Posted: May 23rd, 2022

CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY

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CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY
For this essay, you will do a comparative close reading of two different scholarly anthropology articles . Criteria for choosing articles and tips on how to find them are given below.
A “close reading” is a kind of textual analysis that pays close attention to language and rhetoric. In this case, I want you to focus on the language the author uses to move from method (what he or she did in the field) to an explanation or interpretation of culture. Find one or two different fieldwork events in each of the articles, closely examine what the authors do with them anthropologically, and compare these textual “movements.” What are the fieldwork examples given as evidence for? How do they become anthropological knowledge? (For example, Are they vignettes to set a tone? Typical cases? Generalizable data? Self-deprecating positioning? Evidence for a theory? Examples of a field method and its success or failure? Interventions with or against “ethnographic authority”?)
This essay needs a strong introduction and a thesis statement: What can we come to understand about the nature of anthropological research and writing from the comparison? Do not write a “side-by-side” thesis that merely says the two elements are different. Different how? What do we learn from your comparison of them? The first couple sentences of these should give just enough summary of the articles to contextualize the passages you have chosen to compare. You do not need to exhaustively summarize each article, but do give a sense of the topic, location, time period, and general methodology of each article. The main body paragraphs will present evidence from your close reading to support the thesis, organized in a good comparative structure. Finally, write a conclusion that does more than just summarize. Use it to show the reader where she/he has gone in the essay.
Finding Articles
For this assignment, find two recent scholarly articles (published since 2000) on original, empirical research on a sociocultural or linguistic anthropology topic in a scholarly anthropology journal. Note that this means no biological anthropology, archaeology, or ethnohistory (unless it involves a significant amount of ethnography). Exceptions are possible if you find something else you think might be acceptable, but they MUST be approved by me in advance. If possible, attend one of the Library’s “Finding Articles” workshops prior to this session. Some of the journals you find will be all or mostly sociocultural anthropology, but some will be four-field journals, and you will have to make sure the article you have chosen deals with a cultural or linguistic topic. Check with me first if you have any doubts about the appropriateness of your chosen article! The most common mistake is choosing articles which are not based on actual field research by the author(s). You will encounter lots of other genres that do not fit the bill: comparative, theoretical, methodological, programmatic, literature review, etc. You may want to choose two articles on similar topics that use different methods, or choose two that have interestingly comparable methods. The following are well respected “four-field” journals (meaning that you will have to make sure the subfield—biological anthropology, cultural anthropology, archaeology, linguistic anthropology—is appropriate for your assignment):
American Anthropologist (full text only up to 2009 and only via JSTOR)
Current Anthropology (free access to most article through 2013, and a few selected only articles only up to 2015 in JSTOR)
Journal of Anthropological Research (only up to 2013 and only via JSTOR)
Journal of the Royal Anthropological Society (1995 to present in ASP and JSTOR)
Anthropology Today (no full text of the last 12 months in ASP, only up to 2011 in JSTOR)
How to Cite Passages from your Articles (loosely based on the AAA/Chicago Style Guide):
Sample: The journal name here is American Anthropologist; the article, by Elise Berman, is called “Holding On: Adoption, Kinship Tensions, and Pregnancy in the Marshall Islands.” It is from Volume 116, Number 3, pages 578-590. The publication year is 2014.
Option 1 (“book review style”):
Berman, Elise (2014). Holding On: Adoption, Kinship Tensions, and Pregnancy in the Marshall Islands. American Anthropologist 116(3):578-590.
Put this at the top of your paper. Any quotes from the article should be identified by page number: “(581)” or “(p. 581)”.
Option 2 (internal citation, in the text of your paper):
In Berman’s article “Holding On: Adoption, Kinship Tensions, and Pregnancy in the Marshall Islands” (2014), she argues that…”
Then, at the bottom:
References Cited
Berman, Elise.
2014. Holding On: Adoption, Kinship Tensions, and Pregnancy in the Marshall Islands. American Anthropologist 116(3):578-590.
Any quotes from the article should be identified by page number: “(581)” or “(p. 581).”

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