how to write anthropology essay

Grappling With Guilt Inside a System of Structural Violence

Inside Russia’s Campaign to Steal and Indoctrinate Ukrainian Children

Coastal Eden

On the Tracks to Translating Indigenous Knowledge

A Call for Anthropological Poems of Resistance, Refusal, and Wayfinding

Buried in the Shadows, Ireland’s Unconsecrated Dead

Nameless Woman

A Palestinian Family’s History—Told Through Olive Trees

Can “Made in China” Become a Beacon of Sustainability?

The International Order Is Failing to Protect Palestinian Cultural Heritage

Spotlighting Black Women’s Mental Health Struggles

Being a “Good Man” in a Time of Climate Catastrophe

Cultivating Modern Farms Using Ancient Lessons

Imphal as a Pond

A Freediver Finds Belonging Without Breath

The Trauma Mantras

Baltimore’s Toxic Legacies Have Reached a Breaking Point

What a Community’s Mourning of an Owl Can Tell Us

Why I Talked to Pseudoarchaeologist Graham Hancock on Joe Rogan

Conflicting Times on the Camino de Santiago

Spotlighting War’s Cultural Destruction in Ukraine

Learning From Snapshots of Lost Fossils

How Accurate Is the Stone Age Thriller Out of Darkness ?

The Responsibility of Witnesses to Genocide

How Israeli Prisons Terrorize Palestinians—Inside and Outside Their Walls

The Viral Atrocities Posted by Israeli Soldiers

Unearthing the Origins of Plantation Slavery on São Tomé

Infant, Name Once Known

What It’s Like to Grow Old on the Margins

For the Love of Cats in Turkey

How to Write an Essay: A Guide for Anthropologists

Ask SAPIENS is a series that offers a glimpse into the magazine’s inner workings.

For academics used to the idea of “publish or perish,” writing may seem to be a well-practiced and even perfected skill. But trying out a new writing style for a new audience—from crafting a tweet to penning an essay for the general public—can be an intimidating challenge, even for the most senior of professors.

If you’re struggling with this endeavor, then don’t despair. SAPIENS has a team of expert editors (including myself) with decades of experience wrangling the words of academics into insightful, clear, and interesting essays .

One of the most basic questions we’re asked at SAPIENS is: “How do I write an essay?” This article provides a framework and starting point.

There are two things you must know intimately before you start: your audience and your core point. Know these things and the rest will be far easier. Once you have locked down those two core elements, there’s a basic formula that you can master for almost any essay.

SAPIENS targets a general audience. Some of our readers are anthropologists, but most of them are not. Think of your reader as someone who is very intelligent but not knowledgeable in your area of expertise. Remember that even another anthropologist won’t necessarily know your subject area, the politics of your country or study sites, or the jargon of your specialty. Your essay should be full of depth and insight, providing new information and perspectives even to close colleagues, but it also needs to include basic background and context so that anyone can easily follow along.

A simple tip is to imagine that you are at a cocktail party and the conversation has turned to something you know a lot about. You want to inject some insight into the conversation. You want to thrill, delight, and inform the person you are talking to. That’s your job and the mood you should be in as you pick up your pen (or raise your fingers over the keyboard).

Remember that you are not writing an academic talk or paper or a grant proposal, where your primary mission may be to dive straight into the details, impress your colleagues or a panel of reviewers, or acknowledge others in the field. Buzzwords, jargon, and formal citations do not belong here.

SAPIENS readers are engaging with your essay not because they have to but because they want to. Grab their attention and hold on tight. As anthropologists know better than anyone, human beings have evolved to tell and listen to stories around the glow of a campfire. Harness this knowledge, and be sure you are telling a tale, complete with characters , tension , and surprises .

Anthropologists often have ethnographic research or a dig site to talk about: real people doing real things in real dirt. Pity the poor chemist who has less evocative characters like atoms and elements!

The next fundamental is to have a point. You may know a lot about a subject, but an essay needs to be more than just an overview of a topic. It needs to express a single (preferably surprising) viewpoint.

It should be possible to express the core of your main point in a single sentence containing a strong verb . To have a story, someone or something needs to be doing something: for example, battling a crisis , gaining an insight , identifying a problem , or answering a question . This statement may even become the headline for your essay. An op-ed , by the way, is a very similar beast to an essay, but its point is by definition an expression of what’s wrong with the world and how to fix it.

Once you know what you’re writing and for whom, you can write.

A strong essay contains some basic elements.

A colleague of mine once observed that writing is like certain styles of jazz: The improvisation is layered on top of some standard rules in order to make something beautiful. Until you master the basics, it’s safer to follow straightforward strategies in order to avoid accidentally playing something jarring and incomprehensible.

In keeping with the musical theme, I offer seven notes to play in your piece.

One: A lead.

This paragraph opens your essay. It needs to grab the reader’s attention. You can use an anecdote , a story , or a shocking fact . Paint a picture to put the reader in a special time and place with you.

Resist the temptation to rely on stereotypes or often-used scenes. Provide something novel and compelling.

Two: A nut paragraph.

This section captures your point in a nutshell. It usually repeats the gist of what your headline will capture but expands on it a little bit. A good nut paragraph (or “ nutgraf ,” to use some journalist jargon) is a great help for your reader. It’s like a signpost to let them know what’s coming, providing both a sense of security and of anticipation, which can make them willing to come on this journey with you over the next thousand words.

The nut is often the most important paragraph but also sometimes the hardest nut to crack. If you can write this paragraph, the rest will be easy. (The nut for this piece is the fourth paragraph; in the essay “ Trump’s Slogan ,” it’s the third.)

Remember to include in your nut, or somewhere near it, a “peg”: some real-world event that you can hang your essay on, like hanging your coat on a hook on the wall, to place it firmly in time and space. Does your point relate to something going on in the world, such as the Black Lives Matter movement , a policy change, a new archaeological dig or museum object —or maybe a pandemic ? Does it relate to a holiday , such as Halloween , or a season ? Did you recently publish a paper or a book on the topic? Why should your reader read on right now ?

Three: Who you are.

Let your reader know what you are an expert in, what you have done that makes you an expert, and why they should put faith in your point of view.

Your byline will link to biographical information that declares you are an anthropologist of such-and-such variety at so-and-so university or institute, but the essay itself should spell out that you have, for example, spent decades among a certain community or surveyed hundreds of people affected by an issue. Sometimes your own personal details—your race , your nationality , your heritage , your lived experiences —may also play into your expertise or story. (See how I snuck my own expertise into the second paragraph of this piece.)

Four: Background and context.

After the opening section, your essay’s pace can slow a little. Tell the reader a bit more about the situation, place, insight, or people you are writing about. What’s the history? How did things get to be the way they are? Why does this situation, place, or finding matter to the rest of the world? Why is it important, and why are you personally so interested in it?

Don’t wander too far along the way: Each paragraph should continue to speak to and support your main point. It’s an essay, not a book. Keep it simple.

Five: The details.

Expand on your point. Provide details, facts, anecdotes, or evidence to back up your point and tell a story. Perhaps you have quotes from people you interviewed or statistics behind some aspect of medical anthropology. Those details are the meat of your piece. What insight can you provide?

Back up your view with facts, and provide links to firm evidence (such as published research papers, by yourself or others) supporting any assertions. Sprinkle in an occasional short, pithy sentence to hammer your point home.

Six: Counterpoint.

If your point of view is contentious, acknowledge that. Let the reader know which groups disagree with you and why, and what your counterarguments are.

This approach will add to your credibility. If your point rubs up against what most readers will think, then acknowledge that too. Anticipate common reactions and deal with them head on.

Seven: Conclusion.

Round up your point, sum up your argument, or perhaps look forward to what needs to be done next. (But please don’t simply say, “More research is needed,” which is always true and too broad to provide helpful insight.) Leave your reader with a sense of satisfaction rather than a craving for more or a feeling of confusion.

Sometimes it is nice to have a final point that ends your piece with a bit of a kick. If your essay is amusing, this “kicker” might be designed to make the reader laugh . If it’s discussing a serious societal problem, it might hammer home what’s at stake. If your essay is personal or reflective, it might be an experience that crystallizes your point . For an op-ed, it may be a call to arms .

An essay as a whole should say to the reader, “Look at the world through my eyes, and you will see something new.” Your goal is to enlighten in a clear, entertaining way.

Your editor’s job, by the way, is to help you do all of this: to formulate your point as clearly and strongly as possible, and to prompt you for an anecdote or story to make that point come alive. Your editor’s job is not to mangle your ideas or force you onto uncomfortable ground, nor is it to put things in ways you would not say them or make your voice unrecognizable. If that happens, be sure to speak up.

Remember that if your editor is misunderstanding your text, your readers will surely misunderstand it too. If your editor trips on a point, or stumbles on your phrasing, so will your readers. Editors are experts at identifying problems in a piece but not necessarily experts on how to fix them—make that your job.

Many, many subtle points of writing exist beyond what I have included in this guide. The interested writer may wish to read a slender book packed with fantastic advice: The Science Writers’ Essay Handbook: How to Craft Compelling True Stories in Any Medium .

And there are some considerations that are particular to, or prominent in, anthropological writing—such as the ethical presentation and protection of your sources and the importance of original writing even when retelling the same tales you have published before. Your editors can help you address all of these challenges.

Writing for the general public comes with many benefits. It helps convince funders and university deans that your area of interest is important. It may count toward your application for tenure or raise the profile of your institution. Perhaps most importantly, it can help strengthen your own writing and clarify your ideas in your own mind—cementing your conclusions or spurring ideas for further research. Stepping away from your usual audience, methods, and ways of thinking is a great way to gain novel insights.

Writing for the public brings your important ideas to the wider world and may even help change that world for the better.

You surely have something important to say: Write it for us !

Nicola Jones is a freelance science journalist living in Pemberton, near Vancouver, British Columbia. She has a bachelor’s degree in oceanography and chemistry, and a master’s in journalism, both from the University of British Columbia. Over her career, Jones has been a regular editor and contributor to SAPIENS , Nature ,  Yale Environment 360 ,   Hakai Magazine , Knowable Magazine , and other publications. She has given a TED Talk and edited a major report for  Future Earth on sustainability. Follow her on Twitter  @nicolakimjones .

Stay connected

Facebook , Instagram , LinkedIn , Threads , Twitter , Mastodon , Flipboard

Y ou may republish this article, either online and/or in print, under the Creative Commons CC BY-ND 4.0 license. We ask that you follow these simple guidelines to comply with the requirements of the license.

I n short, you may not make edits beyond minor stylistic changes, and you must credit the author and note that the article was originally published on SAPIENS.

A ccompanying photos are not included in any republishing agreement; requests to republish photos must be made directly to the copyright holder.

We’re glad you enjoyed the article! Want to republish it?

This article is currently copyrighted to SAPIENS and the author. But, we love to spread anthropology around the internet and beyond. Please send your republication request via email to editor•sapiens.org.

Accompanying photos are not included in any republishing agreement; requests to republish photos must be made directly to the copyright holder.

How to Write an Anthropology Essay

17 February, 2022

49 minutes read

Author:  Josh Carlyle

College years are a vibrant, exciting period of ardent studies and professional growth. Still, students often experience an overload with lectures, home tasks, and non-educational activities. So, they quickly get frustrated and fail to manage all their pressing duties and responsibilities. Anthropology studies are not an exception. No matter how attractive studying people and cultures […]

College years are a vibrant, exciting period of ardent studies and professional growth. Still, students often experience an overload with lectures, home tasks, and non-educational activities. So, they quickly get frustrated and fail to manage all their pressing duties and responsibilities. Anthropology studies are not an exception. No matter how attractive studying people and cultures is, the academic workload often gets too tough and non-manageable, pushing students to extremes.

When you’re confused about how to compose an assignment, it’s better to look for an anthropology essay example online to see how others have done that before you. Or you may look for anthropology essay topics when your inspiration abandons you and offers no fresh ideas to start with. In any of these cases, we have a solution. Our company has a large team of experts able to cover any topic and subject, be it cultural anthropology or some exotic anthropological assignment. We have you covered, and you can rest assured that all texts will be completed in line with the best academic writing standards.

Cultural anthropologists and students of other anthropology specialties can order their papers within minutes by using our handy calculator on the main page. There is no more need to go through the tedious study process on your own if you can receive our help and close your homework gaps quickly.

Common Types of Writing Assignments on Anthropology Courses

Throughout your study at the anthropology department, you will be asked to perform an anthropological writing exercise of various kinds now and then. Some anthropology essays may be assigned with a specific topic and subject, while others will be left to your discretion, urging you to develop a critical insight into the surrounding community and approaching social issues around you from the standpoint of an anthropologist.

The most common types of anthropological writing you will come across at any college or university include:

• Response papers . It’s a frequent assignment for students of all departments, but an anthropology essay requiring a student’s response will definitely possess its specifics. The purpose of such assignments is to show their serious engagement with the assigned readings and the provision of a balanced, critical summary and analysis of the studied content.
• Precis . A precis paper is a specific type of response task that requires students to provide a high-quality interpretative summary of the studied material. Students are required to identify the central issue of the author’s concern, dwell on the text’s development, and shape a competent critical analysis of the content to share their personal, subjective stand on the issue of interest.
• Term papers are another frequently assigned work type. Term papers are meant to check the students’ ability to synthesize the learned material, reflect on their learning progress during the term, and pick a relevant subject for an in-depth academic inquiry. It may be a task that cultural anthropology, linguistic anthropology, and physical anthropology students alike can get.

What Is Ethnography?

When you study at an anthropology course, you should naturally be able to conduct competent, professional anthropological essay writing. Such assignments are typically based on a scholarly inquiry – a systematic approach to data available in the environment on the subject of the student’s interest.

This data is collected with the help of an anthropology-specific approach, ethnography. In a nutshell, ethnography stands for a research strategy that enables anthropologists to explore and examine the surrounding cultures and societies. As a rule, ethnographers come to the communities of their interest and observe them in the course of people’s natural interactions. The researcher also becomes a part of the community they research, trying to learn how to do things, interact with people, take interviews, and ask questions.

The basic premise of anthropology is that people’s cultural and social dimensions can be understood only in action. It is impossible to embrace any culture or way of doing things in theory. An anthropologist should get immersed into the community of focus and study their life in an uncontrolled, natural environment. With such specifics in mind, one can see that the primary focus of ethnography is to get a non-evaluative, first-hand impression of a specific social group as a result of in-depth, careful participant observation.

The primary precondition for an ethnographic study is the researcher’s presence in the site of interest and careful observation and recording of social interactions in the group of interest. In most cases, it presupposes fieldwork and takes the anthropologists to distant locations, such as Indigenous islands or communities of indigenous peoples in Canada and the USA. However, it is still possible to conduct high-quality ethnographic research even in your educational settings or neighborhood. 

Like any other kind of academic writing, anthropology essay writing follows a specific set of parameters and conventions. Be it cultural anthropology or physical anthropology task, your assignment should still include the essential elements of an academic composition, such as an introduction, a body, and a conclusion of the paper. 

Introduction

This part of your essay should clearly communicate the subject and its broad context, introducing the reader to the topic and helping them get all the information from your paper. It’s vital to introduce a problem statement in the form of a concise statement or statistics to show why your inquiry is important.

The body of your anthropology essay is the most significant part of the assignment. It should include all significant arguments you have about your topic. Organize the body logically and consistently, thus helping the readers follow through.

This is the final part of your assignment that contains a set of inferences and takeaways at which you arrive in the process of essay composition and research. Don’t repeat your arguments overall; just make it a logical continuation of your inquiry and a reference to the broader significance of this research.

Besides, the process of anthropological writing involves taking the following steps to make your work worth a high grade:

• Topic selection
• Research for arguments
• Draft composition
• Revision and editing

100 Anthropology Essay Topics

Are you looking for a well-written anthropology essay example to guide you through the writing process? You can find tons of valuable materials on this subject on our website.

Here we offer you something better – a list of exciting, thought-provoking anthropology essay topics to jumpstart your writing.

• The modern use of anthropological methods in forensic science.
• How have human beings evolved over time?
• What impact does technological progress have on people in developed and developing countries today?
• What are the implications of genetic engineering for the future of humankind?
• What is the best definition of culture in the modern globalized world?
• What beliefs about supernatural forces do modern communities still hold?
• How has literature affected human development?
• The social preconditions for the rise of terrorism in particular communities.
• Is the 21 st century the time for abandoning social ranks and chaste?
• How does the approach to clothing design in specific cultures reflect their deeper cultural traits and features?
• Is it possible to get familiar with a specific culture by watching films and reading books about it?
• How can the study of ancient cultures help us understand modern socio-cultural trends?
• What role do ancestors play in the lives of specific communities? Has the modern developed society lost its connection with ancestors?
• Cultural differences in approaches to death.
• The tradition of body modification across the globe.
• The concept of race in the global society. What gives rise to racism?
• The place of mythology in modern communities.
• What role does storytelling play in child education around the globe?
• Is the time of closed societies coming to an end? Or is the post-globalization era signaling the new rise of closed communities?
• How do the features of society affect the rise of specific political movements and structures in those communities?
• How do modern societies treat heroes? Who are the heroes of particular societies, and how do those heroes reflect the deeper cultural trends?
• What implications does social status have in the modern world?
• How does the modern developed society treat health and well-being?
• How do different communities incorporate feminism in the 21 st century?
• The impact of social traits on specific communities’ art.
• Does smoking produce a negative social effect?
• What impact did eugenics have on humanity in the 20 th and 21 st centuries?
• What are the popular theories of the human species’ emergence?
• The protective nature of cultural norms.
• The socially determined experiences of various illnesses.

Here is the list you can use to complete your assignments quickly and effectively. Still, if you feel hardships with these papers and want professional assistance from experts, it’s always a good idea to turn to us. We have a large team of anthropology experts ready to manage all kinds of assignments for you. So, contact us today to get an anthropology paper done in hours, study hassle-free, and know that your tasks are in good hands.

#1 The Neanderthals and Denisovans are practical case studies for determining whether a species is fully “human.”

The focus of this essay is on the characteristics that make a species fully “human”. In connection to this, the essay will discuss what is known about Neanderthals and Denisovans, which are practical case studies used in establishing if a species is fully human. The essay will focus more on Neanderthals and finally the paper will argue if Neanderthals were fully humans. Physical characteristics that make a human ancestor “fully human” include being more lightly built and showing extremely robust traits. Long bones of the limbs and distal bones being longer than the proximal bones, a larger fore-brain and having a chin, smaller teeth, fewer jaw muscles and smaller lower faces are atypical to fully human. Intellectual characteristics encompass ability to abstract thought, expressing cultural creativity and using language to communicate (Hawks, 2014).

Neanderthals are extinct species of human within the genus Homo. The species evolved within the last 300,000 years. In regard to the anatomy of Neanderthal, it is essentially within human scope, with the equivalent number of bones as modern humans and they also function in the same way. The anatomical differences include that Neanderthals had more robust build and distinguishing morphological features. They had shorter limbs, barrel shaped rib cage and bigger nose as compared to the modern humans. According toTrinkaus & Shipman (1992) they were much stronger when compared to modern humans with extremely strong arms and hands and had comparative height and weight with modern humans. They had bigger sockets and bigger brain sections controlling vision, the reason there are perceived to have had better eyesight than modern humans. They had a big brain capacity; approximately 1200-1750 ml and hence about 100 ml bigger than modern humans (Gibbons, 2011). In regard to culture, Neanderthal buried the dead, had controlled fire use, performed religious rituals and utilized complex sentence structure within their spoken language (Trinkaus & Shipman, 1992). Neanderthals and modern human inhabited the same cave though at different times, used similar tools and hunted same animals. Comparison of Neanderthal genomes and that of modern humans indicated only 78 new nucleotide substitutions. They also interbred with modern humans indicating some compatibility (Gibbons, 2011). Denisovans are extinct human species and were much different from modern humans. They live about 1,000,000 years ago. The finger bone that has been discovered so far was abnormally wide and robust. Denisovans lived in a caved that Neanderthals and modern humans lived. Their DNA has been found to be genetically different from that of Neanderthals and modern humans (Gibbons, 2011).

Neanderthals are fully human. They engaged in cultural habits that modern humans practice such as burying their dead, using tools, had an intricate social structure and used language. Neanderthal anatomy it is essentially within human scope and with differences that are very minor and can attributed to genetic adjustments because they were isolated individuals who lived a rigorous life within a harsh, cold climate. Their genome components also indicate similarity with that of humans where there have been only78 nucleotide substitutions within the last 78 years and such few changes indicate human lineage where only genetic modifications and mutations have occurred (Gibbons, 2011).

Characteristics atypical to a fully human consist of the ability to use language, intellectual ability, formation of social structure, and ability to perform cultural activities such as burying the dead and religious rituals. The anatomical characteristics are similar to the anatomical features found in the modern humans. In this view, Denisovans are not fully humans but Neanderthals are fully humans because they had almost all characteristics found in modern humans.

Gibbons, A. (2011). Who Were the Denisovans? Science. Vol.26 (333). Gibbons, A. (2011). Close Encounters of the Prehistoric Kind. Science. Vol.7 (328). Hawks, J. (2014). Still Evolving. Scientific American. Trinkaus, E & Shipman, P. (1992). The Neanderthals: Changing the Images of Mankind. New York: Knophf.

#2 Evolution- Summary of Learning Outcomes

Name Institutional Affiliation Instructor Course Date

Over many decades, evolution of human being has been a subjected of research and discussion among many scholars, scientists and anthropologist. However, there is no single answer to that addresses the questions surrounding evolution as new discoveries are made every other time. This paper will review the learning outcomes of the previous units by looking what was striking the most and how adds value to my understanding of human evolution.

The most striking thing in chapter four is the fact that human beings are related to gorillas and chimpanzees but not their descendants. Most interesting is the fact that chimps and humans share 98.4% of the DNA. Also, the number of primate species is very significant. Despite the fact that the number is estimated to be between 250 and 300, only six of the species are apes while humans have only one species. Monkeys comprise the largest group of the species. Therefore, studying primates does not only help us understand the evolutionary lineage of human beings but also the behavioural traits that accompanied the primates in the evolutionary process. Africa is considered the cradle of mankind. This means that apes evolved first in Africa before its continuation in Europe and Asia. It is interesting to also learn that evolution can be dated back to as many years as 22 million years ago. The Proconsul was the first apes to be discovered in Africa while Sivapithecus appeared first in Europe. It is worthy to note that not all apes evolved the present day but some became extinct in the later Miocene. The few that survived gave rise to the current apes and humans, with monkeys undergoing substantial adaptive radiation hence forming a basis for the evolutionary characteristics of the modern species.

Also, different have different view of the world. There are those who view the world as a single entity while there are those whole hold on to the notion of double existence of the word. The varied views imply that different philosophies of knowledge about the world and how human beings came into existence exist. Conflicts are bound to arise given that religion believes in one supernatural being who is responsible for the creation of mankind. On the other hand, the scientist does not acknowledge this idea as they believe in evolution of human being from primitive forms to the modern being. The conclusion arrived at by the scientists is based on tangible evidence and scientific researches.

In summary, the existence of modern human beings triggers more enquiries and the need for more knowledge about the process of evolution. Different philosophies have emerged with each philosopher trying to give a justification of his or her view on human life. As far as early anthropologists like Mary Leaky and Charles Darwin believed that modern man was once an ape, it is important to note that the size of the brain or rather the level of intelligence was not the only trait that distinguished human being from apes. Other distinguishing characteristics emerged with time, thus generating other questions as to whether evolution is an endless process.

Parker, S. T., & Jaffe, K. E. (2008). Darwin’s legacy: Scenarios in human evolution. Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press. Susan G., and Francis E., (2014). Early Pliocene Bipedal Apes. Online lecture.

Article Summary Your name: Institution name:

1.Representing Islam: Orientalism and its Discontents

This article is about classic orientalism about Western conceptions of “the Orient,” in particular the Islamic and Arab world. Most colonial an post colonial studies have emerged from engagements with, and elaboration of, Said’s literature. This article has criticized Said for the gender-blindness of Orientalism. This blindness refers not only to a literal blindness to the centrality of gender an sexuality in orientalist discourse, but also to Said’s assertation that orientalism has been an exclusively male province. Abu-Lughod (2001) has undermined this view by documenting and exploring the ways in which women historically have participate in the development of Orientalism. Said’s work has not only contributed to numerous debates about women’s role in orientalism and the ways in which orientalism is/was gendered, orientalism has been part and parcel of the inspiration behind important new scholarship about gender and women in Islam and Middle East, work that is sensitive to women’s experiences.

2.Islamophobia & Islamophilia

The relationship between terrorism and Islam has become a central concern following 9/11, and this has created a new round of culture argument (Mamdani, 2002). This argument has turned religious especially Islam into a political category. Differentiating a “good Muslim” from a “bad Muslim,” rather than civilians from terrorists. This article by Mamdani (2002) has suggested that people should lift the quarantine and turn the cultural theory of politics on its head. Beyond simple but radical suggestion that if there is a bad Muslim and a good Muslim, there is bad Westerners and a good Westerners. What is problematic about Islamophobia is its universalizing and essentializing quality, which has cast Islam religion and all followers of Islam as potential and real enemies of the world (Mamdani, 2002). What has been harder to assess is the challenge of countering Islamophobia impulses in ways that do not simply reinforce or invert them by cultivating their opposite: the image of the Muslim as “friend,” as a figure identified with the Self, characterized as familiar, and with whom legitimate conflict is not possible.

3. Kemalism, a Global Mode of Politics

Over the years, commentators on Middle Eastern politics have been surprised, seduced and scandalized by the contradictory and unexpected relationship between popular politics and secularism. By contrast, social movement that have been committed to the reintroduction of religion into political and public life have been made use of the media of popular politics, including the vote and mass demonstration. In Turkey, self-described Islamic movements have asserted political demands against a secularized elite or secularizing by claiming the will of the person often through democratic channels. The effort at refashioning secularism, as a form of popular rather than elitist politics, has not continued primarily through the critical discourse, self-conscious of politicians or public intellectuals. The reflections and arguments of the latter frequently reinscribe the demonstration in the regnant narrative of popular politics in Turkey.

4. Islamization, Gender and Islamic Feminism

The article by Navaro-Yashin (1999) has examined the developments in ‘Islamic feminism’. Focusing on Turkey theocracy, it can be argued that Islamization of gender relations has develop an oppressive patriarchy that cannot be replaced in a legal reforms. While a lot of women in turkey resist this patriarchal and religious regime, an increasing number of turkey activists and intellectuals have called for separations of religion and state, feminists of a cultural relativist an post-modernist persuasion don’t acknowledge the failure of the Islamic projects. The Islamization of gender relations for a long time has received strong resistance. Over the years , the Islamic regime has experienced a serious crisis; it had failed to control workers, women, students, dissident nationalities and secular intellectuals. Over the past years, some supporters of ‘Islamic feminism’ have equated it with liberation theology in the west.

5. Islam and the City

There have been a resurgence of Islamic beliefs, and once again the questions of the Islamic cities have once again come to the fore (Abu-Lughod, 1987). In many parts of the Arab world, especially in the Middle East, urban planners are searching for the way to reproduce in today’s cities patterns of city building that have been identified as Islamic. According to Marcais, Islam is an urban religion, and in support of this contention, Marcais argued that prophet Muhammad was an urbanite suspicious of nomads (Abu-Lughod, 1987). Marcais has been able to use the earlier chain of orientalism that, the mosque, like the church and synagogue are essentially urban (citadine). It is important to criticize these approaches because most Arab nations planners are trying to recreate Islamic cities- but by means which are inappropriate because these planners focus more on the outcomes, rather than the processes (Abu-Lughod, 1987). They hope, by ordinance and edict, to preserve and to build new cities on an Islamic pattern, because cities are processes and not products. The elements that catalyzed the process that give rise to Islamic cities were: a distinction between the outsiders and members of the Umma (Abu-Lughod, 1987), which led to spatial and juridical distinction by neighborhoods; the segregation of gender which gave rise to a particular solution to the question of spatial organization.

6. Islam and Fiction

Sociology of literature is more like a field of flowers than a field of battle. In the past, sociology of literature has produce impressive theoretical assertions, brilliant, but isolated insights, and rich veins of research findings, but has not been organized around key debates or questions the way a proper field ought to be organized (Griswold, 1993). The sociology of literature has not been a favorite son of organized social science. Since the emancipation of literature study from the rigid research dicta historically entitled to offer aesthetic, historical and sociological generalization and criticism (Griswold, 1993). The academic disciplines that have been charged with the analysis and history of literature have been caught unaware by the impact of best seller, mass literature, the comics, popular magazines, and so forth. Academicians have maintained an attitude of indifference to the lower depths of imagination print. A challenge and a field have been left open and the sociologists are required to do something about it. Almost all scholars who have contributed to the collection of essays are in agreement that a “scientific” approach or method to the history of literature would lead to nowhere (Griswold, 1993). Not only do they believe that each literature work contains in them some non-rational elements, scholars also consider any approach inadequate with regard to the very nature of the work under investigation (Griswold, 1993). Consequently, sociology of literature as it was developed ten decade ago is rejected and condemned as “historicizing psychologism,” as “historical pragmatism” and as “positivistic method.”

Abu-Lughod, L. (2001) ‘Orientalism and Middle East Feminist Studies’, in Feminist Studies 27, 1. Abu-Lughod, J. (1987) ‘The Islamic City: Historic Myth, Islamic Essence and Contemporary Relevance’, in International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, 19, 2. Mamdani, M. (2002) ‘Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: A Political Perspective on Culture and Terrorism’, in American Anthropologist 104: 3. Navaro-Yashin, Y. (1999) ‘The Historical Construction of Local Culture: Gender and Identity in the Politics of Secularism versus Islam’, in C. Keyder (ed.) Istanbul between the Global and the Local. Rowman and Littlefield, Boulder. Seufert, G. (1999) ‘The Faculties of Divinity in the Current Tug-of-War’, in Les Annales de l’Autre Islam, No.6, 353-369. W. Griswold (1993) ‘Recent Moves in the Sociology of Literature’, in Annual Review of Sociology 19.

#4 Rights as culture

Name Tutor Course Date

Culture is one of the most important social aspects that have been guiding humans for centuries. Different people have always followed different cultures. It is through culture that people are diverse and this influences their perception of different issues. The relationship between people in the society is mainly governed by culture. Culture also influences the beliefs of the people in the society. The human rights issues are also influence by culture. Human right is considered the basic fundamental rights that should be enjoyed by all the humans regardless of their culture (Hood, 97). Some aspects of culture have been identified as the stumbling block for implementing the human rights. However human right is also a concept of culture. This creates some challenges in terms of addressing the human rights issues without considering the cultural issues and aspects. The paper thus discusses the concept of rights as a culture.

According to Cowan, right as culture is one of the conjunctions between rights and culture (10). The anthropologists consider law as culture as it is aimed at governing the daily lives of the people. The law is usually applied to certain group of people who may be diverse in nature. The citizens are required to abide by the law in all their activities. This is similar to culture where the people are required to abide by their cultural practices and beliefs. The concept of human rights is derived from the law. In most countries, the national laws have clearly defined the rights of the people. This is also the same for the international laws that have been developed by the bodies such as the United Nations. Rights are, therefore, a culture as it is derived from the laws which in itself is considered a culture. The relationship between the law and culture makes rights a cultural issue. Since the law is an object of analysis in terms of the cultural issues, the rights is also part of culture. Most of the rights that have been outlined in the laws are derived from the culture of the people. This plays an essential role in linking rights to culture. The rights in most cases are not informed by the philosophical assumptions. It is instead informed by the ideas of self and sociality. The ideals of self and sociality are closely related to the cultural aspects. In some instances, some of the rights issues have ended up being misinterpreted and misrepresented after leaving out the cultural aspects. According to Abu-Lughod, (p 784), the issues of rights and culture was misunderstood in the Afghan War. The American government insisted that it was freeing the women from the oppressive culture and upholding their rights. However, this failed to achieve any success as the culture was considered different from the rights. Most of the women still preferred their cultural practices as compared to the rights issues. The wearing of burqa which was seen as oppressive by the Americans did not stop even after the fall of the Taliban. This is a further indication that rights cannot be separated from culture. It is through culture that the people are able to understand the issues of rights. Most of the law makers are increasingly considering rights as culture. This has led to the development of a concept that is commonly referred to as human rights culture.

Cultural issues are considered as a tool for expanding legal and political apparatus. The culture of the people has to be respected in order for the aspects of rights to be successful. According to Hood, (p 102), there has been attempts to secure human rights while preserving the cultural identities of the people. This has been successful when dealing with the aspects of nature as well as political issues. The Islam world has faced some challenges in terms of maintaining the culture while securing the human rights. Most of the rights issues that have led to theses challenges are mainly associated with the western world which has totally different culture. This has led confusions and hence making it difficult to implement some of the human rights aspects. It is therefore an indication that rights is a cultural aspect. Any attempts to implement or enforce the rights issues on a particular group of people is bound to fail when culture is ignored (Calhoun, 870). However, it is also important to note that culture is not static and it undergoes changes over time. It is through the changes in the cultural aspects that the some of the countries have been able to fully embrace the rights issues that were not initially part of their culture.

The changes in culture has made is possible for some of the rights issues to be addressed. In the Arab world as well as Africa, the culture restricted some of the practices such as education of girls. However, with the changes in culture, the education for girls is currently acceptable. The concepts of equality are currently being embraced in most parts of the world as a result of culture changes. Most societies are striving to improve on the equality between men and women. There have been calls for positive cultural aspects to be maintained in order to ensure that the rights are promoted. According to Brown, (p 196), there have been calls to ensure that the culture is copyrighted. This can also play an important role in ensuring that the cultures of a particular group of people are not exploited. The rights of the sex workers have also been one of the contentious issues in most parts of the world. According to Kotiswaran, (p 582), there has been attempts to eliminate the sex trade through the implementation of strict legislations. This is as a result of how culture perceives the issues of sex trade. Most cultures have negative perceptions with regards to the sex trade and prostitution. As a result of this, it has become difficult for the rights of the sex workers to be protected. This is however practiced in the cultures that are less conservative.

In conclusion, it is evident rights can be considered as a culture. This can be attributed to the link between culture, law and rights. It is evident that the cultural issues are usually considered when developing the law which has a direct impact on the rights. The practical examples of the Afghan war indicate that rights laws and issues cannot be implemented when culture is not considered.

Works Cited

Kotiswaran, Prabha. Born unto Brothels-Toward a Legal Ethnography of Sex Work in an Indian Red-Light Area. Law & Social Inquiry Volume 33 (2008), Issue 3, 579–629. Brown, Michael. Born unto Brothels-Toward a Legal Ethnography of Sex Work in an Indian Red-Light Area. Current Anthropology Volume 39 (1998), Number 2, Cowan, Jane. Culture and Rights after Culture and Rights. American Anthropologist, Vol.108 (2006), No. 1. Calhoun, Craig. The Class Consciousness of Frequent Travelers: Toward a Critique of Actually Existing Cosmopolitanism. The South Atlantic Quarterly 101:4 (2002). Abu-Lughod, Lila. Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving? Anthropological Reflections on Cultural Relativism and its Others. American Anthropologist, 104:3 (2002), 783-790. Hood Steven. Rights Hunting in Non-Western Traditions. Human Rights Law. 1997

#5 My Soul Journey in South East Asia

[Author Name(s), First M. Last, Omit Titles and Degrees] [Institutional Affiliation(s)] Author Note Abstract

The essays below will focus on Southeast Asian geography, focusing on religious pilgrimages and reasons beyond. The paper will follow and explore four individuals as they embark on personal journeys on the holistic landscape of South East Asia. Surakarta, Central Java, Indonesia to Makam Sunan Drajat [the tomb of Sunan Drajat] Java, Indonesia.  An 18-year-old boy takes a journey after he discovers a letter from his mother who abandoned him at the doorstep of expat residents in Laos. Pakxe, Laos to Wat Xieng Thong, Khem Khong, Luang Prabang, Laos” A student at the National University of Laos. architecture faculty undertakes the journey to complete his thesis and re-link with his roots. Manila, Philippines to Kamay Ni Hesus, Lucban, Quezo A recent Social Science graduate embarks on a journey back to her homeland on a pilgrimage for mass prayer for slums in her land of origin. Mandalay, Myanmar” to Kyaiktiyo Pagoda, Mon State, Myanmar” An academic in the music field embarks on a journey to convert to Buddhism after he is drawn to subject matter of his studies.

My Soul Journey in South East Asia

My name is Widji Widodo. I was born in August 1998.I just turned 18 years old. The journey of my story began when my laminated school badge fell off my bag one day. It was picked up by a young girl. I heard someone running toward me and muttered to myself ‘I do not have extra lunch left’. Her voice droned in my ear. she shouted out in echoes. Poverty around me made me want to throw up my slices of well packed lunch box that I chewed on. The sounds and sights of poverty lingered all around me. She uttered my full name. I was surprises and numb, slowing down in my strides. Then I saw her waving my badge. I latched onto it sacredly. “Hey, are you related to…Widji Thukul, his real name was Widji Widodo! she uttered excitedly.

I was raised in the home of expats living in Indonesia in a place called ‘Solo.’ More formally known as Surakarta located in the middle of the island known as Java. The expat community in Solo retirees living mainly in the countryside and some foreign academics studying Javanese culture, language,culture and tradition was a mere distant observation, with a bundle of material in literature, video and audio all in my parents’ library. They were academics. I never questioned my original roots and succumbed to convenient sustainability. It was a life a step ahead of the contrast of daily life in Solo. My expat adoptive parents shunned off any airs of curiosity.

But that day I questioned my name. I sat in the library and found an enclosed cabinet full off publications. Who was this? I read more. Widji Widodo, he was born in Solo in 1963. He was a poet with a voice of activism in the social and political sphere. He was one of the activists Widji Thukul including who disappeared during the black period 1997-1998 when many activists were either missing or abducted, and some were even killed mysteriously. His poems are political, often critical of the Indonesian government (under Suharto) and the social conditions of the country. It’s suspected that he’s one of many anti-government protesters abducted by government forces. Vaguely I knew I was taken into this home from birth, after I was left at the doorstep of my academic and theatre inclined parents, they named me and chose that name. Why? I dug deeper. I was born in a neighbourhood close by shortly after Widjy Thukul that I was named after, went missing after a protest and there was no trace of him. My roots? Nobody really knew. I was left in their care. I questioned holding the books authored by Widji Thukul in my hand.

My first names, I was told, was given to them in a package with the books and a letter. My parents gave me the letter. The envelope italised “I leave you apart from the trenches of poverty and continue on my mission” When you are 18, take the pilgrimage to Makam Sunan Drajat.My journey to heal had sparked off. My point of departure was a pilgrimage.

I left at Surakarta and stopped at Solo Blalpan after almost four hours. Then walked for six minutes to Plaza Surabaya Gubeng and another bus from Plaza Surabaya for forty minutes. We reached the masjid Tamiriya Indrapura after one and a half hour on bus we got to the terminal Bunder and then another long ride for two hours at Pasar Waga. After a thirteen minute walk I reached my destination Makam Sunan Drajat. The tomb of Sonan Drajat is in Drajat, Lomongan. Sunan Drajat spread Islam in the island of Java. Born in 1470 AD by the name of Raden Qasim. Sunan Drajat was known for his philosophy and social awareness spirit. The Sunan Drajat philosophy of reducing poverty is enshrined in stairs to the he seventh level of the Tomb.

Memangun tyasing Sasoma recipe (we always make other people happy) Jroning like kudu Eling lan alert (in a jovial mood we should be aware and alert) Laksmitaning subrata tan nyipta marang pringgabayaning lampah (on the way to achieving the goal – a lofty we are not concerned with any form of obstacle) Mèpèr Hardaning Pancadriya (we should always suppress a surge of passions) Heneng – Hening – Henung (at rest we will get in a state of stillness and silence that we will achieve the goal – noble) Mulya to Panca Time (an inner and outer happiness can only be achieved with prayers five times a day) Mènèhana signed marang wong kang Wuta, Mènèhana manganese marang wong kang luwé, Mènèhana fashion marang wong kang Wuda, Mènèhana ngiyup marang wong kang kodanan (Give science for people to be clever, Teach morality in people who have no shame, and give the protection of people who suffer) [Article] Sunan Drajat also became known as a saint of songs of Java. Mocopat is a pickaxe that is played using a gamelan set “Singo Mengkok”. The gamelan set Sunan Drajat Kuno is stored in the museum of the Sunan Drajat complex that is located Sunan Drajat tomb. Clutching mother’s letter in my hand, I whispered out…My son…. Widji Wadoto.by the time you read this letter, arise, take a pilgrimage to Makam………hear the sounds, feel the words……. Pakxe, Laos to Wat Xieng Thong to Khem Khong, Luang Prabang, Laos My name is ……………………….. I am an architecture student at the National University of Laos (NUOL), a university located in Vientiane, the capital of Laos. I am originally from Pakse, which is predominantly Buddhist. I decided to embarked on a journey to Khem Khong, for an assignment of a thesis on architect sites in Laos. Laos had multiple architecture sites to choose from. I chose this as a particular combination as a journey of my soul. I initiated the journey with a short family visit in Pakxe. Tourists take the journey to Laos for many reasons but Laos Architecture is an exciting stimuli with the attachment to animism and Buddhism. Animal shapes and Buddha images are usually featured in Laos. Some historical constructions were damaged as a result of war but there are several remnants that wins the interest of architects, tourists, archaeologists and adventurers worldwide.

Significant attractions in Laos are influenced by the French colonial era. The city of Pakxe was founded by French administration. It was formerly a residence of King Ratsadanay (1874-1945), the father of Prince Boun Oum who became the Prime Minister between 1948–1950 and also from 1960–1962. He eventually retired from the political sphere and pursued business ventures from Pakxe and Chapassak until he went into exile, when communist forces came into power in 1975. The route northeast toward the No.38 Road, from there I was on route 13 to Vientiane where my University is based. Eventually it was Route 4 to Luang Prabang, Kingkitsarath Rd to Khem Khong. The destination was on the left of Khem Khong.

Wat Xieng Thong is at the tip of the peninsula in Luang Prabang, Laos. It is richly decorated and attractive. This royal temple was built in 1559 on the Mekong River Banks. It was one of the few temples that survived in the 1887 invasion of the Black flag army. The most attractive building is the congregation hall of the Wat Xieng Thong temple. Extensive decoration of gold stenciling on a black lacquer background covers the interior and exterior of the areas. A tree of life mosaic on a red background was created in the 1960’s with a standing Buddha picture and images of a tiger and two peacocks and a man walking. The mosaic has an entrance door intricately carved on either side. The interior consists of pillars of teak wood supporting the roof. The walls are stenciled in gold with animals, floral motifs and daily life scenes. r. Chariot Hall Tree of life Manila, Philippines to Kamay Ni Hesus, Lucban, Quezon The journey began with a traveler, Angelika Kei. She was born and raised in the Philippines but eventually moved to the USA with her parents and continued schooling there. During her last semester in Philippines college she was designated on an outreach programs in the Smokey Mountains. A slum area in the Manila, Philippines. Smokey Mountains is the largest dumpsite and impoverished area where garbage is gathered by over 250,000 people, who make a living this way. Several years have passed and she had achieved her academic levels in social sciences. She decides to embark back on a trip in a venture to take a pilgrimage of healing for the slums of Manilla. The bus journey was a three hour route. It passed Sariava and Tiaong Candelaria. There are mini buses and jeepeys that travel to Lucban. Kamay ni Hesus Shrine Kamay ni Hesus Shrine located in in Lucban Quezon is a destination for all those who seek to be part of the chapel healing mass. The journey involves climbing 305 steps to statue of Ascending Christ which is 50ft tall. The property has various sites inclusive of Noah’s Ark, Luklukan ni Maria, Resurrected Christ, Garden of Eden, The Angels Hill, Gallery of Saints, the religious Murals and The Marian Park. Noah’s Ark was intended to be spiritual retreat, for families and individuals in need of spiritual renewal. Mandalay, Myanmar” b. to “Kyaiktiyo Pagoda, Mon State, Myanmar” My Journey in Myanmar Myanmar is a country that is known for Buddhist Pagodas, natural landscapes and ancient cities with remarkable traditional ways. In an academic discourse in my music major I got drawn into an assignment. Shortly after I discovered my original heritage was linked to Myanmar. I made a bold decision to undertake a conversion to Buddhism as the insight and philosophy entered every segment of my soul, through my personal and academic journey. My Thesis was on Nandashay Sayar Tin, the composer of the national anthem. I eventually took on the initiative to name myself w Sayar, Burmese meaning “Teacher’, to link with my Mandalay roots. After high school, Tin worked at a private school and also established himself in traditional Burmese Sounds. The “young men Buddhist private school was founded by him in 1918. In 1930 the school was closed and Tin relocated to Yangon, where he had recorded music recorded, Tin joined a political movement. He composed the anthem ‘Kaba Ma Kyei’, the national Burmese anthem. “Till the end of the world’. Tin was imprisoned after patriotic lyrics of the song he composed after a ceremony rendition and accused of inciting activism by the British officers. He was eventually releases in 1946 and the song became a national anthem and he was awarded on the Independence Day on January the fourth in 1950. After I completed my thesis of Sayar Tin I undertook my journey of conversion to Buddhism. Kyaiktiyo Pagoda is perched on the edge of a cliff. It is a giant rock that is gravity defying and plastered with gold leaf. Also known as Golden Rock, it is a site of sacred pilgrimage site located in Mon State. According to legend folklore it is maintained that rock defies gravity and keeps balance as it contains a strand of Buddha’s hair that is meticulously placed. It was the day I converted to Buddhism

Evans, G (1998) The Politics of Ritual and Remembrance: Laos Since 1975 . Quin,G, Throwing money at the holy door: Commercial aspects of popular pilgrimage in Java, Fealy and Sally White (eds.) , Expressing Islam: Religious Life and Politics in Indonesia . Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies ( 2007), p 63-7 Usa International Business Publications , Laos Business Law Handbook Wilkinson,G(2015)Golden Rock, Myanmar: Asia’s mysterious giant rock defying the rules of gravity http://kamaynihesus.ph/about-us/ Jovino, S , Smokey Mountain: A walk through the slums of Manila,Philippines ,justonewayticket.com  Renown Travel ( 2010 – 2016), Wat Xieng Thong,One of Laos’ most beautiful and richly decorated temples Yampolsky,T,R,(2003) Wiji Thuku: People’s poet , Lontar Foundation, Jakarta. Article: , (Last Name, Article Title, Year),ture and Rights. American Anthropologist, Vol.108 (2006), No. 1. Calhoun, Craig. The Class Consciousness of Frequent Travelers: Toward a Critique of Actually Existing Cosmopolitanism. The South Atlantic Quarterly 101:4 (2002). Abu-Lughod, Lila. Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving? Anthropological Reflections on Cultural Relativism and its Others. American Anthropologist, 104:3 (2002), 783-790. Hood Steven. Rights Hunting in Non-Western Traditions. Human Rights Law. 1997

A life lesson in Romeo and Juliet taught by death

Due to human nature, we draw conclusions only when life gives us a lesson since the experience of others is not so effective and powerful. Therefore, when analyzing and sorting out common problems we face, we may trace a parallel with well-known book characters or real historical figures. Moreover, we often compare our situations with […]

Ethical Research Paper Topics

Writing a research paper on ethics is not an easy task, especially if you do not possess excellent writing skills and do not like to contemplate controversial questions. But an ethics course is obligatory in all higher education institutions, and students have to look for a way out and be creative. When you find an […]

Art Research Paper Topics

Students obtaining degrees in fine art and art & design programs most commonly need to write a paper on art topics. However, this subject is becoming more popular in educational institutions for expanding students’ horizons. Thus, both groups of receivers of education: those who are into arts and those who only get acquainted with art […]

Department of Anthropology

Writing Guide

The steps to writing a research paper.

1. Select a general topic

2. Research the selected topic

• How to Do Research at the UNT Library (from the UNT Libraries' Web site)
• Anthropology Subject Guide (finding anthropology-related books and articles from the UNT Libraries' Web site)
• Research Tools from the UNT Library

3. Evaluate your resources

• How to Search the Internet and Evaluate Internet Sources

5. Define/Refine Your Topic and Develop Your Thesis

Thesis - An arguable statement put forth for discussion and proof.

• A thesis should be a strong, original idea, claim, or argument.
• A thesis is normally found in the introduction of a paper.
• A thesis informs the reader of the purpose of your paper.
• A thesis should be specific, not broad or vague. Avoid vague terms like "good" or "bad."
• A thesis should analyze, not summarize.
• A thesis will tie together all the ideas of your paper.

6. Re-read with an eye on the thesis

7. Develop Supporting Ideas and Arguments

Make sure the content of your papers is relevant tyour argument. Read carefully and cut or revise parts of your paper that don't support your argument.

8. Types of Supporting Ideas and Arguments

• Data from a Research Project If you conducted a project, present summaries of the data you collected, and relevant examples.
• Facts & Figures Information about your topic that has been collected by other agencies or researchers
• Statistics These are not as central tanthropology as some other fields, but they can still greatly strengthen your arguments.
• Authorities (Quotes from Experts) You must establish the credentials of the authorities before their quotes are persuasive and credibility tthe argument.
• Textual Evidence Supporting information from texts.
• Historical Background

9. Take notes

10. Organize notes

11. Develop an Outline

An outline is key the organization of your paper. See the Purdue University guide for developing outlines at http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/general/gl_outlin.html

12. Write a Draft

When writing a draft, make sure to reference the Chicago Manual of Style . Please note that this requires the Adobe Acrobat Reader .

The Writing Lab at Purdue University provides thorough information on writing a research paper see below for assistance with particular parts of a draft:

• Writing a first draft ( http://owl.english.purdue.edu/workshops/hypertext/ResearchW/1draft.html )
• Introduction ( http://owl.english.purdue.edu/workshops/hypertext/ResearchW/writeintro.html )
• Paragraphs ( http://owl.english.purdue.edu/workshops/hypertext/ResearchW/paragrf.html )
• Conclusion ( http://owl.english.purdue.edu/workshops/hypertext/ResearchW/conclude.html )

13. Avoid Plagiarism

Plagiarism may be defined as the following:

• Using the exact words or phrases of a source without proper quotation marks both before and after the words or phrases.
• Using the exact words or phrases or the ideas of a source without proper documentation in APA style.
• Using slightly changed words or phrases of a source tavoid quotation.
• Submitting a paper that in any way represents the words, phrases, or ideas of someone else as your own.
• Submitting a paper that you did not write.

This definition of plagiarism was written by the English Faculty at Weatherford College.

14. Citing Works Within a Paper

When citing works within a paper, make sure to reference the Chicago Manual of Style Please note that this requires the Adobe Acrobat Reader .

15. Write a Works Cited or Bibliography

When writing a Works Cited or Bibliography, make sure to reference the Chicago Manual of Style Please note that this requires the Adobe Acrobat Reader .

When using APA style, you may reference APA Formatting and Style Guide at Purdue http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/01/

16. Leave it alone for a couple of days

17. Submit for peer review if possible

18. Revise, revise, and revise!

19. Proofread, Proofread, Proofread!

For an excellent, proofreading checklist, visit the Writing Center at George Mason University Online Handouts, including:

• 23 Ways to Improve Your Draft
• Editing Checklist

All available at https://writingcenter.gmu.edu/writing-resources/wc-quick-guides .

If you need assistance writing your research paper, try these UNT Resources

• The University Writing Center
• The Learning Center

Thinking about UNT?

It's easy to apply online. Join us and discover why we're the choice of over 46,000 students.

Anthropology 201 Language, Culture, Power

• Requirements
• Charlene Makley's Website
• Anthro Home

Guidelines for Writing in Anthropology

• AAA Anthropology Style Guide
• Doyle Online Writing Lab
• Strunk, William, and E. B White.  The Elements of Style. 3 rd ed. New York: Pearson Longman, 2000. Print or Online
• Organize Evidence: Anthropological writing requires that you organize ethnographic data (descriptions of activities and events, oral narratives) and other types of evidence (such as historical accounts, newspapers, maps, etc.) to describe and analyze a phenomenon, event or cultural feature/practice.
• Identify a Compelling Question : While analyzing ethnographic data you should seek to identify anthropologically significant or interesting patterns in relation to the body of literature you’re working from (course readings, in our case).
• One of the most common errors we see in new researchers is some kind of ethnocentrism, or lapse in cultural relativism . Inexperienced researchers often attribute an emotion or value to why people are doing what they are doing. For example, if you notice all the people who present as men at a meeting are only speaking to other people who present the same way; it would be reductionist to attribute this to simple sexism .
• The job of the anthropologist is to investigate why this appears to be a standard mode of interaction at this particular meeting, with these particular participants.
• Commenting that something is weird, for example, is not an anthropological statement – nor does it aid in conducting an anthropological analysis. Things in your research context may be different than what you expect, but we do not judge those differences.
• Thinking anthropologically requires temporarily suspending ones’ assumptions about how the world works, about what is normal, and strange . In other words, anthropology exhorts its practitioners to be culturally and linguistically relative — to try to understand cultural and linguistic difference on their own terms . Anthropological thinking refuses ethnocentrism and attempts to see difference without arranging that difference in a hierarchy.
• A Title that clearly reflects the thesis statement or main point of the paper.
• A thesis statement is the controlling idea of an essay which presents the topic and the writer's perspective on that subject. An explicit statement, it focuses and limits the topic and usually occurs at the beginning of the paper. The thesis statement should contain an organizing principle or theme for the paper.
• Clear organization provides a map of the papers’ argument for the reader. The argument should be logically arranged so that a lay-person can follow it. Keep your audience in mind – they are not inside your mind.
• Your paper should explicitly engage at least ONE reading from the course syllabus. Define the methodological concepts of your discussion early on: how will your fieldwork data illustrate or challenge those concepts? If you introduce the term crosstalk in the first paragraph but fail to define it until the fifth, you will have simultaneously lost and annoyed your reader.
• A topic sentence controls the focus and direction of the paragraph.
• Evidence may be in the form of quotations (or paraphrasing) from your fieldwork notes, scholarly sources, statistical data, or other scholarly material that supports a position or argument.
• Your Conclusion should serve as a capstone to the paper. The conclusion should not be a simple restatement or summary of the rest of the paper. The conclusion should be strong and interesting, driving your thesis forward. Lead your readers into a new headspace – push them to think about your thesis in its totality and consider its future consequences. A caution: posing new questions in the conclusion often leads the reader feeling like there is no conclusion.
• It’s not enough to cite scholarly sources, you have to tell the reader why that source, quotation, paraphrase, etc., is of any use or importance. You have to connect that source to the thesis of the paper, and to the other sources in the paper.
• ACTIVE: The students produced well written, stylistically appropriate essays.
• Note: overuse of the passive voice is not poetic, nor does it sound cleverer, or smart. I promise.
• Charlene suggests that we strive to pay attention to our writing so as to avoid overly verbose passages.
• Charlene said to avoid excessive wordiness.
• When proofreading watch for long sentences. Be careful not to cram too many ideas (especially competing ones) in a single sentence.
• Shorter sentences are often far clearer than their rambling counterparts. Ask yourself: Are your sentences composed of a series of incomplete clauses delimited only by an absurd number of commas?

Professor Charlene Makley – Office: Vollum 312 – Phone: 771-1112, ext. 7461 – Office Hours: Mon 4:30-6 pm, Thurs 3:10-4:30 pm, via Zoom

• A to Z entry list
• Browse entries
• Write for us

Support the encyclopedia

Writing anthropology pdf

• Methods & Methodology
• Science & Technology

Writing is key in anthropology, as one of its main modes of communication. Teaching, research, publications, and outreach all build on, or consist of, writing. This entry traces how anthropological writing styles have evolved over time according to changing politics in the discipline. It starts out in the late nineteenth century, showing how early writings in the discipline aimed to be objective. While writing anthropology in a literary mode goes a long way back, it was not until the 1970s that writing began to be collectively acknowledged as a craft to be cultivated in the discipline. This led to a boom of experimental ethnographic writing from the 1980s, as part of the ‘writing culture’ debate. The idea behind experimental narratives was that they might convey social life more accurately than conventional academic writing. Today, literary production and culture continue to be a source of inspiration for anthropologists, as well as a topic of study. Anthropological writing ranges from creative nonfiction to memoirs, journalism, and travel writing. Writing in such non-academic genres can be a way to make anthropological approaches and findings more widely known, and can inspire academic writing to become more accessible. Recent developments in anthropological writings include collaborative text production with interlocutors and artists. However, the tendency for experimentation is also held in check, as publishing in academic publication formats and featuring in citation indices is crucial for anthropologists’ careers. Still, as our writing moves increasingly online, there is a growth of flexible formats for publishing, including online books, essays on current affairs, and conversations in journals.

Introduction

Writing is essential in anthropology. As a major way of communication, teaching, research, and outreach all draw on, or result in writing. But it was not until long after anthropology emerged in the late nineteenth century that writing was first recognised as a crucial craft that required careful training. This entry spans the changing politics of writing anthropology from the late nineteenth century, when Victorian natural science notions about texts as objective was the model for scholarship, to the 1970s, when a sensitivity to style was identified, developing into a movement in the 1980s around the idea of experimental ethnographic writing as initiated by the 'writing culture’ debate (Clifford & Marcus 1986). The protagonists of that debate argued in favour of more detailed accounts of research processes, including the role of the fieldworker in the composition of anthropological writing. Moving on to the twenty-first century, this entry suggests that the understanding that anthropologists are also writers has brought a new emphasis on writing in the discipline. It includes both writing accessible academic anthropology and writing in different genres, ranging from creative nonfiction to memoir, anthropological journalism, and travel writing. Anthropology has existed in a literary mode for quite some time, but as it underwent a ‘literary turn’ (Scholte 1987), literature has become an even stronger resource for the discipline: certainly as an influence to enhance writing styles, but also as a topic for research into literary production and culture. This is made obvious by increasing requests for writing workshops for students and young scholars. Yet, writing remains constrained insofar as publishing is a must when making an anthropological career. Here it is governed by academic publication formats, readership, and citation indices. This entry is organised chronologically, discussing the changing politics of writing academic anthropology over time in terms of styles, publishing, and careers, including the impact of the ‘literary turn’, which leads to a consideration of anthropological writing genres and more recent writings for digital channels.    

Changing politics of writing anthropology  

Classic anthropological monographs, written as the discipline was getting established, were influenced by lingering natural scientific notions of objectivity. These monographs generally left the anthropologist outside the text, at least when it came to personal experiences and feelings, such as revelations, which were assumed to inhibit their scientific value. This applies to the works by founding anthropologists such as Bronislaw Malinowski and Franz Boas. Malinowski’s academic work stands in particularly stark contrast to his controversial private diaries from fieldwork in New Guinea and the Trobriand Islands in 1914-1915 and 1917-1918 (Malinowski 1967). Published posthumously by his widow, the diaries revealed his personal prejudice against interlocutors as well as other problematic attitudes.

But it was the ideal of objectivity, with what would be regarded as its constrained style, that eventually provoked anthropologists to find freer forms of writing, hoping to provide more precise reflections of the richness and complexity of fieldwork. This entailed a shift to taking writing seriously, as identified in the introduction to the volume The anthropologist as writer (Wulff 2016: 1). Prefigured by the interest in narratives of Victor Turner and Edward Bruner in the 1950s and 1960s, a careful consideration of writing became a major feature of anthropology in the 1970s with Clifford Geertz’s work, especially The interpretation of cultures (1973). It was Geertz who developed the concept of ‘thick description’ for a detailed and engaging mode of writing that provides an understanding of human action in a wider context. Geertz’s seminal essay on this topic describes a cockfight in Bali and opens as follows: ‘Early in April of 1958, my wife and I arrived, malarial and diffident, in a Balinese village we intended, as anthropologists, to study’. In this uneasy stage, as newcomers among people who did not acknowledge their presence, they learn after about ten days that ‘a large cockfight was held in the public square’. Geertz goes on to note that cockfights are mostly illegal in Bali:

In this case, however, perhaps because they were raising money for a school that the government was unable to give them, perhaps because raids had been few recently, perhaps, as I gathered from subsequent discussion, there was a notion that necessary bribes had been paid, they thought they could take a chance on the central square and draw a larger and more enthusiastic crowd without attracting the attention of the law. They were wrong...A truck full of policemen armed with machine guns roared up (Geertz 1973b: 412-15). 

The policemen ‘began to swing their guns around like gangsters in a motion picture, though not going so far as to actually fire them’. People ran, and so did the Geertzes, who found themselves hiding from the police in a courtyard with a local couple, which was what made them accepted by the villagers. It is most likely the captivating style, built with suspense and surprise, that explains why this essay has become classic, and the way the Geertzes are included in the story as protagonists who are experiencing potential danger together with locals, but then are rescued by a local couple. This turned out to be an efficient way of conveying how an ethnographic event such as an illegal cockfight could be analysed as a kind of play that mirrored major power struggles in the village.

In the 1980s, a debate known as the ‘writing culture’ debate arose, which argued for more detailed accounts of the research process, including the role of the fieldworker, in anthropological writings than what had previously been the case (Clifford & Marcus 1986). There was an expectation that the fieldwork process should include great and intimate details, including the fieldworker’s feelings and relationships, as that promised to produce a more exact account of fieldwork. A critique levelled against ‘writing culture’ was that its proponents focused too much on the activities of fieldworkers rather than on the people the research is about. The legacy of that debate is a heightened awareness of the intellectual impact of writing style, the politics of representation, and the partial truth of any account. Connected to the ‘writing culture’ debate was the idea of anthropological writing as ‘cultural critique’. It suggested that anthropology should identify alternative ways of considering what is often taken for granted in society. Anthropological writing should be part of ‘a strategy for discovering diversity in what appears to be an ever more homogenous world’ and ‘making visible to others the critical perspectives and possibilities for alternatives that exist’ (Marcus & Fischer 1987: 133). Some of those alternatives concerned the role of women in social life – insisting, for instance, that women should be given opportunities for education and careers that had of course not always been regarded as a matter of importance. Supported by the second wave of feminism, the book Women writing culture (Behar & Gordon 1995) explored issues of identity and difference in relation to sexual politics, racial history, and moral predicaments of anthropology. But its mission was a direct critique of the claim by James Clifford and George E. Marcus (1986), that feminist anthropologists had not written in interesting and experimental ways. The volume challenged the male dominance in the discipline at the time (see also Abu-Lughod 1993).

What proponents of experimental forms of writing share is that a sensitivity to style and an openness to other writing genres may produce more than just a pleasant turn of phrase. ‘Narrative and related writing genres may actually offer more accurate – hence, more scientific – means for us as scholars to convey the full range of the human experience’ (Gottlieb 2015: 742) than conventional academic writing. A defining feature of experimental writings today is their argument for accessibility, even though this was not necessarily a characteristic of all different stages of this movement. There is a growing understanding that even anthropological texts about complicated issues can preferably be phrased in a lucid way, as exemplified by Ulf Hannerz (1992) and Thomas Hylland Eriksen (2018), among many others. This goes against the traditional academic norm to write in a convoluted style which can still be regarded as a marker of prestige, more so than being straight-forward. While some very complicated issues do require a more complex writing style and specialised vocabulary, many academic topics do not. This insight is gaining ground, but it also leads to the need for (re)training academics to write in a more transparent manner. Clarity and captivating narratives are more useful both in teaching and research than the writing style of some traditional ethnographies that have been referred to as ‘boring’ and ‘virtually unreadable’ (MacClancy 1996: 237). The desire for being not only clear but also more engaging has opened up space for experimental writing, such as the early In sorcery’s shadow (1987), a memoir of an apprenticeship among the Songhay people who live in Niger and Mali in West Africa. Written by Paul Stoller and Cheryl Olkes as a literary essay informed by theory, it did not include explicit academic references: there is no bibliography. The memoir has been appreciated for its well-crafted narrative that also includes methodological points as Stoller learnt about and understood a way of life which was at first alien to him. The different stages of his training to become an apprentice sorcerer are carefully conveyed.   

With the growth of global connections came the insight that interlocutors might, and indeed should, be able to read anthropological work about themselves without the risk of being harmed personally or politically. Such ethical issues are considered in When they read what we write (Brettell 1993), which mainly focuses on how this can impact the anthropologist and the writings. There is, for instance, the devastating experience of having one’s published work contested by those it is about. Such experiences can be unexpected, which makes them even more painful. In addition, they might impact negatively the possibility for future research in the community for other colleagues, who might have had nothing to do with this work. Newspaper accounts of anthropological writings add complexity to this problem, especially when they misrepresent findings and if interlocutors read the newspapers but not the actual text. Highly politicised contexts such as conflicts over national language and between ethnic groups may feed into resulting dilemmas. While awareness of the difficulty of doing justice to divided communities is important, the necessity of including the studied people as a potential audience, and not only academics, remains a primary concern in contemporary anthropological writing. Existing concerns are fuelled by the rise of digital online journals and e-books, which can reach a vast and worldwide audience in an instant, particularly when they are Open Access.

All of this raises questions regarding publication outlets in relation to making an academic career, and negotiations over whether a monograph or journal article ranks the most highly (Wulff 2019; Boyer 2016). This has been a concern since the natural sciences, where journal articles are the prime publication format, became the model for citation indices and research assessments. As part of ‘new public management’ of European universities since the 1980s (Shore & Wright 2017), ranking systems have been in place for publishers, their books, and journals. They attempt to emulate private sector management models and business-like approaches to improve research efficiency and results. At some universities, publishing with highly ranked publishers can thus impact positively a department’s funding, as well as the anthropologist’s salary. It certainly impacts hiring practices. Rankings have also reinforced the notion of ‘publish or perish’, meaning that, even in order to keep a job, academics sometimes have to publish a certain number of high-ranking publications per year, for if not, their careers may be in jeopardy. In spite of these measures, the politics of academic publishing remain elusive as criteria keep changing, not least because what one cohort of anthropologists was trained for is bound to be different once they are exposed to assessment. There is a debate over the extent to which the quality of academic writing is and should be tailored to research assessments and evaluation formats, and what the intellectual consequences of this might be (Strathern 2000).

Anthropological writing is increasingly influenced by these managerial trends. In our discipline, journal articles continue to be important, but there is an enduring notion that long-term fieldwork can best be justified in the space of a full-length monograph. While a number of substantial journal articles might work almost as well, it may be more cumbersome to find those articles rather than reading a book where the material and analysis are all in one place. As books, edited volumes, and book chapters are less prominent in the natural sciences and thus on the ranking lists, they become less prestigious on the citation indices where anthropology is included. Moreover, the amount of work it takes to write a monograph is not rewarded, as it is often treated as just another ‘item’. What is more, appreciative references are not distinguished in the citation indices from negative ones. [1] Anthropology, in so far as it is a critical science, can also not be captured by numerical metrics (Stein 2018). The logic of such ranking lists is not in accordance either with how certain edited volumes or at least notable introductions to volumes that were published before citation indices were set up keep having a major influence on anthropology. This aspect is obviously not indicated in citation indices or as impact factors, as they only take account of recent work that is available online. Fredrik Barth’s introduction to his edited Ethnic groups and boundaries (1969) is a case in point as it keeps being a standard reference in anthropology (see also Appadurai 1986) but was published too early to be included in indices. As to the fate of books, printed or electronic, fiction or nonfiction, John Thompson, in his sociological research of the publishing business, predicts that as long as it is attractive enough to readers, the book will ‘continue to play an important role as a means of expression and communication in our cultural and public life for the foreseeable future’ (2011: 399-400).

Writing anthropology in relation to literature

Though anthropology’s literary mode is nothing new, the ‘writing culture’ debate intensified the presence of literature in anthropology, which has been identified in terms of a ‘literary turn’ because of literature’s impact on anthropological writing (Scholte 1987). This was in line with the growing awareness of the writing process. As a part of the move away from the detached textual style, as well as when it came to narrative structure, anthropologists took inspiration from fiction. Geertz (1988) even identified the ‘anthropologist as author’. [2] An anthropology of writing and writers emerged. Local literary work from a field was read as ethnography and might be included in anthropological accounts. With his background as a student of literature at University College London, Victor Turner later connected African ritual and Western literature as ‘mutually elucidating’ (1976: 77-8). Jane Austen was identified by Richard Handler and Daniel Segal (1990) as an ethnographer of marriage, kinship, and class in early eighteenth century England. In the 1990s, Nigel Rapport (1994) organised his fieldwork in the village of Wanet in England in relation to the writer E.M. Forster as an imagined fellow fieldworker. Rapport’s technique was to ‘zigzag’ between the work of Forster and his own field experience. A similar way of combining anthropology and literature, of writing anthropology together with a literary companion, is Kirin Narayan’s Alive in the writing (2012). Narayan juxtaposes her experience of ethnographic writing with that of Anton Chekhov, the renowned playwright and short story writer, as he researched and wrote about Sakhalin Island, the Russian penal colony. Recognising Chekhov as her ethnographic muse releases Narayan’s writing creativity. Inspired by Chekhov’s letter about his journey to Sakhalin, his reflections on his research, and writing process, Narayan feels an affinity with him as she finds topics and texts to include in her book. Incidentally, Chekhov’s work on Sakhalin is nonfiction, and as Naryan gets to know his literary oeuvre , she learns that he is a literary writer with an ethnographic sensibility. [3] Included in Alive in the writing, at the end of the chapters, are writing exercises, and the book concludes with a postscript with advice for different stages of the writing process, ranging from getting started and moving forward to moving past writer’s block, and revising and finishing. In response to the upsurge of non-academic writing workshops and university programs in creative writing in Euro-America during the last decades, there is a plethora of writing manuals, also by fiction writers (cf. Wulff 2017). The daughter of Alfred Kroeber, and his writer-wife Theodora, Ursula Le Guin (2015: ix, xiii, xii) was not an anthropologist herself, but there are anthropological aspects in her fiction, referred to as science fiction or fantasy. Anthropologists appear in her writings, and the ‘other worlds’ she imagined resonate with an anthropological endeavour to study very different ways of living. Le Guin also wrote a ‘handbook for storytellers – writers of narrative prose’ to go with the writing workshops she taught. Her declaration that her ‘book is not for beginners’ attests to an awareness that writing is a skill that is never fully learnt, but ideally one to keep developing. Observing that some people have a gift for writing, she points out that writing is a skill to be learnt and mastered even for those who are gifted (cf. Wulff 2018). Le Guin emphasises that reading one’s own work also requires training. This would be what Brian Moeran refers to as ‘self-editing’, the process of making choices about style, grammar, organization, and of what to include and exclude (2016: 60-5). ‘Editing’, Moeran goes on, ‘is not writing but rewriting’ and this entails being ‘tough with yourself’ (2016: 60-5). Before submitting a text to an editor at a publishing house, Moeran’s advice is to get a sympathetic colleague’s stern comments on it.     

Writing about connections between anthropology, ethnographic writing, and literature, Caroline Brettell observes that:  

The experiments with forms of ethnographic writing that might enliven the ethnographic text represent just one dimension of the way in which anthropology has engaged with literature…Some anthropologists have drawn directly on works of literature as inspiration; others have subjected these literary works to an anthropological analytical and theoretical lens (2015: 73).

Yet others, she goes on to say, ‘have found the ethnographer or the autoethnographer in the novelist’. Anthropological interest in literary production certainly exists, such as in the ethnographic study of writing as craft and career in Ireland. Taking the question ‘How come the Irish are such great writers?’ as a point of departure, I have argued that this goes back to the oral storytelling tradition in Ireland, and a culture that cultivates this practice at social gatherings, also by teaching it to younger generations. Then, there is extensive training in creative writing at schools, as well as writing competitions, and an abundance of writing workshops for adults at literary festivals and other literary events. All this fosters a habit and an urge to write (Wulff 2017: ix). Ethnographies of writing are not limited to textual analysis. They can be based on live literature events and public readings of fiction at literary festivals. Drawing on a study of one of the major literary festivals in the UK called the Hay Festival and the small Polari Salon, an LGBT literary festival at the South Bank Centre in London, Ellen Wiles conveys the value of experiential literary ethnography not only to the academic world, but also to arts practitioners, curators, and producers (2021). It was through participant observation at literary festivals that Wiles learnt that, even in our digitalising world, such live events draw big audiences, not least because they provide appreciated opportunities for face-to-face connections between authors and readers.

Another take on how literature can relate to ethnography is the conceptualisation of fiction as a written text along with songs, poetry, essays, drama, and even newspapers and letters that are produced in a society under study (Archetti 1994a). This can reveal, on one level, interpersonal relationships and, on another level, cultural and social contexts such as history and the nation. It has been suggested that there are three types of fiction: ‘The realistic historical novel that attempts to ”reconstruct” a given period in a given society; the totally imagined story set in a historical period; and the essays devoted to an interpretation of a nation, its characteristics and creed’. In addition, ‘some kind of historical and sociological knowledge is important in fiction’, which makes it similar to writing anthropology. In line with much anthropology, in this volume fiction is treated as ‘ethnographic raw material, not . . . authoritative statements about, or interpretations of, a particular society’ (Archetti 1994b: 16-17).

Many anthropologists have expressed a sense of being confined by the rigidity of the academic style, which has led them to seek refuge in fiction writing. This has been a way to complement what has been found to be unsatisfactory with producing dissertations or other academic writing (Stankiewicz 2012). Reflecting on fiction versus anthropology, there is a common notion that ‘anthropology is unique in its specification of dimensions for comparison and its standards for ethnographic descriptions. Are such dimensions and standards straitjackets? If one thinks so, one might turn to fiction for consolation’ (Eriksen 1994: 192; see also Narayan 1999). This advice seems to be both about reading fiction, also from one’s field, and writing fiction by drawing on fieldwork, such as In an antique land (Ghosh 1992). It turns out that ethnographic novels abound. They were (and are) written by authors who were trained in anthropology, and in some cases pursued an academic career while others went into writing fiction full time. An early ethnographic novel is The delight makers (Bandelier 1890), making use of many years of fieldwork with Pueblo Indians. Their eyes were watching God (Hurston 1937) also has an anthropological perspective. In 1954, the bestseller Return to laughter was published by Laura Bohannan under the pseudonym Elenore Smith Bowen. This is a fictionalised story about Bohannan’s fieldwork in Africa, including aspects of tribal life such as the impact of witchcraft. The novel has been widely read not only by students and scholars, but also by a general audience. It is a testimony to the efficacy of conveying anthropological insights through fiction. It is common that social scientists and anthropologists, including those who drive their disciplines, appreciate fiction writers’ ‘capacity to depict the real and unveil truths’ (Fassin 2014: 52). It is even the case that ‘distinguished anthropologists and sociologists have admitted that they find, in the works of these authors, more compelling, more accurate, and more profound accounts of the social worlds they explore than in those proposed by the scholars who study them’ (Fassin 2014: 52; see also McLean 2017). In this spirit, a new brand of ethnographic writing has emerged, one that experiments with various literary styles, not just as embellishment, but also as a way of writing anthropology through creative writing and thereby conveying otherwise unconveyable truths. The volume Crumpled paper boat (Pandian & McLean 2017: 1-2), for example, is composed of ethnographic writing in the form of poetry, fiction, memoir, and scriptwriting, among others. The title is a line from a poem by Arthur Rimbaud and refers in the volume to ethnographic writing as a journey, ‘a transformative passage’ indicated by ‘a little lost boat’ and ‘the frustrations that lead writers to crumple and scrap the slips of paper on which they work’ until their texts will ‘float… to unforeseeable destinations’ (Pandian & McLean 2017: 1-2). Here, writing is about transformations of the author and saying the unsayable, rather merely conveying what social life is like.     

Anthropological writing genres                                                                   

It is obvious that academic scholarly writing is the major genre for anthropologists, and that it is supported by the art of writing field notes (Sanjek 1990, 2015; Andersen et al. 2020). Still, anthropologists do much writing in other genres, not only literary fiction, as discussed above, but also poetry (Rosaldo 2013, among many others). An anthropological career inevitably includes writing academic administrative texts such as a variety of reports and evaluations, but also writing grant proposals, yet another genre (Brenneis 2009; Finnström 2016). Contrary to many fiction writers, anthropologists tend to learn a certain writing style marked by academic strictness and cues such as aim, argument, engagement with debates and/or earlier research, theory, ethnography, method, conclusions, and bibliography. Anthropologists then tend to keep that style, rather than developing in new directions. Some of them, though, see an opportunity for changing track and tone as they move on to new research topics. Others switch between different genres, bringing back stylistic features from creative nonfiction, memoir, autoethnography, travel writing, journalism, and even fiction, poetry, and crime novel writing to their academic writing (Wulff 2016; Barton & Papen 2010).

Creative nonfiction, which tells stories about real events with fiction techniques, has been especially popular among anthropologists in the United States. This genre can be understood as ‘making the reading experience vivid, emotionally compelling, and enjoyable while sticking to the facts’ (Cheney 2001: 2). Originating in the 1960s New Journalism, this writing genre is often connected with the highly successful In cold blood (Capote 1965), a true crime story about the murder of a family on a farm in Kansas in the United States. The book builds on interviews with local people and police investigators, newspaper articles, and observation of the court case. Creative nonfiction has, since it was formulated, ‘gained momentum in subsequent years to inform assorted kinds of writing’ (Narayan 2007a: 130). The movement has come to include a variety of genres and is now established through ‘courses, grants, writing degree tracks, and journals’ (Narayan 2007a: 130). So what can ethnographers learn from creative nonfiction? One point is to strike a balance of writing about social life in an absorbing way without making things up. Another is to think of how to include and deal with situation, story, character, scenes, summaries, and so called ‘expository lumps’ (i.e. dense and heavy background information) when writing up their work (Narayan 2007a: 136-139). The advice to deal with the latter is to ‘break it up, spread it out, slip it into conversation’ (Le Guin 1998: 114).

Following up on writing anthropology in relation to literature, and in different genres, finding publishing outlets for work that is not strictly academic may be an issue. Yet some specialised journals for this exist, such as Anthropology & Humanism , the journal of the Society for Humanistic Anthropology, which publishes traditional academic articles as well as other anthropological writing genres: poetry, short fiction, and creative nonfiction essays in every issue. [4] These essays often take ethnographic or personal experiences as points of departure and move into more or less imagined realms. The vulnerable observer (Behar 1996), for example, is the story of how a Cuban-American anthropologist was away doing fieldwork on funeral practices in Spain, when her own grandfather died back in Miami. This experience made her argue for the emotional, subjective nature of fieldwork: the ethnographer cannot be detached, nor fully objective, in relation to their field. Spanning different genres, this book is also a kind of memoir, which has itself become a substantial genre in anthropology, primarily recalling events from the field but often going back to the personal life of the anthropologist (Jackson 2006; Narayan 2007b; Stoller 2008; Collins & Gallinat 2010). While memoirs can be expected to be written by older people who have lived long and eventful lives, it turns out that many anthropological memoirs are composed by writers who are still relatively young, or at least middle aged in their 40s or 50s, such as The power of the between (Stoller 2008: 4), triggered by the turmoil of a cancer diagnosis, which entailed a space ‘in-between’ life and death.

My father’s wars (Waterston 2014) is a daughter’s account about her father’s fate as told to her mainly by him, but also by her mother. This was a life course that was driven by dramatic historical events: Alisse Waterston's father had to flee the Holocaust in Poland with his family to Cuba. Eventually he joins the US Army, meets and marries an American woman, and finds himself commuting between Havana and New York, until Castro’s revolution forces the family to leave Cuba for Puerto Rico. This memoir exemplifies how an eventful personal story defined by dangers can convey major political events. Another kind of memoir is My life as a spy (Verdery 2018). When the secret police files in Eastern Europe became available after 1989, Katherine Verdery, an American anthropologist who had spent frequent long research stints studying political economy of social inequality, ethnic relations, and nationalism in communist Romania, discovered in her file that she had been surveilled by the secret police, the Securitate, and accused of being a spy. In this case, the memoir was a way to correct and contextualise a faulty local image of an anthropologist. At the same time, it is an important piece of information about how Romania operated during communism.

Travel writing is yet another form of memoir, as heralded in the classic Tristes tropiques (Lévi-Strauss 1992 [1955]) which documents travels and fieldwork in Brazil. Its proximity to travel writing was later problematised, when travel accounts about the colonies were critiqued for conveying a Western imperial perspective (Pratt 1992). Even though early travel writing relied too much on exoticisation, this is now changing (Nyqvist 2018). Yet travel writing continues to be a way to explore the world on behalf of people ‘at home’, to tell them about places elsewhere, often far away, thereby mediating the world. In addition to describing places and people, as well as the travel itself, travel writing also tends to address the conditions of travel.

Related to anthropological memoir as a genre is the notion of ‘autoethnography’, defined as ‘referring either to the ethnography of one’s own group or to autobiographical writing that has ethnographic interest’ – indeed, the two types can be related (Reed-Danahay 1997: 2). An autoethnography of borders is ‘ Illegal’ traveller , which combines fieldwork on undocumented immigrants with descriptions of the personal experience of having to flee Iran during dangerous circumstances. The preface, dated 1987, begins:

One cold night in late February, in a barren land surrounded by huge rugged mountains, I stood on a gravel road, like any other road in this rural area. Midnight passed; the whole landscape was wrapped in silence. The road separated Iran from Afghanistan. It was the border. Shrouded in a deadly stillness was the road, one of the most sanguinary roads in the world laid in wait for its next prey. It was a moonless night. “Good! The darkness shelters us,” said my smuggler… “If I take this step, I will be an ‘illegal’ person and the world will never be the same again.” That night I took that step and my odyssey of “illegality” began (Khosravi 2010: ix).

There are, again, overlaps between memoirs and autoethnography, yet an anthropological autoethnography is usually distinguished by an explicit and systematic theoretical structure which is intended to explain how a personal story that acknowledges power and inequality has a general ethnographic interest. This has been referred to as critical autoethnography (Reed-Danahay 2019). The experiences in the quote above, and subsequent ones about what it is like to be a refugee in Stockholm, also go into opinion pieces for newspapers such as The Guardian and The New York Times (Khosravi 2020). Contrary to writing anthropology, writing journalism always requires an accessible style, short sentences, and a key point introduced early in the text. If anthropological ideas are used, they have to be explained to a general audience. More often than not, journalistic articles connect to an urgent event in the news. They tend to be much shorter and limited in scope than most academic ones. In addition, editors often decide on the headline, which is drastically different from what academics are used to. Again, the boundaries with anthropological writing are blurred, as some anthropologists who keep writing influential journalistic comments on current affairs become public intellectuals, thereby potentially enhancing their academic reputation. This is at times called public anthropology, considered by many to be crucial for an understanding of public life but requiring a refinement of the art of narrative as well as a relinquishing of dry analysis (Eriksen 2005). Moreover, anthropologists who write journalism can be seen to bring back stylistic traits such as lucidity to their anthropological writing. Journalism in anthropology is – as is so often the case – a twofold topic, comprising both anthropologists writing journalism, and the anthropological study of worlds of journalism and journalistic writing (Boyer 2005, 2013; Hannerz 2004; Boyer & Hannerz 2006). Writing future worlds (Hannerz 2016) investigates the new genre of speculative future scenarios, such as the idea of ‘the clash of civilizations’, having impact on global debate and understandings. As to ethnographies of journalism, there is, for instance, a study of former East German journalists and their attempts at explaining life in post-unification Germany which raises complicated issues about the nation and modernity (Boyer 2005). Still in Germany, another study focuses on news organizations, and how digital information and communication technologies have transformed how journalists work there (as elsewhere): they find themselves in a quickly changing landscape where social media is a major actor and contributes to the fact that their authority, expertise, and skills are challenged (Boyer 2013). More in line with travel writers, foreign correspondents, in a study conducted mainly in Jerusalem, Tokyo, and Johannesburg, report from one part of the world to another. It turns out that unique story lines emerge in different correspondent ‘beats’, yet what they write is also shaped by their home country and personal interest. One insight of this study is that both anthropologists and foreign correspondents have a lot to learn from each other when it comes to illuminating the general public about events and peoples in faraway places (Hannerz 2004).

The frequent blurring of writing genres has attracted a lot of attention. In fact ‘there has been an enormous amount of genre mixing in social science, as in intellectual life generally, and such blurring of kinds is continuing apace’ (Geertz 1980: 1659). One type of genre mixing is the monograph Lost in transition (Ghodsee 2011), on the downfall of communism in Bulgaria, where ethnographic chapters take turns with chapters written as ethnographic fiction. More often, genre mixing in anthropology takes the form of single texts, identified as combinations of ethnography and creative nonfiction, memoir and opinion pieces. Genre mixing has been pivotal for anthropology’s development both intellectually and methodologically. It fosters creativity, and suggests a language to approximate saying the unsayable as well as generating new approaches and ideas for research, even if that is often overlooked on academic ranking lists and citation indices.

Conclusions and looking ahead

As a discipline, anthropology builds on academic writing. Yet a focus on the craft of writing is relatively recent in the discipline’s history. Anthropologists continue to accentuate their identity as writers, drawing on literature, as well as different anthropological writing genres such as creative nonfiction, memoir, autoethnography, travel writing, and journalism. Our on-going sharpening of writing as a skill improves the knowledge that we are able to produce and convey, sometimes even providing more accurate accounts of social life than conventional academic work. Collaborative writing has increased both with the people we study, as an attempt to empower them and to draw on their expertise, and with colleagues from other disciplines, partly in response to requests from research funding agencies. There is also a growing interest in working with visual artists, especially graphic artists, as exemplified by Light in dark times (Waterston & Hollands 2020). Publication formats have equally become more flexible: featuring small books, essays on current affairs, and conversations in journals among many other types of outlets. The rise of digital publishing increases this flexibility, as anthropological discussions are now had on Twitter, and blogs such as AnthroDendum. [5] There is an upswing in honest accounts of how anthropological texts are actually composed that describe the role of personal creativity, academic training, and biography in the way arguments are formulated, as well as the impact of writing routines. They combine writing with a personal touch in combination with a scholarly responsibility, while calling for accessible styles (Nielsen & Rapport 2018; McGranahan 2020). With more diversity in anthropological writing styles, formats, and outlets in the future, questions of how to assess quality will be even more accentuated and debated. Importantly, there is a quickly-expanding realization that writing can and should be a driving force in the process of decolonising anthropology (Pandian 2017; Ulysse 2020; Tapsell 2020), indicating that this is a defining moment for reconsidering writing styles.

References  

Abu-Lughod, L. 1993. Writing women’s worlds: Bedouin stories . Berkeley: University of California Press.

Andersen, A.O., A.L. Oberborbeck, M. Dalsgård, M. Lind Kusk, M. Nielson, C. Rubow & M. Rytter (eds) 2020. Anthropology inside out: fieldworkers taking notes . Canon Pyon, Herefordshire: Sean Kingston Publishing.

Appadurai, A. 1986. Introduction: commodities and the politics of value. In The social life of things: commodities in cultural perspective (ed.) A. Appadurai, 3-63. Cambridge: University Press.

Archetti, E.P. (ed.) 1994a. Exploring the written: anthropology and the multiplicity of writing . Oslo: Scandinavian University Press.

——— 1994b. Introduction. In Exploring the written: anthropology and the multiplicity of writing (ed.) E.P Archetti, 11-28 . Oslo: Scandinavian University Press.

Bandelier, A. 1971[1890]. The delight makers: a novel of prehistoric Pueblo Indians . New York: Harcourt, Brace, and Jovanovich.

Barth, F. 1969. Introduction. In Ethnic groups and boundaries: the social organization of culture difference (ed.) F. Barth, 9-38. Boston: Little, Brown and Company.

Barton, D. & U. Papen (eds) 2010.  Anthropology of writing: understanding textually mediated worlds . London: Continuum. 

Behar, R. 1996.  The vulnerable observer: anthropology that breaks your heart . Boston: Beacon. 

——— & D.A. Gordon 1995. Women writing culture . Berkeley: University of California Press.

Benson, P. (ed.) 1993. Anthropology and literature. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

Bowen, E.S. 1954. Return to laughter . New York: Doubleday Anchor.

——— 2015. Writing culture: anthropology and literature. In Anthropological conversations: taking culture across disciplines (ed.) C.B. Brettell, 61-87. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.

Boyer, D. 2005. Spirit and system: media, intellectuals, and the dialectic in modern German culture . Chicago: University Press. 

——— 2013. The life informatic: newsmaking in the digital era . Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

——— 2016. The necessity of being a writer in anthropology today. In The anthropologist as writer (ed.) H. Wulff, 21-32. Oxford: Berghahn.

——— & U. Hannerz 2006. Introduction: worlds of journalism. Ethnography  7 (1), 5-17.

Brenneis, D. 2009. Anthropology in and of the academy: globalization, assessment and our field’s future. Social Anthropology 17 (3), 261–75.

Brettell, C.B. (ed.) 1993. When they read what we write:  the politics of ethnography . Westport: Bergin & Garvey.

Capote, T. 1965. In cold blood: a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences. New York: Signet Books.

Cheney, T.A.R. 2001. Writing creative nonfiction: fiction techniques for crafting great nonfiction. Berkeley: Ten Speed.

Clifford, J. & G.E. Marcus (eds) 1986. Writing culture: the poetics and politics of ethnography . Berkeley: University of California Press.

Cohen, M. (ed.) 2013. Novel approaches to anthropology: contributions to literary anthropology. New York: Lexington Books.

Collins, P. & A. Gallinat (eds) 2010. The ethnographic self as resource: writing memory and experience into ethnography. Oxford: Berghahn.

Daniel, V. & J.M. Peck (eds) 1996. Culture/contexture : anthropology and literary studies. Berkeley: University of California Press.

De Angelis, R. (ed.) 2002. Between anthropology and literature: interdisciplinary discourse. London: Routledge.

Dennis, P.A. & W. Aycock (eds) 1989. Literature and anthropology. Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press.

Dawson, A., J. Hockey & A. James (eds) 1997. After writing culture: epistemology and praxis in contemporary anthropology. London: Routledge.

Eriksen, T.H. 1994. The author as anthropologist: some West Indian lessons about the relevance of fiction for anthropology. In Exploring the written : anthropology and the multiplicity of writing (ed.) E.P. Archetti, 167-96. Oslo: Scandinavian University Press.

——— 2005. Engaging anthropology: the case for a public anthropology . London: Bloomsbury.

——— (ed.) 2018.  An overheated world: an anthropological history of the early twenty-first century . London: Routledge.  

Fassin, D. 2014. True life, real lives: revisiting the boundaries between ethnography and fiction. American Ethnologist , 41 (1), 40-55.

Finnström, S. 2016. O anthropology, where art thou? An auto-ethnography of proposals. In The anthropologst as writer: genres and contexts in the twenty-first century (ed.) H. Wulff, 46-59. Oxford: Berghahn.  

Geertz, C. 1973a. The interpretation of cultures: selected essays. New York: Basic Books.

——— 1973b. Deep play: notes on the Balinese cockfight. In The interpretation of cultures: selected essays . C. Geertz, 412-53. New York: Basic Books.

——— 1980. Blurred genres: the refiguration of social thought. American Scholar  49 (2), 165-79.

——— 1988. Works and lives: the anthropologist as author. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Ghosh, A. 1992. In an antique land. New York: Vintage.

Ghodsee, K. 2011. Lost in transition: ethnographies of everyday life after communism. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.

Gottlieb, A. 2015. Anthropological writing. In International encyclopedia of the social & behavioral sciences (ed.) J.D. Wright, 740-45. Oxford: Elsevier.  

Handler, R. & D.A. Segal 1990. Jane Austen and the fiction of culture . Tucson: University of Arizona Press.

Hannerz, U. 1992. Cultural complexity: studies in the social organization of meaning . New York: Columbia University Press.

——— 2004. Foreign news: exploring the world of foreign correspondents . Chicago: University Press.

——— 2016. Writing future worlds: an anthropologist explores global scenarios . New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Hurston, Z.N. 1978 [1937]. Their eyes were watching God: a novel . Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

Jackson, M. 2006.  The accidental anthropology: a memoir . Dunedin: Longacre Press. 

Khosravi, S. 2010. 'Illegal' traveller: an autoethnography of borders. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. 

——— 2020. In Iran, we try to be hopeful. But we're stalked by fear of war (10 January 2020). The Guardian  (available on-line: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jan/10/iran-stalked-war-s... ).

Le Guin, U.K. 2015.  Steering the craft: a 21 st century guide to sailing the sea of story . Boston: Mariner Books. 

Lévi-Strauss, C. 1992 [1955].  Tristes tropiques . New York: Penguin Books.

MacClancy, J. 1996. Fieldwork styles: Bohannan, Barley, and Gardner. In Popularizing anthropology (eds) J. MacClancy & C. McDonaugh, 225-44. London: Routledge.

McGranahan, C. (ed.) 2020. Writing anthropology: essays on craft and commitment . Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.

McLean, S. 2017. Fictionalizing anthropology: encounters and fabulations at the edges of the human . Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Malinowski, B. 1967. A diary in the strict sense of the term . London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Marcus, G.E. & M.M.J. Fischer. 1986. Anthropology as cultural critique: an experimental moment in the human sciences. Chicago: University Press.

Moeran, B. 2016. The craft of editing: anthropology’s prose and qualms. In The anthropologist as writer: genres and contexts in the twenty-first century (ed.) H. Wulff, 60-72. Oxford: Berghahn.

Narayan, K. 1999. Ethnography and fiction: where is the border? Anthropology and Humanism 24 (2), 134-47.

——— 2007a. Tools to shape texts: what creative nonfiction can offer ethnography. Anthropology and Humanism , 32 (2), 130-44.

——— 2007b. My family and other saints. Chicago: University Press.

——— 2012. Alive in the writing: crafting ethnography in the company of Chekhov. Chicago: University Press.

Nielsen, M. & N. Rapport (eds) 2018. The composition of anthropology: how anthropological texts are written . London: Routledge.

Nyqvist, A. 2018. The travelling story of Pettersson in the Pacific. In World literatures: exploring the cosmopolitan-vernacular exchange (eds) S. Helgesson, A. Mörte Alling, Y. Lindqvist & H. Wulff, 261-74. Stockholm: University Press.

Pandian, A. 2017. A possible anthropology: methods for uneasy times . Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.

——— & S. McLean (eds) 2017. Crumpled paper boat: experiments in ethnographic writing . Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.

Pratt, M.L. 1992.  Imperial eyes: travel writing and transculturation . London: Routledge.

Rapport, N. 1994. The prose and the passion: anthropology, literature and the writing of E. M . Forster. Manchester: University Press.

Reed-Danahay, D.E. 1997. Introduction. In Auto/Ethnography: rewriting the self and the social (ed.) D.E. Danahay, 1-17. Oxford: Berg.

——— 2019. Autoethnography. In SAGE research methods foundations (eds) P. Atkinson, S. Delamont, A. Cernat, J.W. Sakshaug & R.A. Williams, 1-19. London: SAGE (available on-line: https://methods.sagepub.com/foundations/autoethnography ).

Rosaldo, R. 2013. The day of Shelly’s death: the poetry and ethnography of grief . Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.

Sanjek, R. (ed.) 1990. Fieldnotes: the makings of anthropology . Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

——— (ed.) 2015. eFieldnotes: the makings of anthropology in the digital world . Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Scholte, B. 1987. The literary turn in contemporary anthropology: a review article. Critique of Anthropology 7 (1), 33-47.

Shore, C. & S. Wright (eds) 2017. Death of the public university? Uncertain futures for higher education in the knowledge economy . Oxford: Berghahn.

Stankiewicz, D. 2012. Anthropology and fiction: an interview with Amitav Ghosh. Cultural Anthropology (special issue on 25th anniversary of Writing Culture ) 27 (3), 535-41.

Stein, F. 2018. Anthropology’s ‘impact’: a comment on audit and the unmeasurable nature of critique. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 24 (1), 10-29.

Stoller, P. 2009. The power of the between: an anthroplogical odyssey . Chicago: University Press.

——— & C. Olkes 1987. In sorcery’s shadow:  a memoir of apprenticeship among the Songhay of Niger . Chicago: University Press.

Strathern, M. (ed.) 2000. Audit culture: anthropological studies in accountability, ethics and the academy . London: Routledge.

Tapsell, P. 2020. The anthropology of being (me). In Writing anthropology: essays on craft and commitment (ed.) C. McGranahan, 256-9. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press. 

Thompson, J.B. 2011. Merchants of culture: the publishing business in the twenty-first century . Cambridge: Polity.

Turner, V. 1976. African ritual and western literature: is a comparative symbology possible? In The literature of fact (ed.) A. Fletcher, 45-81. New York: Columbia University Press.

Ulysse, G.A. 2020. Writing anthropology and such, or ‘once more, with feeling.’ In Writing anthropology: essays on craft and commitment (ed.) C. McGranahan, 251-5. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.  

Verdery, K. 2018. My life as a spy: investigations in a secret police file . Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.

Waterston, A. 2014. My father’s wars: migration, memory, and the violence of a century . New York: Routledge.

——— & C. Hollands 2020. Light in dark times: the human search for meaning . Toronto: University Press.

Wiles, E. 2021. Live literature: the experience and cultural value of literary performance events from salons to festivals. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Wulff, H. 2016. Introducing the anthropologist as writer: across and within genres. In The anthropologist as writer: genres and contexts in the twenty-first century (ed.) H. Wulff, 1-18. Oxford: Berghahn.

——— 2017. Rhythms of writing: an anthropology of Irish literature . London: Bloomsbury.

——— 2018. Diversifying from within: diaspora writings in Sweden. In The composition of anthropology: how anthropological texts are written (eds) M. Nielsen & N. Rapport, 122-36. London: Routledge.

——— 2019. Rhythms of writing: craft, career, and context . Pro Futura Lecture. Uppsala: Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study, Uppsala University.

Note on Contributor

Helena Wulff is Professor in the Department of Social Anthropology at Stockholm University. Her current research engages with migrant writing in Sweden. She is editor of The anthropologist as writer: genres and contexts in the twenty-first century (2016, Berghahn) and author of Rhythms of writing: an anthropology of Irish Literature (2017, Bloomsbury).

Professor Helena Wulff, Department of Social Anthropology, Stockholm University, SE-10691 Stockholm, Sweden. [email protected]

[1] Tichenor, M. 2020. Metrics. In The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Anthropology (eds) F. Stein, S. Lazar, M. Candea, H. Diemberger, J. Robbins, A. Sanchez & R. Stasch (available on-line: http://doi.org/10.29164/20metrics ).

[2] Clifford Geertz (1988) considered especially Bronislaw Malinowski, Ruth Benedict, E.E. Evans-Pritchard, and Claude Lévi-Strauss as authors.

[3] A number of volumes combine anthropology with literature such as Dennis & Aycock 1989, Benson 1993, Daniel & Peck 1996, De Angelis 2002, and Cohen 2013.

[4] The Society for Humanistic Anthropology is a section of the American Anthropological Association. See also the online magazine, Otherwise ( https://www.otherwisemag.com/ ).

[5] https://anthrodendum.org/

If you liked what you just read

The Open Encyclopedia of Anthropology is an open access resource. Please help us keep it that way by making a one-time or a regular donation. 

Support the encyclopeadia

How to write an anthropology essay perfectly?

• Academic Writing Tips
• Essay Tips&Tricks

Stuck with an anthropology essay with no help in sight? Anthropology essay writing is not a simple task. Not many college students can handle such a paper. An anthropology essay is an academic paper that deals with the study of humans.

Anthropology is a scientific course program with many subtopics, including culture, human behaviors, and social relationships.

Writing an anthropology essay is quite challenging since it covers detailed analysis and interpretation of past historical events. It also entails predicting patterns of human behaviors while evaluating specific cultural aspects to reveal the occurrences at that particular period. Thus, such compositions need comprehensive research and a keen study of different cultures. Besides, you must identify a fascinating topic to compose a winning essay.

Due to the paper’s complexities, many students can’t craft anthropology papers. It could be because of poor writing skills or inadequate time to write. In such situations, you can seek professional help from our essay writing service . We hire top-rated experts who understand the entire writing process.

Let us help you get top grades without a hassle while you take an academic breather. You deserve well-articulated essays that will impress your professor. Don’t endure burnout from sleepless nights and missed deadlines. Talk to us and get flawless academic papers.

In this article, you will gain insightful tips on writing anthropology papers. We have also listed captivating topic ideas to help you jumpstart your essay.

Writing Assignments You Will Deal with on Anthropology Courses

College students pursuing Anthropology courses often have many assignments to work on as part of the program assessment. You will encounter several disciplines like linguistic anthropology, cultural anthropology, and biological anthropology. You will write many anthropology essays to measure your understanding of this subject’s subdisciplines.

To compose winning essays, you need to understand different cultures, evolutionary origins, and human distinctiveness, among other diverse social aspects. It is essential to be familiar with the subject you are writing on to avoid including inaccurate information.

Thus, you need to take time on the topic selection when writing such assignments. This entails an in-depth examination of historical records and information that will lead to a well-researched paper. Your preferred topic should neither be too broad nor too narrow. It helps you get acceptable content that will fit the required paper length.

Let us explore the approach you need when tackling anthropology papers. We have two effective strategies that can help you during essay compositions:

Writing depends on the target audience. You must follow the required academic standards to compose a comprehensible piece for your fellow students. Ensure your format is appropriate; incorporate proper grammar and no spelling errors. This is the personal approach for anthropology writing.

It is imperative to have flowing paragraphs and logical arguments for an exceptional essay. Pay extra attention to editing and proofreading to eliminate any mistakes that might result in poor grades. Not forgetting to cite renowned scientists in this field to make your paper more authoritative.

The general approach involves writing papers for the general audience. It does not cover a specific audience. For instance, you can take a general approach when composing an essay to lure students into studying anthropology.

Avoid technical jargon, complicated concepts, and citations. Instead, take a creative approach with compelling human experiences and less anthropological vocabularies that might scare them. But remember to use trusted sources for citations.

If you can’t find the best approach, hire one of our seasoned anthropologists to help you structure your paper flawlessly.

What Is Ethnography?

Ethnography is a discipline of the Anthropology course that deals with individual cultures. It deals with qualitative research that entails investigating a particular community to understand their life and interactions for a particular period.

Such types of anthropological writing require long-term research exercise. Your research can take up to three years to compose an excellent paper. This is because you live with the people to understand their culture and perspective towards life.

Today, most scientists use this approach to derive conclusive analysis about specific cultures. It can go beyond anthropology to other scientific fields of study.

Thus, you can get more insights from an anthropology essay example to format your paper appropriately.

How To Write An Anthropology Essay

Anthropological writing might seem simple, but many students get stuck due to the critical analysis of human life. The compositions will not be complicated if you have the correct format and guidance. First, you need to ensure you get an appropriate topic related to the research prompt. Therefore, take time to identify the best title for your paper before commencing the writing process.

First, make sure you read the prompt keenly to know what is expected from you. You will then brainstorm to identify the significant ideas relating to the topic that you will expound on your body.

Carry out a comprehensive research exercise to get reliable academic sources. This will help you when citing your work to avoid plagiarism claims.

Furthermore, it is imperative to note that the anthropological writing exercise follows the formal academic writing style. You must have the proper essay format that entails an introduction, main body, and conclusion.

The introduction should be attention-grabbing with the proper sentences and a compelling thesis statement. Let your readers know what your research paper entails by stating the main points. Proceed to explain the points in the main body. Each paragraph should start with a topic sentence that reveals the main idea. You must articulate your ideas in detailed explanations with a supporting example. Make sure the paragraphs flow logically and transitionally to avoid confusing the readers.

Finally, conclude your essay by restating the main ideas and revealing the significance of the study. Stick to the relevant ideas you captured in the body. Do not include any new information about the research.

One way of improving your writing is to sample an anthropology essay example from a trusted site. Check out the writing style and the format used and incorporate them into your composition.

However, if you are still experiencing difficulties with the paper’s complexities, we can help you compose impeccable content that fits your research question. Let us boost your academic performance with top-notch essays.

Anthropology Essay Topics

Topic selection is a confusing section for many students. You must pick a relevant topic that relates to the research question. Our experts have listed a few topic ideas to inspire your writing.

Let us explore compelling anthropology essay topics to get your writing on the right track.

• Discuss the effect of culture on modern society.
• A comprehensive analysis of folklore in ancient times.
• Explore the history of indigenous societies.
• How do social media platforms impact modern culture?
• Compare and contrast forensic science and anthropology.
• Explore different gender roles in prehistoric times.
• Polyandry and polygamy: An in-depth analysis.
• Ethnic cleansing: The influence on contemporary society.
• Importance of rituals and pagan ceremonies.
• Causes and effect of cultural stereotyping in today’s society.

Here are cultural anthropology topic ideas to inspire your compositions:

• Explore the role of politics in anthropology.
• How does culture influence human practices?
• Analyze the impact of cultural anthropologists on society.
• Causes and effects of cultural conflicts.
• The significance of literature on human culture.
• How does religion impact culture?
• Analyze agricultural practices in ancient times.
• A comprehensive analysis of the Romans.
• Causes and effects of cultural behaviors on cultural anthropology.
• Analyze growth and development in cultural anthropology.

Below are physical anthropology essay topics to help you select the proper title:

• The impact of mythologies in physical anthropology.
• The effects of an aging society in a developing nation.
• Analyze the impact of ancient piercing cultural behavior.
• Explore the challenges of human migration in the 20 th
• Discuss human evolution: A comprehensive analysis.
• Eugenics: The pros and cons.
• Preservation of dead bodies: The influence in Ancient Egypt.
• The effect of the environment on skin color.
• Evaluate physical labor and its effect on humans.
• An analysis of death rituals in African societies.

Below are medical anthropology topic ideas for your perusal:

• Explore the upsides and downsides of alternative medicine.
• Analyze the impact of ethno zoology in medicine.
• Discuss the importance of medical anthropology.
• How medical anthropology can improve human health.
•  What is ethnobotany?
• Discuss the history of Chinese medicine.
• Impact of drugs on medical anthropology.
• A comprehensive analysis of marijuana legalization in developed countries.
• Explore the controversies of abortion in modern society.
• An analysis of the AIDS epidemic in Africa.

The above anthropology essay topics can help you craft remarkable papers that will score you top grades. Do not let fatigue and anxiety jeopardize your grades. We understand how demanding college life can get; that is why our service is at the forefront in ensuring we help needy students get top-quality papers.

Therefore, don’t hesitate to contact us if you need writing assistance.

Exsample #1

Endangered language in kundur and karez-i-mulla, southeast asia.

Southeast Asia present a number of endangered languages and one of such is what is found in the villages of Kundur and Karez-i-Mulla, Herat Province in Afghanistan. Mongolian language is the language that Moseley (2010) considers as ‘critically endangered.’ As a one of the three subfamilies of the Altaic language family, Mongol is considered critically endangered as it is currently spoken by almost 200 old men in the village.

From brief history, during the middle Mongolian period, history witnessed different dialects developing into separate language. The currently surviving language as Mongol in Afghanistan includes Santa (Dongxiang) and Bao’an (Bonan) in the south and Daur in the east. One key property of the language, specifically the aforementioned dialects is that they retained /h/ and /f/ from Proto-Altaic */p/ (this is an asterisk identifies that acts as a sound that is hypothetical or one which has been reconstructed). Furthermore, the language has unassimilated sequences of vowel. What Moseley (2010) gives as an example is the Middle Mongolian e’ü which can be regarded as classical Mongolian having a medial velar, egü. From the classical Mongolian, where other dialects of Mongolian have merged these vowels into a single, lengthy vowel referred to as ṻ.

In terms of the language demographics, this language is currently spoken by only the elderly totaling to about 200 people. Secondly, the 200 elderly speaking the language are among the handful ethnic Moghols found in Herāt in Afghanistan. Owing to the fact that the total numbers of families belonging to Moghols are just a few thousands justifies the language’s status of ‘critically endangered.’ One notable feature of the language that in fact separates it from other Afghanis languages is the fact that it is unique in the preservation of the high back unrounded vowel /ɯ/. The process of the language extinction has been termed as ‘rapid’ in the sense that it has lost its Proto-Altaic */p/ in as much it can be said to be preserving its unassimilated vowel sequences.

Additionally, the syntax and the phonology of the endangered language have been affected by Persian. Some of effects Persian has had on Mongol are that it has borrowed a large number of words from Persian, including some function words. For instance, there is the word ‘Daur’ which is not directly linked or related to those other extant Mongolian language.

Endangered Species in Kundur and Karez-i-Mulla, Southeast Asia

One of the species that has been marked endangered around Kundur and Karez-i-Mulla is the Tibetan Black Bear. This animal goes by several other names in the region including Moon Bear, Baluchistan Bear or Baluchistan Bear. One of the challenges facing the animal is habitat destruction as well as hunting for its paws, skin and gall bladder which has been found to be essential in Oriental medicine. Furthermore, people are Kundur and Karez-i-Mulla consider Kundur and Karez-i-Mulla to be nuisance and destructive because they feed on domestic livestock and crops. Unfortunately, there have been reports of the animal attacking people especially children and women in the regions bordering Kundur and Karez-i-Mulla.

On physical appearance the animal is black with distinctive white crescent marking on the chest. The species is smaller in size and appearance when compared with its better-known American black bear. One feature that makes that animal adaptive to its environment are its large and rounded ears, pointed snout, sharp claws and excellent swimmers and climbers making them feed on their prayers with a lot of ease.

At the moment, there are three distinctive activities that have threatened the continuity of the animal. First, Kundur and Karez-i-Mulla where Mongolian language is common is characterized by settlements in mountainous areas. This development has led to the increase in human caused or Mongolian caused mortality. That is, there have been increased human-caused rates of mortality for the species as a result of settlements in the forest. Secondly, Baluchistan Bear has been endangered by commercial trapping, livestock depredation control, unregulated hunting and habitat deterioration. The third concern for the continuously decreasing number of Baluchistan Bear has been the perception that Baluchistan Bear have been a threat to human life around Kundur and Karez-i-Mulla. As a matter of fact, this is the reason where the association between people and Baluchistan Bear has been minimal leading to its endangering.

How Specie and the Language are Endangered

On the other hand, Baluchistan Bear and Mongolian language have been endangered as a result of changes on human activities and migration. To conceptualise this point, recreational development, energy and mineral and road building are some of the issues that have been behind the decrease in number of Baluchistan Bear in Kundur and Karez-i-Mulla. Comparing the situation with the endangered Mongolian language the situation has been opposite. The spread of Mongolian language is going down as a result of the dying members of the family with little or no trace of documented or written language. This situation has brought the loss of essential ancestral knowledge that was once embedded in people’s culture.

Moseley, Christopher (ed.). 2010. Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger, 3rd edn. Paris, UNESCO Publishing. Online version: http://www.unesco.org/culture/en/endangeredlanguages/atlas

Assignment 2

Institution:

The minorities in South East Asia comprise of the non-indigenous minorities including immigrants as well as their descendants who have adapted into the local culture. Ethnic minorities across Southeast Asia continue to face very real clashes with their nation states regarding sociocultural and political differences. Some indigenous political representatives try to covert ethnic/cultural specificity into some special collective rights at the national level and international fora regarding indigenous people (Swearer, 2012). Minorities’ communities within Southeast Asia have found democratic space to express and represent their cultures and values. Immigrants have shaped the political landscape in Southeast Asia. Authoritarian regimes have not given much space to minorities within their population.

There is an amazing persistence of poverty despite the rapid economic expansion in Southeast Asia. Poverty has declined largely in the last 30 years in most regions of Southeast Asia. The reduction in poverty has happened despite growing inequality. Long-term economic growth was been consistent in most parts of Southeast Asia despite the setbacks such as the financial crisis of 1997-98. Economic growth has not led to total reduction of poverty due to inequality. Absolute poverty has reduced over time due to economic growth. The overall record in poverty reduction and growth has not been uniform in Southeast Asia as experiences in states like Philippines, East Timor, Indonesia, Lao, Cambodia, Vietnam and Myanmar. Southeast Asia has performed well in poverty reduction and economic growth (Ananta & Barichello, 2012). The economic crisis in 1990s negatively affected the achievement of the Southeast Asia population. An obvious manifestation of poverty is malnutrition. Malnutrition reduces poverty alleviation efforts.

Southeast Asia concepts of kingship as well as traditional legitimacy were not incompatible with other autochthonous patterns that existed. Regarded as against their Buddhist and Brahmanic background, concepts of kingship in Southeast Asia are not separable cosmology of a man’s world. Kingship post 1800s is a thing of the past in the Southeast Asia as modern democracy and civilization takes place. Authoritarian regimes have transformed to democracies or allowed open economy. Monarchical tradition within Malaya presently indicates that even Islamization within Southeast Asia did not impact the Hindu vision of the King being the preserver of the balance system within the Universe (Swearer, 2012). Divinity intertwined with Kingship in Southeast Asia. The concepts of kingship are continually fading within the Southeast Asia region.

Development in Southeast Asia has been largely shaped by interaction with other more powerful regions. Southeast Asia has a long history of crucial economic and security ties with the United States and is a very good place of strategic interest. In the course of the Vietnam War, Southeast Asia countries were ideologically divided as well as feuding. There was a simmering feeling of reorganization that begun with economic development through forming a trading bloc. The United States has to maintain regional security through making sure it has a credible military presence, viable regional training as well as a support structure. The United States cannot ignore the region with its vast population and importance in regional balance and stability. The USA objective in the region is very complex and not merely balancing against China (Chou & Houben, 2006). The US alliances with Thailand and Philippines represent two outstanding stand of interest. The Philippines is important in the management of the downside risk while Thailand’s significance is in its potential in assisting in maximizing the upside of the order. Southeast Asia is very significant to the USA foreign policy.

Southeast Asia region represents an interesting as well as significant arena for democratization in the world. The transition from authoritarian rule within the region to democracy in some countries like the Philippines has attracted a lot of attention. Political systems within Southeast Asia range from democracies to single-party states as well as some societies controlled by the military. There are countries were democracy is established and state leadership is normally elected. Some democracy is still at its infancy stage but is gradually being established (Chou & Houben, 2006). Some countries in Southeast Asia have their government structure with combined characteristics from different societies and political structure operate between military rule and democracy. Some countries are single-party states but have opened up their economies like China and are undergoing economic reforms. Democracy in some countries is still a long way coming. They take strategic advantage regarding static ethnic stereotypes of the colonial kind as being part of the decolonization process.

Essay Question 1

Women within the Vietnamese culture are found in a disadvantaged position. The women do not have jobs outside of the house and up brought out more strictly as compared to men. Paradise for the Blind shows the resilience and power of women to be patient and ensure whatever they go through life. Mother to Hang lives in Hanoi for 10 years until the husbands shows up one day. Hang’s father kills himself out of shame since he cannot stand the repercussion of what he has done (Duong & McPherson, 2002). Women in Vietnamese culture structure to fend for their families by working hard. Hang mother despite the poverty level in Hanoi struggles to sell snacks to earn a living. Hang’s aunt does back-breaking work in rebuilding life for herself. She is much respected in the community since she has built herself a fortune through sheer hard work. Her uncle just wanted to take advantage of women and situation in life to make it but the women work hard to get what they have. In Re-branding Islam women’s resilience stands out despite the religious discrimination that they face. In both Re-branding Islam women play an important role in growing the economy of the country. Although women suffer because of how they are regarded in the society they play important part in bringing up their children and determining the destiny of men. In Indonesia where the Islam culture is prevalent, women are disadvantaged despite their struggles in everyday life. Family values play an important role in the two scenarios giving women the strong will to achieve in life (Hoesterey & Hoesterey, 2015). The family values make the women to be determined and sacrifice on behalf of their children and family. Family values bind the women to their goals and they struggle to make the family a success. The role of women as a bedrock of the society and family wellbeing cannot be disputed in both cases.

Ananta, A., & Barichello R.R. (2012), Poverty and Global Recession in Southeast Asia, Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Chou, C., & Houben V. (2006), Southeast Asian Studies: Debates and New Directions Institute of Southeast Asian Studies Duong T.H., McPherson, N. (2002). Paradise of the Blind: A Novel, HarperCollins, 2002 Hoesterey, J.B., & Hoesterey, J. (2015) Rebranding Islam: Piety, Prosperity, and a Self-Help Guru, Stanford University Press. Swearer D.K. (2012). Buddhist World of Southeast Asia, The: Second Edition, SUNY Series in Religious Studies, Bangkok: SUNY Press.

The main finding in the subject chapter seems to indicate that reciprocity and exchange patterns in Japan are asymmetrical, while Americans showed more symmetrical exchange and reciprocity patterns. In other words, the old in Japan would accept gifts and/or help from family members and repay it in kind. However, their American counterparts could only accept gifts and/or help if they had the capacity to reciprocate the gesture with material resources, e.g. by re-gifting the giver or helper. The theme that emerges from Akiyama et al. (2009) however seems to indicate that reciprocity and exchange is a mechanism that the old people perceive as necessary in the creation of stable relationships.

The foregoing theme has been discussed elsewhere in literature where it is indicated that when old people become perennial receivers of gifts and help, they deem themselves as unbefitting of such handouts (Fyrand, 2010; Thompson, 2013). Specifically, the old people feel as if they owe people who help or give them material or moral support too much. Their inability to pay the material or moral debt to their younger givers or supporters leads to a situation where they (the old people), can no longer relate well with givers or helpers.

As Fyrand (2010) notes, the unbalanced relationship between the giver and the receiver (old people) can result in mental distress occasioned by feelings of unworthiness in the latter. Ultimately, the old recipients of gifts and/or help may discontinue the relationship. Interestingly, Akiyama et al. (2009) found out that while old people in Japan (especially women) readily accept support from their children, their counterparts in the US do not readily accept such support and/or gifts unless they are able to repay it in a similar manner.

For example, while the old in Japan accept the help offered by their daughters-in-law, they ‘repay’ the kindness through appreciation, affection, love, and elevating their supporter’s position in the society by talking positively about them.

In Jewish history for instance Abraham is the first recorded monotheist, but around him, other people were still at a magical/animistic/polytheistic stage. The same was still true in the time of Moses when Egypt worshipped many gods, and whose priests were often magicians, and even on into New Testament times when Jewish and Christian monotheism stood alongside Greek and Roman polytheism. The societies involved later moved to a scientific approach, especially in the Scientific Revolutionary period which began in the late medieval period and continued until the time of great thinkers such Isaac Newton, and of course in one sense has continued to the present day.

What Copernicus and others did was reject the then teaching of the Roman Catholic Church regarding astronomy etc, because by direct observation they were able to see that it was wrong. This did and does not necessarily mean that they rejected God. There are fundamentalists who believe in a literal 7 days creation story and other Christians who accept the scientific explanations of gradual evolution, but who still believe that God was the prime cause. For the latter, the two ‘stages’ of religion and science run in parallel with no apparent problem.

At what stage are they? In the late 1800s by Draper and White claimed religion and science are automatically enemies. Craig Rushbolt in his 2004 article ‘Relationships between Science and Religion: Conflict & Warfare?’ points out how their books:- Each painted a picture of history as a conflict between the rationality of science (earnestly searching for truth) opposed by the stubborn ignorance of religion (stubbornly trying to block scientific progress), with science fighting valiantly This he says is not a true picture because it is both over-simplistic and inaccurate.

It would perhaps be truer to say that there was a conflict between the authority of the church with its dogmatic ideas and those who thought independently.

Business Essay and the Best Way of Its Writing

Business is an essential aspect of today’s evolving world. It is a lucrative industry that impacts many sectors, including education. Business-related courses are popular as many students are pursuing the…  Read More

Stuck with an anthropology essay with no help in sight? Anthropology essay writing is not a simple task. Not many college students can handle such a paper. An anthropology essay…  Read More

All About Persuasive Essay Writing

Writing a persuasive essay requires expressing your viewpoint and convincing readers of its rightfulness. Many struggle with completing this type of written assignment because of a lack of proper writing…  Read More

• Essay Writing Guides

Table of contents

• EXPLORE Random Article
• Happiness Hub

How to Write an Anthropology Paper

Last Updated: October 1, 2020

wikiHow is a “wiki,” similar to Wikipedia, which means that many of our articles are co-written by multiple authors. To create this article, volunteer authors worked to edit and improve it over time. This article has been viewed 14,932 times.

Writing a paper for an Anthropology course can be a new experience for those of you that are new to this field of study. Anthropology is generally understood as the study of all people across all points in time and space, and is broken down into four distinct sub-fields in the American tradition: Cultural anthropology, Biological/Physical anthropology, Linguistic anthropology, and Archaeology. Most introductory-level courses, or “Anthropology 101”, will briefly cover what each of these sub-fields mean and how anthropologists work within them. If you’re taking one of these beginner courses, you will most likely have to write an academic paper at some point. This instructional set will provide step-by-step instructions on how to help you successfully write your first anthropological essay using the American Anthropological Association (AAA) guidelines for formatting and citations and how to find credible anthropological sources/information

• Get all of your supplies organized and have everything on hand.
• Make a quick schedule to help you stay on track. If you have plenty of time before the due date, set up daily goals to help you stay on track with all of the research and writing you might have to do. Spreading out your workload will definitely help take away some of the stress.
• If you have plenty of time before the due date, set up daily goals to help you stay on track with all of the research and writing you might have to do. Spreading out your workload will definitely help take away some of the stress.

• Obviously this step isn't anthropology-specific, but it really is one of the most important steps when it comes to writing any paper.
• Try to start and finish your outline in one sitting.  You can always edit it as you move along, but having a complete outline before you start the actual writing process will help you work a lot quicker and more efficiently.

• American anthropology has four distinct sub-fields: archaeological, cultural, linguistic, and biological/physical.  Knowing how you can apply one or more of these sub-fields to help support your argument is crucial to anthropological writing.
• How do you know which field applies to your paper's topic?  The answer is usually all of the above.  In very basic terms, everything that has anything to do with people can be observed and analyzed anthropologically.

• The Internet is a magical and wonderful place for conducting research.  Just make sure that you know where to look when it comes to credible resources.
• Know the difference between scholarly and public sources.
• Get familiar with your school's library system.  Many universities and colleges have free and easy-to-access websites that can access great material.

• This is the official formatting guideline for the American Anthropological Association.
• You can access a free PDF of it here: http://www.aaanet.org/publications/guidelines.cfm
• Although you may not use this format in an introductory-level course, anyone who wishes to pursue their degree in anthropology will most certainly have to write a few papers using this.

• Make sure you understand all of the vocabulary and key concepts from your notes and textbook.
• Does your thesis statement makes sense and do your topic sentences support your claims?
• Do you have enough sources for your assignment?  Are they credible, accurate, and relevant?

• Remember to follow your outline and stick to your writing schedule (if you made one).
• Take short breaks every hour or so to review your work, or to simply just give yourself a rest.

• Ask them to look for things like logical flow of ideas, clarity, and get their overall opinion first.  Spelling and grammatical errors should be noted, but not the main focus of this part in the editing process.
• Once you have their feedback, start working on your final masterpiece.

• Have you completed all of the prompts or answered all of the questions that may have been listed in the rubric?
• Did you meet the length requirements?
• Does the format and citation style comply with the rubric as well?
• Can you identify your thesis statement and topic sentences?
• Did you successfully support your claim?
• Did you cite your sources properly?
• Are there any spelling or grammatical mistakes?
• How did you apply your knowledge of anthropology in this paper?

Expert Q&A

• Here are a few links to some really great anthropological websites. Check them out if you get stuck on your research step. Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0
• American Anthropological Association website: http://www.aaanet.org Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0
• Anthropology Resources on the Internet: http://www.anthropology-resources.net/index.html Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0

Things You'll Need

• a computer with a word processor program
• your class notes and textbook
• access to the Internet

You Might Also Like

• American Anthropological Association logo [Image], Retrieved from: http://www.ssrn.com/en/index.cfm/aarn/

About this article

Did this article help you.

• About wikiHow
• Terms of Use
• Privacy Policy
• Do Not Sell or Share My Info
• Not Selling Info

Writing Anthropology

Essays on craft and commitment.

Illustrations: 12 illustrations

Release Date: May 01, 2020

Published: May 2020

Editor: Carole McGranahan

Contributors: Sasha Su-Ling Welland , Ieva Jusionyte , Paul Stoller , Anand Pandian , Kirin Narayan , Ruth Behar , C. Anne Claus , Kristen Ghodsee , Michael Lambek , Zoe Crossland , Donna M Goldstein , Sarah Besky , Sienna Craig , Marnie Jane Thomson , Sarah L Gonzalez , Kim Fortun , Yarimar Bonilla , Maria Vesperi , Kristen Drybread , Whitney Battle Baptiste , Chelsi West Ohueri , Adia Benton , Carla Jones , Ghassan Hage , Bhrigupati Singh , Alan Kaiser , Lara Deeb , Jessica Winegar , Jane Eva Baxter , Matt Sponheimer , Mary Murrell , Noel Salazar , Daniel M. Goldstein , Robin Bernstein , Nomi Stone , Stuart J. McLean , Kathleen Stewart , Lauren Berlant , Jessica Marie Falcone , Roxanne Varzi , Uzma Z. Rizvi , Sita Venkateswar , Katerina Teaiwa , Bianca C. Williams , Ulysse, Gina Athena , Paul Tapsell , Barak Kalir , Kevin Carrico , Lisa Sang Mi Min , Ann Laura Stoler , Catherine Besteman

“ Writing Anthropology is the long-awaited handbook that our discipline desperately needs to move us away from the lingering idea that our texts should be indecipherable to mortals. Carole McGranahan and company have given anthropologists a beautifully wrinkled and coffee-stained road map to help us all get to a writing place that is thoughtful, self-aware, compassionate, and (gasp!) accessible.” - Jason De León, author of The Land of Open Graves: Living and Dying on the Migrant Trail

“In this powerful volume, a multitude of ruminations, thoughts, prompts, and provocations flow together like a vibrant stream until we see the lifeblood of contemporary anthropology as a committed way of writing about people that is beholden to a sense of accountability. The accomplished anthropologists featured in this book pursue a shared commitment to writing well. But this is not merely for the sake of more effective explication or theoretical nuance. They aim to better convey the hardships and dignity of humanity itself. This is ethnography at its best: beautifully written, surprising, deeply instructive, and grounded in an ethical practice that never ceases to care about and attend to everything and everyone with whom anthropologists engage.” - Laurence Ralph, author of The Torture Letters: Reckoning with Police Violence

"In these 53 short, blog-style essays, students now have a new, pithy guide to help them think through a wealth of writing issues. Recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty; professionals." - Choice

"A rich wordhoard of ideas that focus on 'craft and commitment' in anthropological writing…" - David Syring, Anthropology and Humanism

"I am currently planning a series of ethnographic writing workshops in our department and yes, this will be one of the books we use. . . . Reading different kinds of ethnographic writing . . . in a format that allows for easy comparison might stimulate reflection on writing and help students find their own voice. That in itself would be an accomplishment."  - Helle Bundgaard, Asian Ethnography

"Although Writing Anthropology is not ostensibly a how-to book, readers seeking strategies to apply to their writing practices should not be disappointed. . . . The essays in this collection resonate, as McGranahan depicts, that ‘anthropology is a writing discipline’ (7). As writers, anthropologists make ideal commentators on their practices of presentation and representation, on their visions for process and product." - Steven E. Gump, Journal of Scholarly Publishing

"... Writing Anthropology makes a compelling case for clear, truthful, heartfelt, and engaged anthropological writing. It will certainly be one of those books I will turn to for inspiration and solace when I find myself struggling in front of a white screen." - Nastja Slavec, Anthropology Notebooks

“Making a poignant point about clarity and commitment in anthropological writing, Carole McGranahan has put together an important volume of essays.” - Helena Wulff, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute

Please read our FAQs to learn more about Pre-Orders

Price: $28.95

This title will be released on May 01, 2020

Buy the e-book:

• Amazon Kindle
• Apple ibooks
• Barnes & Noble nook
• Google Play

Information

Author/editor bios, table of contents.

Sales/Territorial Rights: World

Additional Information

Paper ISBN: 978-1-4780-0812-5 / Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-4780-0684-8 / eISBN: 978-1-4780-0916-0 / DOI: https://doi.org/10.1215/9781478009160

Publicity material

• Front Cover Image
• High Resolution Cover

The item was added to your cart.

Something went wrong, please try again.

100 Anthropology Essay Topics

Table of Contents

Anthropology Essay Topics: A Comprehensive Guide

Essay writing is pivotal in every student’s academic journey. In particular, anthropology students will encounter numerous essays throughout their educational journey. It’s essential to master the art of crafting outstanding essays to secure top grades. Contrary to common misconceptions, essay writing isn’t confined to language or linguistics courses. Every discipline, including anthropology, demands this skill. Thus, students must refine their essay writing abilities to produce stellar content.

Selecting the Ideal Anthropology Essay Topic

The essence of an exceptional anthropology essay often lies in the topic chosen. Selecting a broad topic might overwhelm you, preventing you from addressing it thoroughly. Conversely, an overly narrow topic might lack adequate content, making it challenging to meet word count requirements. The ideal topic should be of personal interest and fall between these extremes.

Anthropology Essay Topics to Consider

At times, professors might provide topics. But often, the onus is on students to choose. To aid in this selection, here’s a list of ten anthropology essay topics:

• Anthropology’s role in forensic science
• Varied marriage customs across global cultures
• Human evolution traced through time
• Native American cultures and anthropology
• Literature’s contribution to human evolution
• The increasing threat of terrorism
• Anthropology’s influence on art
• Supernatural beliefs across different cultures
• The effect of social media on global cultures
• The interplay between anthropology and genetic engineering

Cultural Anthropology Essay Topics

Delving deeper into cultural anthropology, here are ten more topic suggestions:

• Defining ‘culture’ across societies
• Supernatural beliefs and their cultural implications
• Diverse cultural perceptions of death
• Rituals associated with death globally
• Marriage customs across various cultures
• Societal hierarchies and caste systems
• The pivotal role of ancestors in culture
• Unique clothing designs across the world
• Body modification views in different cultures
• A deep dive into ancient Roman culture

Evolution-centric Anthropology Essay Topics

For those interested in evolution, consider these topics:

• The development of human intelligence
• The fascinating evolution of the human eye
• Sexual selection among humans
• An exploration of the Red Queen hypothesis
• Comparing human brains to other species
• Chromosomal evolution in plants
• Bird evolution mysteries
• Climate change and its evolutionary repercussions
• The earliest known life forms on Earth
• Natural selection in the animal kingdom

Ritual-based Anthropology Essay Topics

Rituals form the backbone of many cultures. Delve into these topics:

• The essence of ritual efficacy
• The intersection of magic and science
• The linkage between myths and rites
• Global variations in marriage rituals
• Childbirth rituals across cultures
• Death ceremonies worldwide
• The historical evolution of rituals
• The societal significance of rituals
• The intricate web of myths, rituals, and religion
• The interrelation of rituals, myths, and faith across societies

Physical Anthropology Topics:

• The mystery of Neanderthals and their relationship with modern humans.
• Human bipedalism: Why did we start walking on two legs?
• The role of nutrition in human evolution.
• Cranial capacity and its relation to intelligence.
• The significance of lactose tolerance in human evolution.

Cultural Anthropology Topics:

• Indigenous communities and their relationship with the modern world.
• Cultural adaptations to extreme environments.
• Tattoos and body piercings: Cultural significance and global variations.
• The cultural impact of globalization.
• Migration and its effect on cultural identity.

Medical Anthropology Topics:

• Traditional medicine vs. Western medicine.
• The cultural basis of certain illnesses.
• Global health issues and cultural perceptions.
• The role of rituals in healing.
• Mental health awareness in various cultures.

Linguistic Anthropology Topics:

• The dying languages of indigenous tribes.
• The role of language in shaping thought.
• Bilingualism and its effects on cognitive functions.
• The evolution of slang and colloquialisms.
• The cultural implications of language loss.

Archaeological Topics:

• The significance of the Dead Sea Scrolls.
• Unearthing ancient civilizations: Lessons from Pompeii.
• The mysteries of the Egyptian pyramids.
• Megalithic structures around the world.
• The societal structure of the Indus Valley Civilization.

Religious Anthropology Topics:

• The origins of world religions.
• Shamanism across different cultures.
• Religious rites and their social implications.
• The anthropology of atheism.
• Comparative study of creation myths.

Gender and Sexuality Topics:

• Gender roles in matrilineal societies.
• The third gender in various cultures.
• Cultural perceptions of homosexuality.
• Transgenderism across history.
• The social construction of femininity.

Economic Anthropology Topics:

• The cultural basis of consumerism.
• Barter systems and their societal implications.
• The anthropological study of modern-day capitalism.
• The rise and fall of ancient economies.
• Gift economies and their societal significance.

Political Anthropology Topics:

• The rise of nation-states.
• Ancient political structures and their relevance today.
• The role of leaders in tribal communities.
• The anthropology of revolutions.
• The cultural basis of political ideologies.

Technological Anthropology Topics:

• The impact of the Internet on societal structures.
• Mobile phones and their influence on culture.
• The anthropological perspective on AI.
• Social media and its role in shaping modern identities.
• Technology adoption rates across various cultures.

Environmental Anthropology Topics:

• Indigenous knowledge and environmental conservation.
• Cultural adaptation to climate change.
• Rituals related to agriculture and harvesting.
• The anthropological study of urban landscapes.
• Human-animal relationships in different societies.

Art and Anthropology Topics:

• Indigenous art forms and their significance.
• The evolution of music across cultures.
• Dance forms and their cultural roots.
• The anthropology of film and cinema.
• The cultural implications of fashion and clothing.

Migration and Diaspora Topics:

• The anthropology of refugee communities.
• Cultural assimilation vs. preservation in immigrant communities.
• The impact of remittances on home communities.
• The evolution of diaspora identities.
• The role of food in migrant communities.

Kinship and Family Topics:

• The evolution of the nuclear family.
• Kinship structures in patrilineal societies.
• The role of elders in family structures.
• Marriage customs and their evolution.
• The anthropology of adoption.

Unique Anthropology Essay Ideas

For those seeking distinctiveness, here are some unique topics:

• Gift-giving customs in diverse societies
• Global agricultural practices
• The practice of polygamy across cultures
• The rich tapestry of folklore
• Traditional healing across cultures
• Gender roles in various societies
• Religious convictions and customs
• Clothing preferences and designs across cultures
• Societal social networks

Students aim for top grades in pursuit of academic excellence. However, various challenges might hinder this quest. That’s where our institution can assist, from topic selection to complete essay writing. Reach out today, and let us guide you through your anthropology essay journey.

Writing Anthropology: Essays on Craft and Commitment

• Publisher: Duke University Press

• University of Colorado Boulder

Discover the world's research

• 25+ million members
• 160+ million publication pages
• 2.3+ billion citations

• Katherine Mayfour

• Minke Nouwens
• MED ANTHROPOL
• Catherine Trundle
• Tarryn Phillips

• Paula Lopez Caballero

• Sergio Zendejas Romero

• Recruit researchers
• Join for free
• Login Email Tip: Most researchers use their institutional email address as their ResearchGate login Password Forgot password? Keep me logged in Log in or Continue with Google Welcome back! Please log in. Email · Hint Tip: Most researchers use their institutional email address as their ResearchGate login Password Forgot password? Keep me logged in Log in or Continue with Google No account? Sign up

Get the Reddit app

A storehouse of linguistic, archaeological, cultural and biological anthropology information.

How to Write an Essay: A Guide for Anthropologists

By continuing, you agree to our User Agreement and acknowledge that you understand the Privacy Policy .

Enter the 6-digit code from your authenticator app

You’ve set up two-factor authentication for this account.

Enter a 6-digit backup code

Create your username and password.

Reddit is anonymous, so your username is what you’ll go by here. Choose wisely—because once you get a name, you can’t change it.

Reset your password

Enter your email address or username and we’ll send you a link to reset your password

Check your inbox

An email with a link to reset your password was sent to the email address associated with your account

Choose a Reddit account to continue

• Share full article

Advertisement

Supported by

James C. Scott, Iconoclastic Social Scientist, Dies at 87

In influential books, he questioned top-down government programs and extolled the power of the powerless, embracing a form of anarchism.

By Trip Gabriel

James C. Scott, one of the world’s most widely read social scientists, whose studies on why top-down government schemes of betterment often fail and how marginalized groups subtly undermine authority led to his embrace of anarchism as a political philosophy, died on July 19 at his home in Durham, Conn. He was 87.

His death was announced by Yale University, where Dr. Scott was Sterling professor emeritus of political science. He also taught in Yale’s department of anthropology and the school of forestry and environmental studies before retiring in 2022.

The author of a shelf of disparate, iconoclastic books, several of them regarded as classics, Dr. Scott was “one of the great intellectuals of our time,” Louis Warren, a history professor at the University of California, Berkeley, said in a 2021 oral history of Yale’s agrarian studies program, which Dr. Scott co-founded.

Dr. Scott’s wide-ranging scholarship was approachable to nonscholars. It won him a readership that was both broad and politically diverse, including the free-market libertarians of the Cato Institute and the lefty theorists of the Occupy Wall Street movement.

His study of rural ethnic groups in Southeast Asia, and the theories about resistance to power that he extrapolated, led to a new view of supposedly primitive peoples and to a new academic field, resistance studies.

He was a big-picture scholar harking back to the likes of the German sociologist Max Weber, a rare breed today in the social sciences, which became increasingly reliant on statistics and what Dr. Scott disparaged as “fourth-order abstraction.”

We are having trouble retrieving the article content.

Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and  log into  your Times account, or  subscribe  for all of The Times.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access.

Already a subscriber?  Log in .

Want all of The Times?  Subscribe .