and font (12pt).

Grade: 15% of your final course grade.

Setting The Scene

The major theme of “Chapter 2” of Finance and Society has been the growth of finance as a global technical system between roughly 1790 and 1945. As we have seen, this period saw more and more people, from various geographic and social positions, become entangled in global financial networks. This increasing entanglement brought both positive effects—the ability to develop infrastructure, growing economic productivity, greater average wealth—and negative ones—loss of economic autonomy, greater concentration of wealth, increased susceptibility to economic crisis. To a great degree, the allocation of these benefits and costs followed divisions of geography, class, gender, ethnicity, and race.

In this context, finance became the subject of new political controversies. Financial practitioners, journalists, jurists, politicians, and others began to contemplate the role that finance, financial technologies, and financiers played—or ought to play—in society. What function did finance play in the broader economy? How did the expanding presence of finance accord with a nation’s political values? Who ought to participate in the benefits, and the costs, of financial action? What were the consequences of financial activity for average people? These questions became the subject of public debate. We have encountered a variety of different texts that addressed these questions in some way, including texts by: Alexander Hamilton, George Logan, Josiah Nott, Andrew Jackson, the anonymous author of “Panic in Wall Street,” W. R. Lawson, D. W. Griffith (A Corner in Wheat), C. A. Conant, Louis Brandeis, H. W. Moorhouse, and Samuel Crowther’s interview with John J. Raskob.

Assignment

A successful “compare / contrast” essay achieves two objectives. The first objective is to explain the arguments made by your chosen texts and to identify what is similar and different about those arguments. Be specific. What assumptions, values, ideas, conclusions, etc. do your texts share in common? Where do they diverge?

The second objective is to draw conclusions on the basis of your comparison. What can we learn from the similarities and differences between the two texts? Can you think of a possible explanation for why the texts have the similarities / differences that they do? Do those similarities / differences tell us something about the different authors who produced them and the different contexts in which they were written?

There are many valuable conclusions you might draw. For example, by comparing texts from different time periods, you might be able to show change (or continuity) over time. By comparing texts written in different places, or by people with different social positions or political values, you might be able to draw a connection between how certain writers thought about finance and those authors’ geographic, social, or political environments.

Some general advice: There are many good ways to write a compare / contrast paper. A good strategy can be to think about what is most surprising about the relationship between your chosen texts. Sometimes the most surprising and interesting thing can be a difference between two texts: For example, you might show that Text A came to one conclusion, while Text B thirty years later concluded exactly the opposite. Other times, the most surprising and interesting thing might be a similarity: For example, you might show that Texts X, Y, and Z all share some fundamental assumption, despite being written in vastly different times and places. Follow your instincts. What jumps out most to you?

A few logistical points:

You may not choose all texts from a single class meeting. You must compare texts from at least two different sessions. (You cannot, for example, write a paper that only compares Conant and Brandeis. You may certainly compare either of those two to a different text, or write about Conant and Brandeis in conjunction with a third text).

There are no “bonus points” for discussing three texts instead of two. You may well find that you can write a more pointed, insightful argument by focusing on fewer texts and analyzing them more deeply. No outside research is required for this paper. Please stick to writing about texts from the syllabus. If you wish, you may draw upon other texts from the syllabus, especially secondary sources, in order to provide background or context for your analysis (with proper citation, of course).

If you wish, you may choose to write about Griffith’s film, “A Corner in Wheat,” as one of your chosen texts. (It is a wonderful historical source!) If you choose to do so, make sure that you refer to specific moments and scenes in the film. Note those specific moments by giving the time (mm:ss) in the film at which they occur. (You can refer the YouTube time markers).

Due Date: Class 26.

Length: 1,200–1,500 words, double-spaced with standard margins (1in) and font (12pt).

Grade: 15% of your final course grade.

Setting The Scene

The final “chapter” of the course focused on finance in the contemporary moment. We have looked particularly at how various social-science perspectives—collectively, “Social Studies of Finance”—can be brought to bear to understand finance, often in ways that go beyond idealized, purely economic models of finance. This final paper asks you to explore finance as a social, cultural, and / or political phenomenon in modern life.

You have a few different options you might pursue for the final paper. Compared to previous assignments, these are pretty “open-ended.” You have more choice, but consequently the burdens on you as a writer are higher. Two things are especially critical. First, you must make an argument in your paper. Make sure you formulate a clearly-stated thesis, and justify it with evidence. Be precise, and be sure to define any key terms in your paper. Second, you must completely cite all sources, following the “Chicago-style” footnotes described below.

For all of these options, you are not required or expected to do any outside research; there are many ways to write an “A” paper for this assignment using only materials on the syllabus. However, you may choose to draw upon outside sources: newspaper and magazine articles, additional scholarly articles, popular financial books, etc. If you choose to draw upon outside sources, they must be properly-cited. This is not expected to be a “research paper,” so please limit yourself to no more than 3–4 outside sources.

Assignment Options

  1. Was the financial crisis of 2007–‘08 a “normal accident,” as defined by sociologist Charles Perrow? If so—or if not—what does that say about what we should do to build a safer financial system in the future?

  2. Select one cultural artifact—a novel, work of popular non-fiction, television show, film, etc.—that offers a depiction of finance in the modern moment (from roughly 1980 or later). Craft a paper that analyzes and critiques the way your chosen source represents modern finance and the financiers who participate in it. Texts that you might consider include works of fiction (Tom Wolfe’s Bonfire of the Vanities, Brad Easton Ellis’s American Psycho), films (Wall Street, The Big Short, Wall Street 2, Margin Call, or Inside Job), or television (season 1 of Billions).

    Questions you might consider: How does the text you choose depict financiers? Are they sympathetic characters? Does your text offer moral judgments about specific individuals, institutions, or about the financial “system” in general? What does your text suggest motivates the behaviors and actions of financiers and financial institutions? Does your text make an argument about what the “problem” is with modern finance?

  3. In 2005, Chairman of the Federal Reserve Alan Greenspan proclaimed: “Hedge funds have become increasingly valuable in our financial markets.” Looking from the year 2016, defend or reject this statement. Do you agree that hedge funds play a valuable role in modern financial life? Be sure to bolster your argument with specific evidence.

  4. Formulate, and answer, your own question about finance in modern society and culture. (If you choose this option, you must provide a clear statement of the question you propose to answer.)

Due Date: Class 22.

Grade: 15% of your final course grade.

Introduction

Writing is hard work. One of the goals of STS.002, as a CI-H course, is to help you develop your writing skills through the analysis, and re-analysis of your own processes of thought and composition. Hence this assignment, which asks you to return to one of the first two papers you wrote and engage critically in the acts of reflecting, rethinking, and rewriting.

Overview

This assignment has two parts:

Part I. Self-diagnosis (approximately 2-3 pp.)

Part II. Rewrite (your rewritten paper should be roughly the length of your original paper, and should not exceed 1,750 words).

Please submit both of these in one document if you can. Your grade on this assignment will take account of three factors:

  1. The thought and effort you demonstrate in the “self-diagnosis” exercise
  2. The degree to which your rewritten paper improves upon the original paper
  3. The overall quality of your final, rewritten paper

Part I. Self-Diagnosis

For this part, you are asked to go back to your last paper with fresh eyes. Begin by reading it over a couple of times. If you can, try imagining that you are someone else (i.e. not the same person who wrote the paper). Then answer the following questions to the best of your ability. Use full sentences whenever possible, and be sure to number your answers. Your answer to these questions need not be long—a couple sentences for each is fine—but they should be thoughtful and reflective.

Style

  1. What part or aspect of your paper do you like best? Why?
  2. Provide an example of one of the stronger (i.e. better written) sentences or sections in your paper? What makes it well written?
  3. Provide an example of a poorly written sentence in your paper, or—at the very least—one that could do with a bit of improvement.

Argument

  1. What is the argument (thesis) set up in the introduction to your paper?
  2. Do you think your argument is interesting? Is it valid?
  3. Do you think you do a good job proving that argument? Why or why not?

Analysis and Evidence

  1. Go through each of the major body paragraphs in your paper, and state what each paragraph accomplishes (or fails to accomplish) in one sentence. For each paragraph, ask: Does this paragraph supports or illuminate your thesis?
  2. How many direct quotes from primary sources did you use? What role do they serve in your argument? (If you used fewer than three or four, consider using more in your revised version.) Select at least one specific quotation from your paper, and comment on how you used it. Did you provide sufficient context? Did you analyze it well? How did that particular quotation advance your paper’s overall argument?

Part II. Revision

For this part, you will rewrite your paper. Plan to incorporate the most successful parts of your previous version, but don’t be afraid to rewrite whole sections or paragraphs if necessary. You may even decide to reorganize the entire paper. Use the information you gathered in Part One to plan out your strategy. Given that this is a revision, pay particular attention to procedural details, like proofreading and ensuring that your citations are in the proper format (Chicago-style footnotes, please!!!)

MIT Open Learning
Over 2,500 courses & materials
Freely sharing knowledge with learners and educators around the world. Learn more
© 2001–2024 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Accessibility
Creative Commons License
Terms and Conditions
Proud member of:
© 2001–2024 Massachusetts Institute of Technology