Week 7 Practical: Regional case survey: comparative method

Moving from the course's own two campus cases to a survey of documented regional cases, and the comparative method that makes cases from different sources comparable at all.

5 April 2027

Before the practical#

No fieldwork this week — the phase changes from on-campus observation to desk study, using documented cases as the primary source.

In the practical#

Before comparing anything, the method that makes comparison legitimate: a case counts as usable data only if it names where it came from, describes behaviour rather than only atmosphere, and has more than one account behind it. A striking case that fails on any of these three still gets read; it just doesn’t get weight in a comparison.

Applied to two regional cases — drawn from documented, publicly circulated accounts, not the course’s own fieldwork — students classify each against the week-2 scheme and note where the write-up doesn’t give them what they’d need for confident classification.

Afterwards#

No submission this week. This method is what next week’s global survey and the week-9 comparative analysis both depend on — a case that skips sourcing doesn’t make it into either.