The Agency of Ceremonial Objects in Social Organization
Description
For the final assignment of this semester, you are required to write a research paper on the topic that you
identified in your research proposal. In this assignment, you are expected to summarize the main findings
of your research that you gathered from your analysis of different ethnographic accounts and theoretical
considerations. As indicated, your research paper has to address a specific research problem in the history
of anthropology and has to discuss previous ethnographic accounts in light of more recent theoretical
approaches. Thus, its main objective is:
1. to provide a comprehensive discussion of the most significant contributions to a research problem
within the field of cultural anthropology in light of different ethnographic accounts
2. to account for more recent theoretical approaches that helps to reinterpret or reanalyze the past
ethnographic accounts within a new theoretical and methodological framework by accounting for
recent advances in anthropological method and theory.
In your research paper, you are required to articulate the theoretical or methodological problem that lies at
the core of your research question, followed by the articulation of your thesis statement that summarizes
your main methodological and theoretical claim. After determining the contours of your research question
in the introductory part by indicating the frame and focus of your research paper, you must outline the
structure of your argument and the type of evidence you will present in the main body of your research
paper.
The main body must provide the supporting evidence of your methodological and theoretical
claims by discussing the different theoretical claims made by the main contributors to the field of research
under review. In presenting the different perspectives that address the identified research problem, you
also need to discuss the relative strengths and weaknesses of these positions articulated by the respective
ethnographic accounts and theoretical approaches.
In your summary you must reiterate your main
methodological and theoretical problem and your main claim and restate the main findings of your review
of the respective literature in the most concise terms.
