Can you help me write my research paper for Anthropology ?

ANTH 100

Paper #2: Research Topic

Suggested length: 8-12 pages +/- (12-point font, double-spaced)

Introduction: Make sure your introduction clearly explains why this topic deserves attention. Get your audience interested in the

topic. Maintain an objective and academic tone. Prepare your audience—do not assume your audience knows what you are writing

about—your introduction should let your reader know what you are discussing. (Up to 5 points).

Body: Make sure your text’s body is logically ordered and clear. Use topic sentences to organize your paragraphs. Use proper

grammar and spelling. (Up to 5 points).

Content (Up to 75 points):

1. Format/genre: Using, and citing, your academic sources only, discuss your research topic. This is not a high school paper,

nor a reflection paper, this is a first-year college research paper. Avoid contractions. Define terms that your reader might

find new or unfamiliar. Do not use a conversational style. Imagine your paper will be read by

anthropologists/professors/students seeking to learn from your research.

2. Addressing Bias: Think like an anthropologist: seek to understand your topic better; to do so, avoid ethnocentric biases.

Use cultural relativity to keep an objective distance from your topic (which may be difficult)—you do not have to personally

like your topic (for instance, we try to study infanticide as objectively as we can, attempting to do so without bringing our

own biases to our analysis—yet we do not have to agree with infanticide), but we do want to present it without bias.

It may help to think of our own familiar cultural patterns as “unfamiliar,” while trying to think of the unfamiliar phenomenon

as familiar. If you were enculturated from birth into the culture you are studying, it would all make perfect sense to you. Try

to get as deep into the emic/insider’s mindset as you possibly can.

3. “Thick” Description—Functions and Meanings: See Guest’s (2018) definition of “thick description” (44). Describe your

social phenomena in as much detail as your data allows. Does the phenomenon behave differently in different contexts?

How? Not only how, but why (explain why, if possible, given your data)?

1. Functions (etic analysis): After describing the phenomenon in detail, what are all of the functions it serves in your

topic’s culture? How does it help people adapt to the world around them and survive? Also, how does this phenomenon

function/interact with other cultural subsystems? For example: if you are studying a religion, how does religion interact

with politics in this culture?; how does it interplay with the society’s gender system(s)?; are their class, age, or economic

implications?; etc. The more interrelations you can discuss, the more points you will receive.

2. Meanings (emic meanings): After describing the phenomenon, and after examining the various functions it serves,

describe insiders’ understandings and perspectives. For instance, infanticide may function to help families survive by

limiting the family size in the face of limited resources. It may make sense for the “greater good” (e.g., helps the other

children who need food survive), but different cultures will develop various meanings around it—these insider’s

meanings are crucial for understanding the phenomenon! So do not simply describe the phenomenon and its

functions—be sure to try to describe an insider’s perspective.

This is difficult and requires nuance! You are speaking for others; this comes with an ethical responsibility to NOT

misrepresent how our fellow humans make and live meaningful lives! The more sensitivity and nuance you demonstrate,

as well as the most in-depth discussions about meaning/insiders’ perspectives, the better the points awarded.

Conclusion: Make sure your conclusion recapitulates why the topic deserved discussion, your main points, and summarizes any

conclusions or revelations you found along the way (do not introduce new material, arguments, or data/citations in your conclusion).

(Up to 5 points).

Sources: Make sure your sources are academic. Non-academic sources will not receive any points. (Up to 5 points).

Formatting: For each of the sources (or source) used, be sure to demonstrate the proper use of at least one in-text citation. At the end

of your paper, on a new and separate page, list your works cited—in alphabetical order (by authors’ last names) in proper format.

Both in-text and works-cited references must be correctly formatted according to the Chicago Manual of Style’s Author-Date (NOT

Notes-Bibliography—use their online Quick Guide) style. (Up to 5 points).