SA 301 Contemporary Ethnography

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Contact info

For Library research help, please contact Moninder Lalli, Librarian for Sociology / Anthropology by email (moninder_lalli@sfu.ca) or Ask a librarian.

Essay  

Start Your Research Here - This page gives you an overview of the research process, or in other words how to find materials for your essay.

Selected encyclopedias and handbooks

For more, try Anthropology guide's "Background information"

Characteristics of ethnographic sources

  • author is an anthropologist (has an anthropology degree) or is working in an anthropology department, and the article is published in an anthropology journal
  • article is based on fieldwork (article will indicate that in the content).... anthropologists are looking at what people do and say about culture and society and everyday life, and it is based on the anthropologist observing these people and being immersed in their social context over a long period of time. Anthropologists tend to speak in anecdotes and from the people's point of view.
  • article looks at how people are affected --going along, resisting, talking about it, how ideas come alive in the life of people, or how it matters in the life of people.

Since the articles need to be from an anthropological point of view, search the A-Z Journals List for the following:

Find books in the library

How to use the Library Catalogue  [guide]

Do a Library Catalogue search to see if the Library owns or provides access to the sources that you've identified. 

For known items it is best to check using "Browse by title" icon.

Search by topic, using Basic or Advanced Search

Books on your topic and ethnographic

Use either 'ethnography' OR 'ethnology' in combination with the name of the people you're researching or the geographic region in which they live.

Note: In the searches below, you can limited results to "Online Resources only" and "Resource type" of "Books"
In addition if you want to find a book or book chapters, you can limit the results to "Subjects" of "ethnography" and also "ethnology"

Combine different concepts using AND
Combine same concepts using OR
Use quotation marks to search for a phrase
Use brackets for synonyms
Use asterisk (*) for different endings of words

Use pulldown menu and select, "Source Types" as "Books"

Note:  For Catalogue Search, when combining concepts, use CAPITAL letters ( "OR", "AND")

Ethnographic books on a country or region, but not necessarily on your topic

To search for a whole book that is ethnographic, but not necessarily on your topic do the following:

In "Catalogue search", use the "Browse search" tab.
Change the default, "title" to "subject"
Search: for "Ethnology" and then the "name of country" 

E.g. Ethnology -- Fiji

Selected books

Ethnographic and Anthropological comics

The books, below, are part of University of Toronto Press' EthnoGrahic Series.

Browse subjects

For specific groups or regions, try "Ethnology" and the name of a country or geographic area.
Browsing by the Subject Heading:  "Ethnology" and the subheading(s) for different geographic region(s) of the world

Find journal articles

Characteristics of the sources

  • author is an anthropologist (has an anthropology degree) or is working in an anthropology department, and the article is published in an anthropology journal
  • article is based on fieldwork (article will indicate that in the content).... anthropologists are looking at what people do and say about culture and society and everyday life, and it is based on the anthropologist observing these people and being immersed in their social context over a long period of time. Anthropologists tend to speak in anecdotes and from the people's point of view.
  • article looks at how people are affected --going along, resisting, talking about it, how ideas come alive in the life of people, or how it matters in the life of people.

Since the articles need to be from an anthropological point of view, search the A-Z Journals List for the following:

Searching databases for ethnographic articles

Anthropology Focused Databases

  • Anthropology Plus
    • The resource indexes material relating to anthropology and archaeology and many of the journals by the American Anthropological Association
  • AnthroSource -- Full-text access to journals produced by the American Anthropological Association

For a longer list, try  Anthropology Databases, or the Anthropology resource guide.

Non-Anthropology Databases

Your strategies with the non-Anthropological focused databases is to try to limit your searches to journals that are "anthropological." 
Another strategy is to use the words (ethnogr* or ethnolog*) along with words describing your topic/cultural group.
  • Sociological Abstracts -- Sociological aspects of twenty-nine broad topics, including anthropology.
    • first search for "anthropol* - limit to "Publication title -- PUB" index
    • then add your other concepts in other search boxes
  • Social Sciences Full Text -- access to English-language social science journals.
    • first search for "anthropol* - limit to "SO Journals name" index,
    • then add your other concepts in other search boxes
  • JSTOR
    • Searchable, archival collection of core scholarly arts, humanities and social sciences journals, except for the most current 5-7 years of a journal since this is an "archival" collection.
    • Note: Use "advanced search" and limit the search to "anthropology" subset of journals
      • it will accept the truncation symbol.
      • since full text is being searched, you may consider using putting quotation marks around your "phrase words" to ensure that the words appear together.​
  • Academic Search Premier

  • Underground & Independent Comics, Comix, and Graphic Novels - Covers a wide-range of history and criticism. Includes full-text access to The Comics Journal, as well as interviews, criticism, images, and journal articles that document the continual growth and evolution of this art form.

Selected journals

For more, try "Browse by Subject" search for Ethnology -- Periodicals

Find author affiliation

If you want to check if an author is an anthropologist and it is not apparent from the article itself, try checking the "author affiliation" in these sources:
  • Web of Science -- A combined search of all of the Web of Science Citation indexes. This database does not do any "subject" indexing but it does provide author affiliations
  • Google Scholar -- Search specifically for scholarly literature. This would be good for when you do find something useful, enter the details of the reference, and then see who is citing those article -- use the link "cited by"

Library guides

Writing help

Selected resources on writing

Ethnology -- Authorship (books on writing ethnographies)