Literature review essay

In your final essay, you will present a review of the scholarly literature on an area that anthropologists are debating. Your review of this literature needs to both document the most important arguments in this area and synthesize the information you have about other people’s ideas to make an argument about what people are debating, what positions have people taken in this debate, how this debate reflects larger conversations in anthropology, and what you conclude about anthropology’s future directions based on this debate. This is not necessarily something that scholars will state clearly in their own writing. In fact, scholarly discourse in anthropology can sometimes shy away from exposing conflict. You have to read the literature critically to see the fault lines and discern the arguments back and forth between the sides in the debate. For any argument, there is always a counterargument, and you will need to judge for yourself what the positions and the stakes are in any writing you read. Over the next weeks, you will report back to Ryan on your progress in two preliminary assignments. You can also get advice from him any time in office hours.