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How to Write a Research Paper
Writing a research paper is a bit more difficult that a standard high school essay. You need to site sources, use academic data and show scientific examples. Before beginning, you’ll need guidelines for how to write a research paper.
Start the Research Process
Before you begin writing the research paper, you must do your research. It is important that you understand the subject matter, formulate the ideas of your paper, create your thesis statement and learn how to speak about your given topic in an authoritative manner. You’ll be looking through online databases, encyclopedias, almanacs, periodicals, books, newspapers, government publications, reports, guides and scholarly resources. Take notes as you discover new information about your given topic. Also keep track of the references you use so you can build your bibliography later and cite your resources.
Develop Your Thesis Statement
When organizing your research paper, the thesis statement is where you explain to your readers what they can expect, present your claims, answer any questions that you were asked or explain your interpretation of the subject matter you’re researching. Therefore, the thesis statement must be strong and easy to understand. Your thesis statement must also be precise. It should answer the question you were assigned, and there should be an opportunity for your position to be opposed or disputed. The body of your manuscript should support your thesis, and it should be more than a generic fact.
Create an Outline
Many professors require outlines during the research paper writing process. You’ll find that they want outlines set up with a title page, abstract, introduction, research paper body and reference section. The title page is typically made up of the student’s name, the name of the college, the name of the class and the date of the paper. The abstract is a summary of the paper. An introduction typically consists of one or two pages and comments on the subject matter of the research paper. In the body of the research paper, you’ll be breaking it down into materials and methods, results and discussions. Your references are in your bibliography. Use a research paper example to help you with your outline if necessary.
Organize Your Notes
When writing your first draft, you’re going to have to work on organizing your notes first. During this process, you’ll be deciding which references you’ll be putting in your bibliography and which will work best as in-text citations. You’ll be working on this more as you develop your working drafts and look at more white paper examples to help guide you through the process.
Write Your Final Draft
After you’ve written a first and second draft and received corrections from your professor, it’s time to write your final copy. By now, you should have seen an example of a research paper layout and know how to put your paper together. You’ll have your title page, abstract, introduction, thesis statement, in-text citations, footnotes and bibliography complete. Be sure to check with your professor to ensure if you’re writing in APA style, or if you’re using another style guide.
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Anthropology Research Paper

This sample applied anthropology research paper features: 6200 words (approx. 20 pages), an outline, and a bibliography with 33 sources. Browse other research paper examples for more inspiration. If you need a thorough research paper written according to all the academic standards, you can always turn to our experienced writers for help. This is how your paper can get an A! Feel free to contact our writing service for professional assistance. We offer high-quality assignments for reasonable rates.
Applied Anthropology Research Paper

The paper commences with a brief definition of applied anthropology in both its broader and more restrictive senses. What follows then is an examination of the origins of applied anthropology within the matrix of anthropology, generally, in the 19th century. The early history of the discipline through the post–World War II, or mid-20th century, era is explored in the next section. The mid-20th-century era was dominated by three subjects: the Fox Project, the Peru Vicos Project, and Project Camelot, which is treated separately. The section on the later 20th century leads into applied anthropology today, which is followed by a section on areas for future research.
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What Is Applied Anthropology?
Origins of applied anthropology, early history, the fox project, project camelot, late 20th century, programs in applied anthropology, anthropologists and the military, forensic anthropology, ethnic cleansing, and political dissidents, future directions.
- Bibliography
Applied anthropology, in its broader sense, is distinguished primarily from academic anthropology as anthropological methods and data put to use outside of the classroom. This is not to say that all anthropological methods and data put to use outside of the classroom is applied anthropology; field research also is anthropological methods and data put to use outside of the classroom, but it can be used for academic purposes, as well as for practical application. Applied anthropology is used to solve practical problems outside of the academic world, and it has appeared under such names as action anthropology, development anthropology, practicing anthropology, and advocacy anthropology among others.
In its narrower sense, applied anthropology is distinguished from practicing anthropology. Practicing anthropology is the application of anthropology strictly outside of academia by nonacademics; applied anthropology can be practiced outside of academia or within academia by academics. To some, the differences are considered to be minimal, but to others they are of great importance.
Early in the 19th century, anthropology was a religious philosophy that examined how to view the place of humans in the cosmos. This began to change by the mid-19th century, and people who were to become the founders of what is called anthropology today began to look at the more earthly nature of humanity. One of these individuals was Lewis Henry Morgan. Morgan, who was an attorney, began to work with the Iroquois in the 1840s on legal issues involving railroad right of ways. This may have been one of the first, if not the first, application of the nascent but as yet still inchoate discipline.
Across the Atlantic, Sir Edward Burnett Tylor, the “father of anthropology” who defined “culture,” considered anthropology to be a “policy science” that should be implemented to ameliorate the problems of humanity. James Hunt, who founded the Anthropological Society of London, began to use the term practical anthropology by the 1860s, and in 1869, the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland (this was later to be titled the Royal Anthropological Institute) was formed.
In North America, the federal government formed the Bureau of American Ethnology (BAE) under John Wesley Powell in order to perform research that was intended to guide government policy toward Native Americans, and in 1879, Powell dispatched Frank Hamilton Cushing to the Zuñi pueblo to perform some of the first anthropological field research. By 1895, the BAE had hired anthropologist James Mooney to research a revitalization movement, the ghost dance. It also was in the 1890s that Franz Boas, the “father of American anthropology,” worked outside of academia with the Chicago Field Museum.
Boas developed a lifelong hatred of racism arising from anti-Semitic experiences he had had in school in Germany. This led him to attempt to dispel the prevailing racist notions of the day in anthropology. From 1910 to 1913, Boas applied anthropometry to disprove a basic racist assumption: Cranial shape was a factor of race. To accomplish this, he measured the heads of Jewish immigrants in New York City ghettos. Presumably, they were members of the dolichocephalic (longheaded) Mediterranean race, and indeed, the immigrants tended to fit that pattern. However, their children, born in America, were members of the brachicephalic (roundheaded) Alpine race. Apparently, they had changed race within one generation of having moved to America. Boas explained this anomaly as being the product of different diets between the parents and their children during their growth years and not the result of race at all.
Boas’s first PhD student, Alfred Louis Kroeber, and Kroeber’s students spent the first two decades of the 20th century conducting “salvage ethnology” to preserve cultures that were, or already had, become extinct. The most famous of these cases, both within and outside of anthropology, is the story of Ishi, the last member of the California Yahi tribe, whom Kroeber brought to Berkeley to serve as the key respondent from a vanished people. In 1919, Kroeber applied anthropological techniques to discover the rapprochement between fashion and economic cycles in his hem-length study. He demonstrated that one could determine (and perhaps predict) economic cycles by the rise or fall of women’s dress and skirt lengths. The 1920s also found Margaret Mead (1928/1973) making recommendations on sex education to the American educational establishment in the last two chapters of her doctoral dissertation, published as Coming of Age in Samoa.
In Europe, it was common during this time for anthropologists to seek employment in colonial governments: Anthropologists from the Netherlands were employed by their government to provide ethnographic data on its Indonesian colony; Northcote Thomas used anthropology to aid in administrating the British colony in Nigeria; and Alfred Reginald Radcliffe-Brown served as director of education on Tonga. Somewhat later, in the 1930s, Edward Evan Evans-Pritchard (1969), in the employment of the government of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, spent several research periods among the Nuer to determine why they did not consider it necessary to uphold their treaty with the British government, among other projects. Also in the 1930s, Radcliffe-Brown first used the term applied anthropology in the article “Anthropology as Public Service and Malinowski’s Contribution to It” (although the term already had appeared in 1906 in a degree program at Oxford). Bronislaw Malinowski himself, had coined the term practicing anthropology for nonacademic anthropology.
In 1932, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt appointed the anthropologist John Collier to Commissioner of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). Collier then employed fellow anthropologists Julian Steward, Clyde Kluckhohn, and others in the applied anthropology office to investigate Native American cultures and to counsel the BIA in regard to the Indian Reorganization Act. The anthropologists served as intermediaries between the BIA and Native Americans during the drawing of tribal constitutions and charters. Also in the 1930s, Edward Sapir’s student, Benjamin Lee Whorf, applied anthropological linguists to the analysis of fire insurance investigations, and anthropologist W. Lloyd Warner was hired by the Western Electric Company to study worker productivity in its bank-wiring facility. Warner employed qualitative ethnographic techniques, such as participant observation and informal interviewing, that previously had been used in nonindustrial, non-Western societies in one of the first applications of “industrial anthropology.”
The 1940s brought about the efflorescence of the field with the founding of the Society for Applied Anthropology (SfAA) by Margaret Mead, Conrad Arensberg, and Eliot Chapple. They published the journal Applied Anthropology to counter what they saw as academic bias against practical, nontheoretical work. In 1949, the name of the journal was changed to Human Organization, and the SfAA code of ethics was created. Despite this, Melville Herskovits taught in the late 1940s that applied anthropology was racist and should not be practiced, according to one of his former students.
Today, a variety of organizations specialize in applied anthropology. The Consortium of Practicing and Applied Anthropology Programs (COPAA), chaired by Linda A. Bennett of the University of Memphis, lists and gives a brief description of some of these organizations on its Web site, including the COPAA, the SfAA, and the National Association for the Practice of Anthropology within the American Anthropological Association.
The COPAA also lists regional organizations, which include the Washington Association of Professional Anthropologists; the High Plains Society for Applied Anthropology; the Chicago Association for Practicing Anthropologists; the Sun Coast Organization of Practicing Anthropologists; the California Alliance of Local Practitioner Organizations that embraces the Southern California Applied Anthropology Network, the Bay Area Association of Practicing Anthropologists, and the Central Valley Applied Anthropology Network; and the Mid-South Association of Professional Anthropologists. It was during World War II that Margaret Mead headed a group of anthropologists who served in the Office of Strategic Services. In addition to Mead, Ruth Benedict, Ralph Linton, Julian Steward, and Clyde Kluckhohn, among others (including such interdisciplinary notables as Erik Erikson), worked on the Committee on Food Habits, the Culture at a Distance national character project, the War Relocation Authority, and others, in order to aid in the U.S. war effort. A description of their work and methods was published (Mead & Rhoda, 1949) after the war as The Study of Culture at a Distance. Following the war, anthropologists also worked for the U.S. Pacific protectorates’ administrations.
Mid-20th Century
In the late 1940s, Sol Tax of the University of Chicago wanted to develop a program that would give field experience to anthropology students. To do this, he began the Fox Project in 1948 to look into social organization and leadership in the Fox/Tama settlement, which was facing acculturative pressures from the neighboring Euro-American community. Although they tried to become involved in the amelioration of the acculturative process, they had no authority to do so. Thus, they developed a theoretical agenda that became known as “action anthropology.” In 1953, the group consulted with the Fox project and developed a framework for action that was funded by a private foundation. University of Iowa students joined the University of Chicago group, and together they created the Fox Indian Educational Program and began the Tama Indian Crafts industry.
About the time that the Fox project was nearing its completion in 1952, Edward Spicer’s book, Human Problems in Technological Change, was published. That same year Allen Holmberg began Cornell University’s 14-year experiment: the “Peru Vicos Project.” Cornell University had rented Vicos, a feudal estate in Peru, as a living laboratory to study social engineering on the Quechua-speaking peasantry, to test theories of modernization, and to develop models for community advocacy and culture brokering.
Project Camelot had the potential to be a low point in the application of anthropology in the late 20th century. In December 1964, the Office of the Director of the Special Operations Research Office of the American University in Washington, D.C., announced a new program to be funded by the army and the Department of Defense. The program extensively would employ anthropological fieldworkers in government research for 3 to 4 years. In theory, it was a project that was intended to develop a systems model that would enable the prediction of social changes that in turn could develop into political movements in third world nations that might threaten the United States—specifically in Latin American countries (where a field office was planned) but with plans to expand globally. Its objectives were to formulate means to predict civil wars and revolutions; to identify means to prevent civil wars, insurgency, and counterinsurgency movements in particular societies; and to develop a system of field methods to collect the information to accomplish the two previous objectives. The budget was expected to be in the $1.5 million range annually.
Some anthropologists feared that applying anthropology to aid Latin American government’s repression of political movements was unethical and would hinder development of societies in those countries. A more horrific potential outcome to the field ethnographers was the possible executions of their field respondents. In response to the outcry from the social science community, Project Camelot was cancelled in July 1965.
Nonetheless, not all social scientists found Project Camelot to be totally objectionable. Beyond the satisfaction of the obvious and never-ending quest for research funding, which it would have provided, albeit from sources that are suspect to many in the academic community, there is the less obvious appeal of ethnography finally having some input into government international policy, something that had been called for over decades. Likewise, many anthropologists in that era had gotten their starts in the military by having had their first international experiences during the second World War and their educations financed by the government issue, or GI, Bill. Rather, it was the possible outcomes of their research that convinced the community to object to Project Camelot.
Also in the 1960s, medical anthropologists working with the Foré tribe of New Guinea traced the origins of a deadly neurological disease, kuru, to cannibalism by using traditional qualitative techniques, such as collecting life histories; Margaret Mead testified before Congress on birth control and marijuana, and she coined the term generation gap to describe a global phenomenon that had never occurred previously in human history; Jules Henry’s Culture Against Man described the Orwellian nature of popular advertising in American society; Jomo Kenyatta applied his PhD in anthropology from the London School of Economics under Malinowski to running the government of Kenya, with its diverse ethnic makeup, as its first president under the slogan Harambe, or “let us pull together” in Kiswahili. Oscar Lewis conducted his “family life histories” in Mexico City ( The Children of Sanchez ) and New York ( La Vida ) and described the poor as living in a selfperpetuating “culture of poverty.” Although this was criticized widely as an attempt to blame the poor for their condition, it also could be said that Lewis was acknowledging the wisdom of people who lived on the edge and their ability to survive and fully exploit their economic niches.
James P. Spradley conducted a Herculean application of ethnoscience to “tramp” culture in Seattle in the 1960s to determine the emic structure of the society in order to make recommendations for improved treatments to social workers, police, psychiatrists, and alcohol treatment centers. It was published as You Owe Yourself a Drunk: An Ethnography of Urban Nomads in 1970. In 1969, George Foster wrote the first textbook on development and change agency, Applied Anthropology, in which he cited changes in human behavior as a primary goal in order to solve social, economic, and technological problems. He followed this up in 1973 with Traditional Societies and Technological Change.
In 1974, the University of South Florida began the first master of arts degree program to focus specifically on training students for careers in applied anthropology. The options available to those students form a wide range of topics that define applied anthropology. Among them are archaeology, Cultural Resource Management, economic development, educational anthropology, immigration, medical anthropology, race, gender, ethnicity, and urban policy and community development. Among the reasons for such theoretical breadth is the realization that many master of arts students do not choose to pursue a doctor of philosophy degree, and this curriculum, then, qualifies them to work in specialized professions outside of academia. The reader will note that work outside of academia is known as practicing anthropology, and in 1978 the University of South Florida first published the journal Practicing Anthropology. Graduate programs in applied anthropology are becoming more widespread in the United States since that time; for example, the master’s program in applied anthropology at California State University, Long Beach, has three program options: communities/ organizations, health, and education. Northern Kentucky University’s anthropology program is long known for its award-winning Web site with information on where undergraduate anthropology majors, who cannot or do not choose to attend graduate programs, can find jobs outside of academia; currently, it is in the process of developing a master’s program in applied anthropology.
COPAA lists member programs on its Web site for those interested in pursuing a career in applied anthropology. The Web site notes that there are other programs that are not currently COPAA members. Among the universities in consortium are the University of Alaska, Anchorage; American University; University of Arizona; California State University, East Bay; California State University, Long Beach; University of Florida, Gainesville; The George Washington University; University of Georgia; Georgia State University; Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis; University of Kentucky; University of Maryland; University of Memphis; Mississippi State University; Montclair State University; University of North Carolina at Greensboro; University of North Texas; Northern Arizona University; Oregon State University; Santa Clara University; San Jose State University; the University of South Florida; the University of Texas at San Antonio; and Wayne State University.
The first doctoral program in applied anthropology was begun at the University of South Florida (USF) in 1984. Although the master of arts curriculum had been intended for nonacademic professions, the PhD curriculum trained students for university careers, as well as for practicing anthropology. USF’s Center for Applied Anthropology combines these two objectives in ventures such as the Human Services Information System database and the Alliance for Applied Research in Education and Anthropology.
In the 1960s and 1970s, Napoleon Chagnon and James Neel conducted genetics research for the American Atomic Energy Commission in an ethnographic setting. Chagnon was the ethnographer, and Neel was the geneticist. Their work was designed to determine the effects of the forces of evolution (such as the founder effect) on small populations in order to determine how genes might affect survival following a nuclear destruction of modern civilization. Their research took them to the Orinoco River basin in southeastern Venezuela where they established contact and conducted research among the Yanomamo, an isolated, horticultural, tribal society. Out of this research came Chagnon’s ethnography, The Yanomamo: The Fierce People. From its very early days, the project was heavily documented on film, and their classic documentary, The Yanomamo: A Multidisciplinary Study, became a standard in both cultural and physical anthropology classrooms. In the film, Chagnon and Neal become aware of a measles epidemic sweeping up the Orinoco Basin toward the Yanomamo. They acquire a vaccine that contains a weakened strain of the live virus and conduct mass inoculations of the Yanomamo against measles.
Although their work was met with criticism from the outset, none was quite as virulent as the later criticism contained in Patrick Tierney’s 2000 book, Darkness in El Dorado, and its aftermath. Tierney claimed that Chagnon and Neel had been conducting Josef Mengele-like genetics experiments on the Yanomamo by injecting them with the live measles virus to see who would live and who would die—not, as shown in the documentary, to protect them from an epidemic. The author of this chapter recalls sweeping condemnations of Chagnon and Neel from the anthropological community on several Internet electronic mailing lists originating throughout the United States at that time based on Darkness in El Dorado— although the book had not yet been released. By that time, Neel was dead, and although Chagnon was retired, he filed a lawsuit against Tierney in which he and Neel eventually were vindicated. Currently, calls are being made in anthropology to disband the “El Dorado Task Force” set up to investigate this case.
In the 1980s, Philippe Bourgois conducted field research among Hispanic crack (“rock” cocaine, which is smoked) dealers in the Harlem area of New York. This was not an update of Elliott Liebow’s Tally’s Corner nor of Oscar Lewis’s La Vida. Rather, it is what Bourgois refers to as a “culture of terror” that exploits an underground economy. Bourgois argues that this renders the crack dealers unexploitable by the larger, legal society as they pursue their interpretations of the “American dream.”
Across the Atlantic, anthropologists and other social scientists began to influence government policies in the Republic of Ireland in the late 1980s, according to Thomas Wilson and Hastings Donnan, via what are called the economic and social partnerships with government. This should not be confused with hegemony as may have been the case with the 1960s American “military-industrial complex.” Rather, in a country in which anthropology traditionally had been practiced by foreign scholars investigating semi-isolated rural communities, it was a remarkable innovation for anthropologists and other academics to have creative input, with their governmental partner, in the policies that led to the Celtic Tiger economy in what had been one of the poorest countries in Europe and the social structural transformations that allowed the “boom” to filter down to the public at large. Anthropologists also have been called on more recently in Ireland to assist the government with ethnic minority issues, especially those of the indigenous minority, the travelling community.
Since the beginning of the 1990s, nonacademic jobs for anthropologists have increased, and more anthropologists have found themselves involved in the business world, especially in marketing, although the irony of this may not be lost on those who were students when Jules Henry’s anti-Madison Avenue research, published as Culture Against Man, was a popular textbook in the 1960s and 1970s. Much of the new material centers around cultural miscues that corporations and individuals make in advertising— physical gestures, slang, and so on—when acting crossculturally (e.g., Chevrolet’s attempt to market the Nova automobile in Latin America where the homonym of the name means “does not go” or Gerber’s attempt to market baby food with an infant’s picture on the label in parts of Africa where labels routinely showed the containers’ contents for consumers who could not read). Other businessoriented approaches fall more along the lines of the Western Electric bank-wiring study (noted above) conducted by W. Lloyd Warner in the 1930s.
Nonetheless, some members of the anthropological community still consider business anthropology to be “colluding with the enemy,” according to Jason S. Parker of Youngstown State University in a recent article in the Society for Applied Anthropology Newsletter. Parker points out that these same critics, who stigmatize those applied anthropologists that work in business, are not offering any jobs to their recently minted bachelor’s degree graduates, who must then look elsewhere. Parker argues that the anthropological perspective can benefit the employees, as well as the corporations, through the inclusion of their input in the manufacturing processes.
Ann T. Jordan has written a persuasive argument for the use of anthropology in the business world in her book Business Anthropology. Jordan cites a number of cases in which anthropologists have ameliorated conditions that had the potential to lead to labor disharmony through managerial insensitivity to working conditions. Likewise, she explains that cross-cultural conflicts and misunderstandings on the job could easily be avoided with anthropological input.
Applied Anthropology Today
Louise Lamphere suggested a convergence of applied, practicing, and public anthropology in 2004. Lamphere argues that anthropologists in the 21st century should collaborate with each other, as well as with the groups that they are investigating, on archaeological research, health, urban, and environmental topics to unify their work on critical social, educational, and political issues. The traditional research populations increasingly want greater degrees of jurisdiction over what is written about them, and applied anthropologists, especially those influenced by the feminist critique, have advocated more collaboration with their respondents on ethnographic publications and museum exhibits in order to express more emic perspectives. This joint participation in the research and presentation process (whether by publication or museum display) fosters skills and generates capacities for indigenous change within communities.
Charles Menzies erects a paradigm to foster these joint ventures based on his work with the Gitkxaala Nation in British Columbia, which consists of four stages. First, the anthropologist opens a dialogue with the community that may suggest modifications to the research protocol. Then, research continues to grow and change in consultation with the respondents—who now are becoming “coethnographers.” Next, the research is conducted jointly between academics and members of the society. Finally, the data and results are analyzed by the joint team and the reports are coauthored. Lamphire advocates training students to conduct collaborative research of this nature as anthropologists increasingly find themselves employed by nonacademic public and private organizations.
21st-century anthropologists increasingly find themselves involved in policy-making jobs in areas as diverse as libraries and the army. The University of Rochester library hired anthropologist Nancy Fried Foster, under a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, to study undergraduates’ term paper research, to steer library renovations, and to make suggestions on the redesign of its Web site. Foster used traditional anthropological research methods to discover that not only are many students extremely uncomfortable with the increasing technological changes that universities are forcing on them but also that they use the libraries to escape from them.
A recent Society for Applied Anthropology Newsletter reports that anthropologists increasingly may become involved in work with the military via a program called the Human Terrain System under the Department of Defense (DoD). According to Susan L. Andreatta, president of the SfAA, the DoD wants to employ graduate-level anthropologists in Iraq and Afghanistan. Opinions on this are divided, but one may note that the Society was founded by anthropologists who worked for the war effort in the 1940s.
The anthropologist and senior consultant to the Human Terrain Systems project is Montgomery McFate. William Roberts of St. Mary’s College, Maryland, describes her argument as one in which a military that has greater understanding of indigenous civilians in war zones will reduce loss of life and cultural destruction.
Also, archaeologists may be involved with the military on sensitive issues. As of this writing, archaeologist Laurie Rush serves as a cultural resources manager at the United States Army’s Fort Drum, where she works with the Integrated Training Area Management unit of the DoD’s Legacy Program to develop a consciousness for archaeological treasures. This project arose out of a British Museum report that detailed the construction of a helicopter pad by U.S. Marines on the ruins of the ancient city of Babylon, the destruction of a 2.5-millenniaold brick road, and the filling of sandbags with artifacts. Part of Rush’s program involves building models of archaeological sites, mosques, and cemeteries for soldiers to train to avoid.
Television programs such as Crime Scene Investigation (CSI), CSI: Miami, CSI: New York, and Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) have sparked an international interest in forensics. This, in turn, has led to a student population interested in forensic anthropology. Cable television’s Discovery Health channel has created a true-life version of the CSI phenomenon with its Forensic Files program, which features cases solved by forensic anthropologists, such as Elizabeth Murray of the College of Mount St. Joseph in Cincinnati who works regularly with law enforcement agencies across the country.
The ABC News and Christian Science Monitor Web sites occasionally report on the applications of forensic science. They describe forensic anthropologists and archaeologists who have been involved in the identification of the remains of the nearly 3,000 victims of the September 11, 2001, attack; Jon Stereberg, a forensic archaeologist, has tried to trace the evidence of 1992 gas attacks in the clothing of victims in the Balkans; and Clyde Collins Snow, a retired forensic archaeologist, has investigated grave sites in Guatemala, Bosnia, and Iraq. Currently, forensic specialists, such as Ariana Fernandez, are examining the bodies of Kurdish people who were found in mass graves and who are believed to have been massacred in a genocide attack during the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq.
The travel and tourism industry is in dire need of the services of anthropologists, and this is becoming an attractive employment option to anthropology graduates, according to Susan Banks, an anthropologist involved in the travel industry. Too often, tourists will go to exotic locales where they believe that they are seeing the actual types of lives lived in those places, unaware that they are being fed a fabricated culture designed, not to expose them to life in other places, but to screen them from the true ways of life found in those locations. Commonly, tourists are discouraged from visiting local towns and actually learning something about the countries that they have visited. Anthropology can offer a remedy to this problem and provide some much-needed income to the local economies. Exploitation and insensitivity to indigenous people by culturally uninformed tourists does little to change the image of the “ugly American.” Likewise, the international sex trade both exploits and victimizes indigenous peoples and furthers the spread of dangerous diseases, such as HIV/AIDS.
Environmental degradation of local ecologies is another problem of culturally ignorant tourism. For this reason, Susan Charnley, in an article in Human Organization in 2005, suggests a change from nature tourism to ecotourism. She cites the case of Ngorongoro Conservation Area (NCA) in Tanzania. Nature tourism involves traveling to pristine locations where tourists can experience and enjoy nature; ecotourism involves traveling to natural areas that conserve the local ecology while respecting the rights of the local cultures and encouraging sustainable development. Charnley makes the case for the increasingly difficult position of the Massai people since the creation of the NCA and the negative effect it has had on their economy. Charnley argues for culturally appropriate involvement of local people in tourist destinations in ways that will provide actual benefits to their communities. These benefits would include social and political justice and involvement in decision-making processes that directly influence their lives.
A selection of articles from Human Organization from the first decade of the 21st century includes such topics as the administration of federally managed fisheries, including a discussion of the role of James A. Acheson who was the first applied anthropologist hired by the National Marine Fisheries Service in 1974 to conduct policy research and implementation through conservation and stewardship of marine ecosystems.
Another article described the importance of beer parties among Xhosa labor cooperatives on homesteads in South Africa. An article that has to do with changes in gender relations and commercial activities, as the global market expands to countries such as Mali, explores how the outside world can force local peoples to change the structure of their society by giving advantages to one gender over the other when that may not have been the case previously. Another article illustrates what the author of this chapter sees as a parallel between the popular use of family trusts in the United States in the 1980s and 1990s and a move from individual land tenure to collective, kinbased ownership on Mokil Atoll in Micronesia, as the region’s political, economic, and demographic transformation has imperiled the rights of absentee owners. By placing the land ownership in the kin group, it is protected from individual alienation.
A 2007 article by Kathryn Forbes is especially topical in the current social, economic, and political climate of the United States today. Forbes’s article examines how the regional land use of ideologies and popular images of farm workers has contributed to a housing crisis for Mexican agricultural laborers in Fresno County, California. Stereotypic descriptions of Mexican farm workers have resulted in the formulation of zoning codes that exacerbate demographic segregation in Fresno County. Most farm workers live in rural areas, which are more economical and more convenient to their sources of income but where there are fewer retail outlets—including groceries. The arrival of seasonal laborers, combined with a lack of affordable housing thanks to local policymakers, has engendered a regional overcrowding crisis for Mexican farm workers. Forbes’s role in this discussion is similar to the review of the roles that anthropology can play in public policy cited by Wilson and Donnan (2006) in Ireland.
Forbes’s article is especially relevant to the United States today as the influx of immigrant labor, thanks in part to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), has made the appearance of Hispanic laborers a topic of vituperative discussion on national radio talk shows and political campaigns. This is a point that falls clearly within the purview of social science rather than politics as anthropological demographers and gerontologists clearly can demonstrate that not only does the country require immigrant labor because of statistical “full employment,” but also it needs to save social security from the influx of baby boom retirees.
The bankruptcy of social security was predicted in university classes as long ago as the 1970s. The increase in life spans, coupled with the potentially disastrous demographic effect of a baby boom generation that will retire to be supported by a much smaller (thanks to the introduction of the birth control pill in the 1960s) birth dearth/baby bust cohort, has the potential to lead to economic disaster for the latter group as their increasing social security taxes erode their quality of life. The baby boom retirees’ social security taxes must be replaced from somewhere—if not by eroding the birth dearth/baby bust cohort’s quality of life, then by an influx of tax contributors, for example, immigrant laborers.
Anthropologists are in a unique position to act as the social partners of policymakers on this issue not only by means of their demographic and gerontological expertise but also by their ethnographic contributions to allay the concerns of the extant non-Hispanic population of the United States over its possible perception of cultural drowning by immersion in a neo-Hispanic society del Norte (“land of the north”).
Likewise, anthropological expertise in indigenous Latin American medical beliefs, such as hot and cold, wet and dry bodily conditions derived from the ancient Mediterranean medical concept of humors where illnesses were believed to be caused by an imbalance of humors; folk illnesses, such as susto (“fright”), a culture bound syndrome found in southern Mexico in which an individual who does not recover from an illness is believed to have had a terrible fright in the past that prevents recovery from the unrelated illness (Rubel, O’Nell, & Collado-Ardon, 1991); and cultural sensitivities to variations in conceptions of sexual modesty and familial responsibilities will form a necessary component in the rapprochement of the two larger cultures although this may be difficult in cases of smaller subcultures.
Other areas for future research in applied anthropology include human trafficking (briefly cited in the discussion of tourism); indigenous rights (e.g., salmon fishing among the native Northwest coast peoples in North America, cattle grazing in the Burren in County Clare, Ireland, or the effects of water control on the Marsh Arabs of southern Iraq); anthropometry and gender (in the cultural sense, not the linguistic sense) stereotypes and gender rearing roles; cultural relativism versus cultural interference, including whether or not Muslim women need to be “saved” or if Western hegemonists even have the right to do so; genital mutilation (male as well as female); the role of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in distributing information and treatment of HIV/AIDS; food waste, diet and health, and body image; intelligent design, globalization and hightech industry; and the role of biology and culture in psychiatric illnesses, to name but a few of the possibilities open to applied research in anthropology.
In an article titled “Making Our Voices Heard—Ethical Dilemmas and Opportunities,” in the November 2007 Society for Applied Anthropology Newsletter, Mark Schuller of Vassar College gives a good review of the future of applied research in anthropology. Schuller writes that many anthropologists believe that their contributions are considered marginal and irrelevant and are passed over in policy making based on a review of the leading anthropological journals and newsletters. He argues that applied anthropologists with a holistic viewpoint can inform policymakers regarding the integrated structural correlation among debt and poverty, education, health care, and local welfare via their engagement with local communities. Schuller calls for local, global, and ethical analysis of current concerns to make anthropology applicable in the “real” world. He suggests that a good way to apply anthropology is through teaching; his students investigate public policies and then send letters to the editors of newspapers in order to introduce anthropological viewpoints into current policy discussions.
Schuller has been keyword-searching “anthropology” on Google and reports that he has found at least two stories a day in which anthropologists are interviewed or have authored stories in media outlets. Among the included issues that his students or other anthropologists have written about in daily news publications is the part played by anthropologists in clandestine activities, inequalities of globalization, the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) health care bill, the UN Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, No Child Left Behind, prison reform, disclosure of hormone content in milk, Hurricane Katrina “fatigue,” and the cancellation of international debt in impoverished nations of South America.
In the same issue, Amanda Stronza of Texas A&M University describes a new program in applied biodiversity science, which also will tackle poverty and cultural inequality. The interdisciplinary research program integrates cooperation between social and biological sciences and conservation organizations at the applied level. Research topics are to incorporate biodiversity with local legislative policy in partnership among academia, governments, NGOs, and local societies in four regions of the Americas.
This research paper has explored the subject of applied anthropology. It was done from a historical perspective in order to gain a processual understanding of how it arrived at the state in which it is found in early 21st-century anthropology.
A brief definition of applied anthropology was followed by a review of the origins of applied anthropology in the 19th century and a history of the field through World War II, the Fox Project, the Peru Vicos Project, and Project Camelot. The section on the later 20th century led into applied anthropology today and topics for future research.
Bibliography:
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- Carlson, S. (2007). An anthropologist in the library. Chronicle of Higher Education, 53 (50), A26.
- Chagnon, N. (1997). Yanomamo (5th ed.). Fort Worth, TX: Harcourt Brace College.
- Colburn, L. L., Abbott-Jamieson, S., & Clay, P. M. (2006). Anthropological applications in the management of federally managed fisheries: Context, institutional history, and prospectus. Human Organization, 65 (3), 231–239.
- Dobyns, H. F., Doughty, P. L., & Lasswell, H. D. (Eds.). (1971). Peasants, power, and applied social change: Vicos as a model. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.
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Cultural Anthropology research paper suggestions
Some suggested topics for your paper:, note-- these instructions are for students taking the course during a regular semester, not the 5-week bridge module course.
- A description of key points of a culture in which you are interested (a brief ethnography)
- An in-depth look at the concept of "worldview" or the comparison of the worldviews of two societies
- Religious beliefs or practices of a particular society
- Marriage/family in a particular group or comparison between societies
- Types of economic organization/systems
- Language acquisition
- The influence of language on culture
- Views about ancestors
- The role of women in a given society
- Doing fieldwork as an anthropologist
- The importance of cultural anthropology to the missionary . . . or to the business executive . . .or to the educator . . . or to the . . .
- Ethnocentrism and some tips on how to minimize it
- The idea of cultural baggage and how to minimize it
- Culture shock : What it is and how to best work through it
These topics are given to you as idea starters. You may use one of these or some adaptation of it or you may come up with a different topic that interests you more. Leafing through any introduction to cultural anthropology book may also stimulate your thinking in terms of a topic.
Ready for some cross-cultural humor?
-- Howard Culbertson

Free Cultural Anthropology Essays and Papers

Cultural Anthropology
Anthropology, the study of the development of various societies and cultures, has helped humans understand the differences amongst groups of people. Cultural anthropology, in particular, focuses on the cultural variations that have developed throughout human history. Anthropologists are responsible for studying and examining the behaviors of humankind, researching how humans interact and how they develop. Most anthropologists accomplish this by partaking in field study which enables them to experience
Anthropology And Cultural Anthropology
Cultural anthropology examines different cultures and studies them in their native environments by observing or becoming part of each group to understand each culture from within. According to Crapo (2013), “Cultural Anthropology is the study of the similarity and diversity of human ways of life (cultures) and of the regularities in how culture functions” (sec. 1.1). When observing each culture neutrally from the outside in, is called an etic point of view and when experiencing the culture from
Importance Of Cultural Anthropology
Cultural Anthropology Cultural anthropology is one of several branches of anthropology, the comparative study of human societies and cultures. The science of cultural anthropology deals specifically with the origin and development of human behavior. Much like most sciences, cultural anthropology has developed and changed since its beginnings in the 1800s. Sciences dealing with culture and behavior have changed especially, as scholars and researchers in the field have adapted to better research and
Essay On Cultural Anthropology
types of cultures and societies in various parts of the world, this can often lead to misunderstanding which ultimately leads to the illusion of cultural superiority, and in most cases this can lead to genocide - the systematic murder or annihilation of a group of people or culture. Anthropology is the study of humans, our immediate ancestors and their cultural environments this study stems from the science of holism - the study of the human condition. Culture is crucial in determining the state of the
Cultural Anthropology Essay
fieldwork is very important to the practice of cultural anthropology. In a 2 to 3 page essay discuss the strengths and weaknesses of this research method. In doing so, please do the following: a) Define ethnographic fieldwork and explain why it is important to cultural anthropology. Ethnographic fieldwork is characteristic of cultural anthropology (Sprandley, 6) . Ethnography entails theory of cultures. Ethnographic fieldwork is important to cultural anthropology to undercover the unknown principles of
Anthropology is known as the study of human beings, over time and space. We often look at anthropology as just the evolution of mankind and their basic development. After taking a class in Cultural Anthropology, I’ve come to realize how much more in depth it is. There are many different aspects that we do not look at. We do not need to be anthropologists to see how these concepts can apply to our daily lives. Anthropology makes you to look at the world differently than you were taught too. Cultural
- 1 Works Cited
Cultural Anthropology Almost all cultures world wide have highly developed traditions of music and dance. According to Mari Womack, author of Being Human: An Introduction to Cultural Anthropology, music and dance carry much importance within a culture. "As do other artistic forms, music and dance reflect cultural and social organization. Cultural values can be conveyed in the words of a song, and the performance of a song or a dance is dependent on the social context" (Womack 226). Music and
Cultural Anthropology: Paper 2 Ethnography is a research method used to explore different cultures from a personal view. Many anthropologists have sought to use ethnography as their main study method because of its specificity and opportunity to get hands on. Those that participate in ethnographies are expected to accurately record detailed accounts of the society in which they are staying, but at the same time maintain a critical distance. The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down is a ethnography
Through week 9 of Cultural Anthropology, our subject involved health and illness. I feel this topic is one of the most important throughout the entire book because it pertains to literally everyone. Health and illness is brought into examination through a variety of questions throughout this chapter. For instance, Guest presents the question of how does culture shape our ideas of health and illness? Furthermore, while reading through Guest’s chapter, I came to a better understanding of how health
Cultural Anthropology Research Paper
this semester of Anthropology has opened my mind all about humans and why we do what we do. I also learned historical information about early human ancestors that have changed my thoughts on when life began for humans. Acquiring this information, I have used it to apply it in my everyday life at work, on the go, or at home with family. What we have learned this semester are the four major subfield of anthropology, which are Archeology, Linguistics, Cultural and Physical Anthropology; along with the
Disadvantages Of Cultural Anthropology
distinguish cultural anthropology in certain ways. The definition per ethnographic studies helps to distinguish cultural anthropology from other disciplines and helps to understand it and how it is carried out. Field work ethnography defines cultural anthropology as holism, cross culture comparison and observation by participation. Ethnographic fieldwork has a lot of advantages. Ethnographic fieldwork defines cultural anthropology to be holism. It stresses that cultural anthropology embraces a holistic
Cultural anthropology is unique because it is the study of human kind. It strives to fully be able to understand and describe humans. Cultural anthropologists focus on four very important things in order to do their job correctly. They have a holistic perspective that they use to understand human behavior. Holism means as a whole, in order to completely understand one aspect of a culture, you have to be able to understand all the other aspects of the culture. A second important element in cultural
Reflection Of Cultural Anthropology
Cultural anthropology has taught me a lot in such a short time. This class has been very eye opening to me and has made me think more about the different cultures around me and just how important it is to learn about them. One of the things I have learned is how religion is related to culture. Culture is behaviors of a community such as the food they make, the music they listen to, and the rituals they take part in. This can be very similar to religion because a culture is based off of their religious
Cultural Anthropology Article Comparison
Introduction: Cultural Anthropology is a term that is in everyday lives and topics. When one thinks of anthropology they think of the study of old remnants commonly referred to as archaeology. This, however, is not the only form of anthropology. There are four types of anthropology and they are archaeology, biological anthropology, cultural anthropology, and linguistic anthropology. However, Cultural anthropologists are every where and study people of all walks of life. One can find a topic and
Cultural Anthropology and Ethnographic Fieldwork
- 16 Works Cited
Cultural Anthropology and Ethnographic Fieldwork James P. Spradley (1979) described the insider approach to understanding culture as "a quiet revolution" among the social sciences (p. iii). Cultural anthropologists, however, have long emphasized the importance of the ethnographic method, an approach to understanding a different culture through participation, observation, the use of key informants, and interviews. Cultural anthropologists have employed the ethnographic method in an attempt to
The Importance Of Cultural Anthropology
Why studying cultural anthropology matter? Cultural anthropology known as the comparative study of human societies and cultures and their development. Cultural anthropology is also known as the study of human cultures, their beliefs, practices, values, ideas, technologies, economies and other domains of social and cognitive organization. Cultural anthropology studies how human cultures are shaped or shape the world around them and it focus a lot on the differences between every person. Human societies
Cultural And Social Anthropology: The Definition Of Culture
beginning of the year I defined culture as “a group of individuals that share similar thoughts and ideas and that behave similarly in like situations”. After reading the book Cultural and Social Anthropology there was one definition of culture that stuck out to me. Franz Boaz stated that culture is like wearing a set of cultural glasses. These glasses help us to perceive the world around us, meaning, that people look at certain events around the world in a particular way. The way a person interprets
Social And Cultural Anthropology: The History Of Kinship
traditionally been one of the key topics in social and cultural anthropology according to Robert Perkin. It describes the relationship between or among individuals that share a common origin in terms of historical ancestry, culture, or biological relationships. It is sometimes used as to classify people and form social groups in different societies. Although kinship has been studied under many disciplines, it is most prominent in the field of anthropology. The way in which kinship is classified differs
Cultural Ecology And Environmental Anthropology
The anthropological studies of Cultural Ecology and Environmental Anthropology represents differing schools of thoughts when it comes to understanding the “making” of “culture”. Nevertheless, both Cultural Ecology and Environmental Anthropology implement the ideology of “nature”, consisting facets of landscape, geography, and the environment as the focal methodology to investigate the construction of what we know as “culture”. In this case, pioneers of Cultural Ecology such as Leslie White develop
Anthropological Perspective, And Cultural Anthropology: The Study Of Culture
keeps us apart. Anthropology is the study of humans, how we work, what are our rituals, the study of our past. The anthropological perspective is how one must look at culture or at another society to observe it without bias and without judgement. There are four important parts to observing through the anthropological perspective the first being the concept of culture, holistic perspective, comparative perspective, and culture relativism. Through the study of cultural anthropology one, will understand
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Flanagan, Mariah Camille (2017) The religioscape of museums: understanding modern interactions with ancient ritual spaces .Undergraduate Thesis, University of Pittsburgh.
Merante, Monica M (2017) A universal display? Investigating the role of Panathenaic amphorae in the British Museum . Undergraduate Thesis, University of Pittsburgh.
Deemer, Susanna (2016) Between Capitulation and Overt Action: An Ethnographic Case Study of the Chinese American Student Association at University of Pittsburgh. Anthropology Honors Paper, University of Pittsburgh.
Devlin, Hannah (2016) Compositional analysis of Iroquoian pottery: determining functional relationships between contiguous sites. Undergraduate Thesis, University of Pittsburgh.
Gallagher, Anna (2016) The Biderbost site: exploring migration and trade on the social landscape of the Pacific Northwest. Undergraduate Thesis, University of Pittsburgh.
Hoadley, Elizabeth (2016) Discrimination and modern Paganism: a study of religion and contemporary social climate. Undergraduate Thesis, University of Pittsburgh.
Johnson, Rachel (2016) Households and Empire: A pXRF Study of Chimu Metal Artifacts from Cerro la Virgen. Anthropology Honors Paper, University of Pittsburgh.
Kerr, Jessica (2016) Mountain Dew and the Tooth Fairy: The Influence of Parent/child Relationships, Consumption Habits, and Social Image on Dental Caries in Rural Appalachia. Anthropology Honors Paper, University of Pittsburgh.
Kulig, Shannon (2015) What were the elites doing? understanding Late Classic elite practices at Lower Dover, Belize. Undergraduate Thesis, University of Pittsburgh.
Kulig, Shannon (2015) Pottery at the Cayuga Site of Genoa Fort. Anthropology Honors Paper, University of Pittsburgh.
Ojeda, Lauren (2015) The Syndemic Nature of Mental Health in Bolivia. Anthropology Honors Paper, University of Pittsburgh.
Paglisotti, Taylor (2015) Gender, Sexuality, and Stigma: A Case Study of HIV/AIDS policy and discourse in Rural Tanzania. Anthropology Honors Paper, University of Pittsburgh.
Wasik, Kayla (2015) Understanding Activities and Purposes: An Analysis of Ground Stone from the Parker Farm and Carman Iroquoian Sites. Anthropology Honors Paper, University of Pittsburgh.
Bugos, Eva (2014) “That’s what I look to her for:” a qualitative analysis of interviews from the Young Moms: Together We Can Make a Difference study. Undergraduate Thesis, University of Pittsburgh.
Deahl, Claire (2014) A Study of Veterans Communities in Pittsburgh. Anthropology Honors Paper, University of Pittsburgh.
Fetterolf, Michael (2014) Healing Alzheimer’s. Anthropology Honors Paper, University of Pittsburgh.
Liggett, Sarah (2014) Creating an Armenian Identity: The Role of History, Imagination, and Story in the Making of ‘Armenian’. Anthropology Honors Paper, University of Pittsburgh.
Marler, Adrienne (2014) Illness Perceptions in Patients with Hepatobiliary Cancers. Anthropology Honors Paper, University of Pittsburgh.
Radomski, Julia (2014) “Hay que cuidarse”: family planning, development, and the informal sector in Quito, Ecuador. Undergraduate Thesis, University of Pittsburgh.
Siegel, Nicole (2014) The Bathhouse and the Mikvah: The Creation of Identity. Anthropology Honors Paper, University of Pittsburgh.
Zhang, Zannan (2014) Functional Significance of the Human Mandibular Symphysis. Anthropology Honors Paper, University of Pittsburgh.
Chastain, Stephen (2013) The origin of the Mongolian steppe and its role in the adoption of domestic animals: paleoclimatology and niche construction theory. Anthropology Honors Paper, University of Pittsburgh.
Ferguson, Kayla (2013) The Use of English in Tamil Cinema. Anthropology Honors Paper, University of Pittsburgh.
Johnston, Graham (2013) Play, Boundaries, and Creative Thinking: A Ludic Perspective. Anthropology Honors Paper, University of Pittsburgh.
Willison, Megan (2013) Understanding gendered activities from surface collections: an analysis of the Parker Farm and Carman Iroquoian sites. Undergraduate Thesis, University of Pittsburgh.
Zajdel, Evan (2013) Narrative threads: ethnographic tourism, Romani tourist tales, and fiber art. Undergraduate Thesis, University of Pittsburgh.
Conger, Megan (2012) Considering Gendered Domains in Iroquois Archaeology: A Comparative Approach to Gendered Space in Central New York State. Anthropology Honors Paper, University of Pittsburgh.
Fisher, Isaac (2012) Return of the Gift: Food Not Bombs and the Radical Nature of Sharing in the Society of Engineered Scarcity. Anthropology Honors Paper, University of Pittsburgh.
Neely, Sean (2012) Spaces of becoming and being: the nature of shared experience in Czech society from 1918 to 1989. Undergraduate Thesis, University of Pittsburgh.
Rodriguez, Eric A. (2012) Profitability and production in 19th century composite ships: the case study of the Austrian vessel, the Slobodna. Undergraduate Thesis, University of Pittsburgh.
Bednar, Sarah E. (2011) Use and Perception of Teotihuacan Motifs in the Art of Piedras Negras, Tikal, and Copan. Anthropology Honors Paper, University of Pittsburgh.
Pallatino, Chelsea Leigh (2011) The Evolution of La Donna: Marriage, Motherhood, and the Modern Italian Woman. Undergraduate Thesis, University of Pittsburgh.
Barca, Kathryn G. (2010) An Analysis of Iroquois Pottery Function at the Parker Farm Site (UB 643): Comparisons between Two Structures. Anthropology Honors Paper, University of Pittsburgh.
Cannon, Joshua Warren (2010) Textile Production and Its Implications For Complex Social Organization. Undergraduate Thesis, University of Pittsburgh.
Rodriguez, Erin Christine (2010) Obsidian in Northern Ecuador: A Study of Obsidian Production and Site Function in Pambamarca. Undergraduate Thesis, University of Pittsburgh.
Rodriguez, Erin Christine (2010) Households and Power among the Pre-Contact Iroquois. Anthropology Honors Paper, University of Pittsburgh.
Wicks, Emily (2010) From Use to Disuse: A Study of Pottery Found in Households and Middens at Two Cayuga Sites, Parker Farm (UB 643 and Carman (UB642). Anthropology Honors Paper, University of Pittsburgh.
MacCord, Katherine (2009) Human Skeletal Growth: Observations from Analyses of Three Skeletal Populations. Undergraduate Thesis, University of Pittsburgh.
Nichols, Teresa A (2009) Declaring Indigenous: International Aspirations and National Land Claims Through the Lens of Anthropology. Undergraduate Thesis, University of Pittsburgh.
Sporar, Rachael E. (2009) Bones Say It Best: Bioarchaeological Evidence for the Change European Colonialism Brought to the Indigenous Peoples of North America. Anthropology Honors Paper, University of Pittsburgh.
Stacy, Erin Michele (2009) Stable Isotopic Analysis of Equid (Horse) Teeth from Mongolia. Undergraduate Thesis, University of Pittsburgh.
Sudina, Tony (2008) The Utilitarian Characteristics of Iroquois Pottery Vessels. Anthropology Honors Paper, University of Pittsburgh.
Browne, Nathan C. (2007) An Architectural Analysis of Longhouse Form, Spatial Organization, and an Argument for Privatized Space in Northern Iroquoia. Anthropology Honors Paper, University of Pittsburgh.
Melly, Caroline M. (2007) Strategies of Non-African Development Agencies and Their Implications for Cultural Change in Nigeria. Anthropology Honors Paper, University of Pittsburgh.
Sadvari, Joshua W. (2007) Dental Pathology and Diet at the Site of Khirbat al-Mudayna (Jordan). Anthropology Honors Paper, University of Pittsburgh.
Haines, Allison (2006) Assessing Osteophytosis in the Nubian Neolithic. Anthropology Honors Paper, University of Pittsburgh.
O’Donnell, Kathryn (2006) Gendered Identity in Transitioning States: Women’s Reproductive Health Activism in Berlin. Anthropology Honors Paper, University of Pittsburgh.
Prakash, Preetam (2006) Relationships between Diet and Status at Copan, Honduras. Anthropology Honors Paper, University of Pittsburgh.
Birmingham, Katherine (2005) Retracing the Steps of Iroquois Potters: Highlighting Technical Choice in Iroquois Ceramic Studies. Anthropology Honors Paper, University of Pittsburgh.
Colatrella, Brittany (2005) From Hopelessness to Hopefulness: A personal dialogue on ending generational poverty. Anthropology Honors Paper, University of Pittsburgh.
Long, Autumn (2005) The Ethos of Land Ownership in a Rural West Virginia County: An Ethnographic Account. Anthropology Honors Paper, University of Pittsburgh.
Richter, Stephen (2004) Anasazi Cannibalism in the American Southwest: A Site-By-Site and Taphonomic Approach. Anthropology Honors Paper, University of Pittsburgh.
Sulosky, Carrie (2004) The Effects of Agriculture in Preceramic Peru. Anthropology Honors Paper, University of Pittsburgh.
Wiseman, Natalie (2004) Religious Syncretism in Mexico. Anthropology Honors Paper, University of Pittsburgh.
Hamm, Megan (2003) Egyptian Identity Vs. "The Harem Hootchi- kootch": Belly Dance in the Context of Colonialism and Nationalism in Egypt. Anthropology Honors Paper, University of Pittsburgh.
Michalski, Mark (2003) Anthropological Fact or Fiction: A Critical Review of the Evidence For and Against the Existence of Cannibalism in the British Navy. Anthropology Honors Paper, University of Pittsburgh.
Mueller-Heubach, Oliver Maximillian (2003) The Moravian Response to a Changing America as Seen Through Ceramics. Anthropology Honors Paper, University of Pittsburgh.
Shock, Myrtle (2003) Comparison of Lithic Debitage and Lithic Tools at Two Early Contact Period Cayuga Iroquois villages, the Parker Farm and Carman Sites. Anthropology Honors Paper, University of Pittsburgh.
Steinman, Joanna (2003) Feng Shui. Anthropology Honors Paper, University of Pittsburgh.
Strauss, Amy (2003) Greek Neolithic figurines from Thessaly. Anthropology Honors Paper, University of Pittsburgh.
Thompson, Ross (2003) Study of Arsenic in Hopi Artifacts. Anthropology Honors Paper, University of Pittsburgh.
Whitehead, Jeffrey (2003) We Owe It All to the Iroquois? Anthropology Honors Paper, University of Pittsburgh.
Boswell, Jacob (2002) A Study of Changing Context: Adapting Eastern Medicine to a Western Setting. Anthropology Honors Paper, University of Pittsburgh.
Persson, Ann S. (2001) A Beacon of Restoration: Archaeological Excavations at the John O'Neill Lighthouse Keeper's Residence, Havre de Grace, Maryland. Anthropology Honors Paper, University of Pittsburgh.
Unice, Lori Ann (2001) Dental Health Among the Monongahela: Foley Farm Phase II. Anthropology Honors Paper, University of Pittsburgh.
Asmussen, Heidi (1998) Toward an Understanding of Iroquois Plant Use: archaeobotanical material from the Carman Site, a Cayuga village in central New York. Anthropology Honors Paper, University of Pittsburgh.
Rockette, Bonny (1998) Huari Administrative Architecture: A Space Syntax Approach. Anthropology Honors Paper, University of Pittsburgh.
West, Kate (1997) Faunal Analysis of the Carman Site: a Cayuga village site in central New York. Anthropology Honors Paper, University of Pittsburgh.
Norejko, Jay (1996) The Most Diverse Fauna of Plesiadapiformes (Mammalia: Primatomorpha) Ever Sampled from the Clarkforkian Land Mammal Age. Anthropology Honors Paper, University of Pittsburgh.
Kasperowski, Kris (1995) Stone Tool Manufacture at the Carman Site. Anthropology Honors Paper, University of Pittsburgh.
Montag, Michelle (1995) Lithic Debitage Analysis of the Carman Site. Anthropology Honors Paper, University of Pittsburgh.
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Developmental and anthropological approaches to childhood.
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Aids and Accusation Unimagined Community
AIDS and Accusation: Haiti and the Geography of Blame by Paul Farmer, and Unimagined Community: Sex, Networks, and AIDS in Uganda and South Africa bring the Western reader into a confrontation of largely ingrained belief systems regarding self, wellness, disease, one’s place in economy and privilege, and the vast differences in outcome that social isolation, economic position, and culture can effect on disease management. Farmer’s book was initially published in 1992 and published again in 2006. Thornton’s book was published […]
Mass Globalization
It is no secret that technology is the 21st century has resulted in mass globalization for many western countries offering education, ideology and socialization. Considering its affordability, in 2010 Janet McIntosh wrote the article Mobile phones and Mipoho’s prophecy where she conducted ethnographic fieldwork in the town of Malindi, Kenya where she analyzes the sociolinguistics in the society when cell phones were introduced. McIntosh’s research has contributed to anthropology and economic development by exhibiting how cell phones globalized Kenyan culture […]
Sociology of Community and Sociological Perspective
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For my anthropology book review, I decided to read and analyze The Land of Open Graves: Living and Dying on the Migrant Trail by Jason de Leon. Jason takes a look at U.S.-Mexico immigration policies from a holistic anthropological view that includes forensic science, linguistics, ethnography, and archaeology. The book’s main argument about immigration is the Sonoran Desert is used by the United States government as a cruel and harsh method of border enforcement. After reading this text, I would […]
An Analysis of Humanity from Individualism Point of View
Humanity is a complex species of sentient organisms. We, as humans, are the only species who chase after the meaning of life or, at least, we think so. We, as humans, are the top of the food chain because of our ability to adapt. We, as humans, are destroying the planet at a pace that the principle of systematic entropy itself would be awed by. Ah, beautiful unison. Yet, are humans more alike than they are different? Are our similarities […]
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Essays on Cultural Anthropology
Understanding of cultural anthropology and its aspects, my interest in social and cultural anthropology, how cultural anthropology should be understood: a brief explanation, breaking down buddhism from the perspective of cultural anthropology, the relationship between cultural and linguistic anthropology, land scape in a changing world, whose culture is it': cultural property and cultural artifacts, defining the concept of culture, ethnography as methods of anthropology, an anthropological perspective on vampires, my interest in anthropology, the cultures and relationships, symbols of contention and culture, the severity of littering and how it truly affects us, specific depiction of human figure, feeling stressed about your essay.
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Ideas for a Cultural Anthropology Research Paper
Kimberley mcgee, 10 aug 2018.

An anthropologist is naturally curious. They explore, study, record and care about the world around them, how people interact and how events, rituals or laws affect people. When an anthropologist is tasked with writing a research paper, it can be a great opportunity to explore many topics they have been studying to realize what they find interesting.
Explore this article
- Cultural Anthropology Research Paper Example
- Get Started on Solid Ideas
- Tips for Anthropology Writing
1 Cultural Anthropology Research Paper Example
Cultural anthropology research topics are abundant. Narrowing down the list can be difficult. A good research paper idea can have a narrow focus or a broader perspective on an issue that affects a wide swath of people. A cultural anthropology research paper example can include differences in growth and development of a certain species or subgroup of a race, such as differences in death rituals across the globe.
You can get very detailed, such as exploring marriage rituals in various cultures that are either in close proximity or far away around the world. You can study a set of twins from different backgrounds over a specific time frame or examine conflicts among different cultures in close proximity.
You can also apply current technology to formerly developed anthropology ideas. For instance, you can apply forensic science to cultural anthropology in ancient burial rituals, or bring the subject of anthropology to modern issues, such as feminism, education, migration or politics.
2 Get Started on Solid Ideas
If you are struggling to come up with an idea for a well-crafted paper, consider asking yourself a wide range of cultural anthropology research questions. From this list, you will cull where your true interests lie and possibly come up with an idea that grabs not only your attention but that of the professors that will be poring over the written project.
Think about what class or topic you recently encountered that you felt needed more information. Were you left feeling that the research was lacking or full of holes? Consider what topics challenge you or left you wanting to learn more.
3 Tips for Anthropology Writing
There is a difference in anthropological writing compared to typical research paper writing. Anthropology requires that the writer be culturally relative. They understand the cultural differences and let them stand without introducing their own ethnocentrism.
In your research and in your writing, point out cultural norms by critically questioning them. Organize evidence, such as historical accounts, articles in newspapers and interviews with living subjects who may have experienced an event or are part of the religion or subject you are studying.
- 1 The Writing Center: Anthropology
About the Author
Kimberley McGee is an award-winning journalist with 20+ years of experience writing about education, jobs, business and more for The New York Times, Las Vegas Review-Journal, Today’s Parent and other publications. She graduated with a B.A. in Journalism from UNLV. Her full bio and clips can be seen at www.vegaswriter.com.
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151 Best Anthropology Research Topics for Students to Consider
Table of Contents
Anthropology Research Topics
Do you want to write an excellent anthropology research paper? Are you searching for the top anthropology research topics? If yes, then check this blog post and get interesting anthropology research paper topic ideas.
Anthropology is a scientific study that deals with humans and their evolutionary history, behavior, communication, and socialization. Mainly, the subject focuses on the physiological and biological features of humans and their social aspects including culture, language, family, religion, and politics.
When it comes to doing research on Anthropology, you can find a variety of research topics. But selecting a persuasive anthropology research topic out of them is the real challenging task. During the topic selection process, give high preference to the topic that is interesting to you and has a wide scope of research and discussion. Also, make sure to pick the topic that has many reference materials and evidence.
Before you begin your topic selection, first, search online and generate a wide range of anthropology research paper topic ideas. If you have many ideas, then you can easily shortlist and find the best topic from them. To help you, here, in this blog post, we have listed the top anthropology research topic ideas in various areas such as biological, cultural, ethnographic, physical, and medical anthropology. Go through the complete list and select the best anthropology research topic that fits your interest.

Biology Anthropology Research Topics
- How do social relationships affect nutritional choices and human healthy living?
- The clinical interactions in any social association of your choice
- The origin, spread, and transgenerational impact of any endemic in any society of your choice
- Analyze the concept of vulnerability and risk in public health care.
- The commercialization and commodification of medicine and healthcare in contemporary society.
- How maladaptation affects migrants in any country of your choice.
- Analyze the possibilities of traditional institutions in preserving cultures.
- How do pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies shape contemporary medicine?
- The relationship and comparison between malnutrition, violence, and chronic disease in any society of your choice
- The challenges of a developing nation in public access to healthcare services.
- How do music and interpersonal relationship improve cognitive behavior?
- How ethnography and its studies could help people with learning disabilities?
- The function of Ethnography in software technology
- How teachers can adopt the findings of Ethnography in classroom learning?
- The role of clinical science in the pharmaceutical science of rural communities
Also, Read – Excellent Biology Research Topics for Every Student to Consider
Ethnographic Anthropology Research Topics
- Why abortion is considered the first resort for sexually assaulted and domestically violated victims?
- How has the value of education improved through ethnographic discoveries?
- The role of Ethnography and its studies in psychology
- An ethnographic study on the inclusiveness of health care and the public access to it
- Examine the state of theories of racism
- The ethnographic study of a group of domestically violated victims and how they respond to the violation
- The effects of smart homes and privacy in communal Ethnographic studies
- Conduct a study on the beliefs of Japanese students while they learn English.
- The status of spiritual healing through systems of pilgrimage therapy.
- Evaluate how journalists cope with stress.
Anthropology Research Topics on Ethnographic
- Use ethnographic information to assess intensive public healthcare.
- How do traditional health beliefs and myths affect contemporary society’s development?
- An ethnographic overview of patient handover in European health care.
- An expository study on the role of psychologists in advancing special education
- Examine the boundaries of citizens’ involvement in intensive healthcare.
- The expansion and development of anthropology in the 20th and 21st centuries
- What can we learn about ourselves as a species through anthropological research?
- Compare and biological contrast and physical anthropology
- How can cultural anthropology help us to understand more about ourselves?
- How is the relationship to the social anthropology of the ideas collected evidenced?
Cultural Anthropology Research Topics
- Feminism in patriarchal societies
- How are burial practices interwoven with religion and myth?
- A forensic overview of the concept of family, fraternity, and gangs
- The emergence and influence of culture on tourism
- The concept of ancestors in native American countries and Africa
- Conduct an in-depth analysis of the philosophy of two societies of your choice.
- The meaning of cultural baggage and the ways to address the concept of culture invasion
- The concept of social status in any African community
- Assess the structure of family and marriage in two countries of your choice
- The significance of cultural diversity in the study of human evolution in anthropology
- Music, dance, and parties in the contemporary society
- The role of literature in spreading libertarian ideas.
- The evolving roles of women in Asian countries
- A criticism and distinction of anthropology and art
- How does migration promote cultural diversity?
See Also – Intriguing Cultural Research Topics for you to Consider
Physical Anthropology Research Topics
- Account for the similarity and contrast in the philosophy of ancient Greece and Italy
- Assess Latin language and account for the development of other languages since their inception
- Assess the Slavic groups and explore the development of the aborigines and the modern Slavophiles
- Account for the significance of women in ancient Egypt
- The origin of man in different societies of civilization
- What is the underlying Egyptian belief in preserving the dead?
- Aging in Asian countries and what it means for them
- Analyze five pieces of literature on the stages of drowning till death.
- Examine the influence of the environment on skin color.
- Have western ideas of superiority affected the acknowledgment of Egypt as the cradle of civilization?
- What are the contemporary facts that support past research and experiences of Homo habilis?
- What are the consequences of smoking on human physical appearance?
- The advantages and consequences of eugenics in today’s society
- Analyze the physical concept of re-adjusting newborn babies by nursing mothers.
- What is transcultural nursing?
Medical Anthropology Research Topics
- Assess the connection of income to health.
- The complications in the treatment of periodontal disease
- How do nursing ethics become pragmatic in the career of professionals?
- The role of ethnobotany in medical sciences
- An assessment of women’s sexuality and how culture affects sexual health
- Examine the environmental health disaster of two countries of your choice.
- A study on the status of cancer after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in Russia
- Assess the residue of why societal infamy is linked to HIV/AIDS.
- Explain big pharma and the complications of watchdogs and whistle-blowers.
- Approaches to human illness from a biomedical Anthropology Perspective
- Medical Anthropology: Religious, Spiritual and Magical Beliefs
- Medical Anthropology: Analysis of Culture and Medicine
- The U.S. Urban Poor Health Crisis: Perspective of Critical Medical Anthropology
- Applied Medical Anthropology: Towards a Holistic Medical Approach
- The Link Between Culture and Health Applying Medical Anthropology
- Medical Anthropology Cultural Conflicts Hierarchy and Problems of Mental
Interesting Anthropology Research Topics
- A review of the latest archaeological dating methods
- Recent improvements in crime detection
- The influence of environmental anthropology on medicine
- How accurate is DNA evidence in matching and testing criminology?
- A critical assessment of radioactive carbon dating accuracy
- The factors that promote cultural hatred in a diverse society
- The role of folklore in the defense and transgenerational retainment of cultures
- The important changes in theories behind linguistic anthropology
- Explore the use of fossil records in paleoanthropology.
- A detailed analysis of language classification
Good Anthropology Research Topics
- How does the internet promote Westernization?
- Protective and risk dimensions of cultural norms, human behavior, and social institutions
- What is language endangerment?
- Explain the existence of racism in modern times.
- The role of TV reality shows in the social life
- Physical anthropology essentials
- The influence of cross-cultural experiences in the modern world
- The connection of political science with cultural anthropology
- The link between cultural anthropology and political science
- The political ecology of vector-borne and infectious diseases.
Popular Anthropology Research Topics
- The concepts of the American culture of consumerism and the Scandinavian culture of minimalism
- A criticism of the monarchy in European politics over Western democracy
- The significance of women in ancient Egypt
- The benefits and consequences of eugenics in today’s world
- The contemporary psychology of traveling between teenagers and their parents
- The influence of the Roman Catholic Church as the center of government, religion, art, and social life
- The cultural constructions of human society and how they aid evolutions
- A detailed overview of how the Roman Catholic Church improved the science of sculpting and architecture
- The disparity in healthcare accessibility in any developing country
- The evolving ideas about matrimony in Asia
- The process of aging and how it exacerbates fear of old age
- Examine the greeting gestures in American and Chinese societies.
- The development of rock music and its connection to Native American tribes.
- The significance of Greek culture on Italian languages and culture.
Exceptional Anthropology Research Topics
- Assess the effectiveness of government and non-governmental organization intervention in Africa following the Ebola virus outbreak.
- Evaluate the effects of a nuclear disaster on people using a natural disaster event as a case study.
- Make an attempt to assess how sex workers in Central Europe help to reduce the spread of HIV/AIDS.
- How has the HIV/AIDS epidemic affected the gay community since its discovery?
- Choose a minority group and conduct research on their mental health based on their challenges.
- Investigate why abortion is regarded as the first option for victims of sexual assault and domestic violence.
- Make an ethnographic study of healthcare management and intensive care nurses in the United States.
- An ethnographic study of resource management and how it affects American doctors should be attempted.
- Investigate an ethnographic study of a group of domestically abused victims and how they respond to the abuse.
- Analyze the advantages and disadvantages of orthodox and unconventional medicine in Native Americans.
- Examine women’s sexuality and how culture influences sexual health.
- Attempt to provide a medical moral perspective on the ethics of euthanasia and how it may be synonymous with suicide.
- Give an account of how his environmental and political health can help medical anthropology advance.
- Examine the relationship between income and health and examine three pioneering studies on the subject.
- An attempt to explain big pharmacy as well as the complexities of watchdogs and whistleblowers.
Amazing Anthropology Research Topics
- In pre- and post-capitalist communities, compare and contrast the economic anthropological concerns that exist.
- using anthropological studies to understand how political institutions affect people
- Compare and contrast the many medical procedures that different countries have independently found and created.
- What significance does medical anthropology have for the field of anthropology as a whole?
- In the psychological analysis of anthropology, what mental processes can be investigated?
- case studies involving altered states of consciousness are used to describe transpersonal anthropology more fully.
- In the Middle of the Movement”: the Non-Profit Industrial Complex’s support of sexual and reproductive rights
- The formation and division of gender and race among Ecuador’s indigenous people are discussed in the book Breaking the Equator.
- The Deconstruction of the American Dream: Visually Imaginative Communities in Post-World War II American Culture’s Shirley Cards and Kodak Announcements
- The Imposition of Consent: Moving Beyond Paradigms, Gender Standards, and the Persistence of Recasting Genital Appearance and Health in Medical Practice for Intersex Babies
Anthropology Research Topics for Exam
- The beliefs of risk, responsibility, and dependence on healthcare
- Cultural norms, human behavior, and social institutions: Protective and Risk Dimensions
- Prevention of harm and good health behaviors
- Experience of illness and social relationships with a disease
- Factors influencing changes in diet, health, and healthcare
- In a social organization, there are clinical interactions
- Multiple healing approaches, including those from ethnomedicine
- medical policies and practices and the historical and cultural contexts that influence them
- The interpretation of drugs and biotechnology
- The social formations of colonialism, postcolonialism, and modernity’s medical practices
Wrapping Up
We hope the anthropology research topics suggested in this blog post will help you to write a persuasive research paper. If you are still confused about how to write an effective anthropology research paper on the right topic, then immediately send your requirements to our research or dissertation helpers . Our professional writers who are experts in the field of anthropology will step in and offer research paper help according to your expectations.

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Medical pluralism in a Dong Village, Southwestern China
Since Charles Leslie introduced the concept of “medical pluralism” in the early 1970s, there has been a steady stream of research in this domain. Based on a case study of a Dong (ethnic group) village in China...
Agricultural adaptation to climate change in the trans-Himalaya: a study of Loba Community of Lo-manthang, Upper Mustang, Nepal
This paper presents community interference on agricultural ecology against climate change impacts in Lo-manthang, Upper-Mustang, Nepal. The peoples’ response strategies are based on traditional agroecological ...
The endogenous development of pastoral society: an anthropological case study in East Ujimqin Banner in Inner Mongolia
Through empirical research on the social development of pastoral society in the East Ujimqin Banner, this study puts forward that within the government’s “passive development” discourse, local herders would pr...
Intercultural pedagogies: experiencing the kungfu teaching methods at the Shaolin Temple
The Shaolin Temple is a unique religious institution in China. It is the most renowned temple of Chan Buddhism and, at the same time, a famed site of intensive cultivation of traditional kungfu. Besides runnin...
Islands and the world from an anthropological perspective
Island studies play an important role in the development of anthropology. It is of academic value and practical significance to understand the island world as the field where multiple modernization forces and ...
From regional society to migrant society: a study on urban transformation in China
This paper considers the process of the change in Chinese society—in which its people went from being regional to being migrant in urban communities—and recognizes urban transformation as being based on and an...
The rhythms of life in the Himalaya: seasonality and sociality among the Gurung people of the Nhāson Valley
The paper explores the linkage between ecological and social systems of the Gurung people in the Nhāson Valley of Nepal, accounting for the interconnectedness of social life and seasons. The main themes of the...
Research on the reform of county-level Fangguanfu in ethnic regions in China —a case study of the Fangguanfu Reformation at Ongniud Banner
Ongniud Banner, as a mixed agricultural and pastoral county-level administrative region within the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, actively promotes an improved level of government services, especially the Fang...
Regional ethnic autonomy: thinking and actions on the reconstruction of a unified multi-ethnic country by the CPC
The founding of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) established and consolidated a new type of socialist ethnic relations, and the people of all ethnic groups in China have embarked on a socialist road since ...
Chinese cultural view, the inner idea of Confucianism and the intuitionism of the Taoist school—comments on The Silver Wings : a scholarly sequel to the Golden Wing
The Silver Wings: Local Society and Cultural Changes in China (1920s–1980s) is a representative ethnographic work since the reconstruction of Chinese anthropology in the late 1970s. It used the perspective of cul...
Understanding the traditional customary law of the Yi people via ethnographic film – collaborative ethnographic film making process
This paper will take the film The Rules from Ancestors as the basis to discuss the “writing” process of ethnographic film, addressing how a contemporary visual ethnography can be realized through the presentation...
Sewing transnational textures of labour regulation: towards an integrative perspective
Labour regulation is often approached either by methodological nationalism or methodological globalism. Main arguments are that labour and its regulation are increasingly dis-embedded and commodified. As an al...
From the jungle to urban centers: body image and self-esteem of women in three different cultures
The aim of this study is to compare body image, body perception, body satisfaction, body-related self-esteem and overall self-esteem of women from three different cultural backgrounds. The survey covers a samp...
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To make an acknowledgement in a research paper, a writer should express thanks by using the full or professional names of the people being thanked and should specify exactly how the people being acknowledged helped.
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Boswell, Jacob (2002) A Study of Changing Context: Adapting Eastern Medicine to a Western Setting. Anthropology Honors Paper, University of Pittsburgh. 2001.
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Introduction Social constructs are embedded in the everyday lives of people. Constructs can range from a vast majority of things within different cultures
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Island studies play an important role in the development of anthropology. It is of academic value and practical significance to understand the island world as