Current Topics in Anthropology

Picking a Topic - Ideas

• Picking a topic that’s interesting to you
• Choosing something relevant to your course
• Clarifying with the course readings
• Scanning through some current course readings, old readings that you found interesting
• Take a concept discussed in class and apply it to something else

Where Do You Find Topics and Background Information?

• Annual Review of Anthropology
• Oxford Bibliographies: Anthropology
• Individual Journals
  • Browse individual issues, tables of contents; also see special issues devoted to particular topics
  • AnthroSource – see the list list of journals; search using search box at top right (Advanced available)
• Web of Science:
  • To see a listing of individual Anthropology journals for browsing, go to Journal Citation reports > Browse Categories > Social Sciences, General > Anthropology
  • To search in all WoS Anthropology journals, at the Advanced Search page select the dropdown for "Web of Science Categories" and type Anthropology into the search box; select the option that appears
    • You can now search on your topic with results from WoS's Anthropology-categorized journals
• Broad database search from the Anthropology Subject Guide

What is a Literature Review?

• An overview of existing research on a specific topic
• Focused on scholarly literature: the "scholarly conversation"
• Usually involves aspects of analysis and synthesis
• Not just a list or a summary of material

Purpose of the Literature Review

• Summarize existing research
• Show you are aware of research done in a field
• Show you can interpret the research
• Identify gaps in or critique existing knowledge
• Fit your work into the scholarly conversation

Research Questions

• Should be:
  • Clear
  • Researchable – doable
  • Relate to existing studies
  • Neither too broad, nor too narrow
  • Video tutorial: Developing a Research Question (6:25)

Literature Search Tips

• Conduct your search systematically
• Create a search strategy
• Use effective search terms and combinations
• Decide where you’ll search
• Repeat searches across databases
• Track results, modify strategies as needed
• DO NOT: type questions into a research database
• Do: separate your terms into concepts, and link them with connectors (boolean operators) to broaden/narrow results

Example Search Strategy

For the research question "In what ways are Indigenous people adapting to anthropogenic climate change in the Canadian Arctic?"

• Break it down into the following concepts and search strings:

Concept 1: Indigenous OR Inuit OR (People group)

AND

Concept 2: "Climate change" OR "Global warming"

AND

Concept 3: Arctic OR Nunavut OR "Yukon Territory" OR "Northwest Territories"

AND

Concept 4: Adapt* OR Modif* OR Adjust* OR Regulat*

AND: narrows results OR: broadens results; links similar terms NOT: subtracts any results with your search term (use judiciously)

NOTE: if you use Omni, you must put AND, OR, NOT in all CAPS

For more details see:

• Better searching using AND, OR, NOT (video, 2:26)
• Better searching using truncation (video, 1:50)

How to Search for Anthropology-Specific Literature

• In Web of Science: at the Advanced Search page:
  • Select the dropdown for "Web of Science Categories"
  • Type Anthropology into the search box – select the option that appears
    • You can now search on your topic with results from WoS's Anthropology-categorized journals
• In ProQuest:
  • Select the "Command Line" link
  • Type JSU(Anthropology)
  • Type additional search criteria as needed; e.g. a search on articles with "garden" in the title in the Anthropology-identified journals would be JSU(Anthropology) AND TITLE(garden* )

Managing Your Information

• Consider using a reference manager:
  • Laurier recommends the free Zotero reference manager. See links below for some short videos we've made on them:
  • Getting started with Zotero
  • Using Zotero's plug-in for Word
• Attend our online workshop Citing Insights for more detailed training, see Library Events.

Chicago Style: 2 Important Resources

Video tutorial: How to cite in Chicago style 

Chicago Manual of Style Online, 17th ed

• NOTE: this links to Chapter 15 on the Author-Date reference system