The American Anthropological Association Uses the Chicago Style for Organizing a Paper

The American Anthropological Association uses the Chicago style for organizing a paper.

 In anthropology, except when you are using your own fieldwork research and discussing your own ideas, you need to cite the sources of the information you are using and you need to cite them within the text. Then you need to provide a bibliography or reference page at the end of the paper listing the sources you used within your text.

 In fact, the more you back up your information and theories with academic or other quality resources, the stronger your paper.

 Perhaps you are putting someone else’s theory to work in your own analysis (and your writing assignments all require that you do this). In that case, you need to cite the source of the theory or concept close to where you define or describe it in your paper.

 Perhaps you are quoting directly from a written or video source etc. In that case, you need to cite the source of the quote. If it is a published quote, you will need to include the writer of the quote, the date of the publication from which you obtained the information and the page numbers of the quote. (Scott 1998: 3-4)

See examples below.

2 3 4 5 6 Examples of how citations are typically used within the text. Sometimes people use footnotes instead. You may cite with another style. Mainly be consistent.

From: Environment and Social Justice: Some Issues E. N. Anderson, Dept. of Anthropology Univ. of California, Riverside, CA 92521-0418 Comparable findings are well documented for East Africa, where the Notice the citations within the text. Anderson made a Maasai and their neighbors, for instance, maintained the land and its wildlife. statement about parks and When these peoples are displaced by game parks, the parks promptly wildlife and then cited his deteriorate and wildlife populations decline (Fratkin 2004; James Igoe, sources. In parentheses he personal communication; McCabe 1990, 2004; McCabe et al. 1992). Similar includes the authors’ names and the dates of their stories from all over the world routinely appear on environmental social publications. This way he science and environmental justice listserves and in professional meetings, immediately lets the and are painfully common knowledge to field researchers. readers know where he got the information to make a Often, this is done in the name of conservation and environmental statement like this. management. This rhetoric is suspect. Many have held that such rhetoric is just misguided (Latour 2004) or is actually intended to shore up Readers can then refer to the bibliography to see governmental power rather than to conserve resources (Agrawal 2005; Scott more about the information 1998). Sometimes, simple mistakes, based on the assumption that local source. people could not know what they were doing, have caused colonial and postcolonial powers to scorn local practices and promote alien practices that turned out to be less well adapted. This has happened especially often in Africa, where racism led to a particularly high level of indifference to local competence. The classic study is Fairhead and Leach (1996), which has been followed by a large literature. Occasionally there are better outcomes. After displacing Aboriginal owners from their lands for national parks, the Australian government found that the lands were deteriorating, and has had to bring back Aboriginal management (B. and E. Anderson, personal observations; see also Pyne 1991). This last sentence is a direct Even global warming is harming the poor differentially. Global quote, so Anderson also warming is caused, in large part, by release of greenhouse gases due to includes the page number of burning fossil fuels and to clearing of land (leading to breakdown of the source after the author’s name and the date of vegetable material). The leading releasers of greenhouse gases are the publication. United States and China. These benefit. However, global warming has led to drying of Africa (Gedney et al. 2006; ironically, the United States and China are both getting increased rainfall, though not in their dry areas). Africa’s droughts have led to thousands of deaths from starvation, shortage of potable water, and related causes (Sierra 2006). Sierra magazine concludes: “Global warming is an environmentally unjust calamity” (Sierra 2006:13).

Then include a bibliography, which gives the complete information about each source: author, date of publication, title of article or book chapter etc., (editors, if they put the book together), title and volume of journal if that is the source, and page numbers.