Citation Practices for Anthropology Papers
adapted from an essay by Prof. Steven Parish, Dept. of Anthropology, UCSD

Anthropology papers are different from papers you may have written for other courses, or for a writing class. Anthropology, like sociology and psychology, uses a distinctive citation format.

Anthropologists document the use of other people's work--the sources of ideas or data used in a paper--by placing citations in the text of the paper.

Documentation, for our purposes, means providing bibliographic references to sources. A citation is a bibliographic reference to a specific source--a book, an article, or other source of information. In-text citation simply means placing citations in the text of the paper, instead of in footnotes. In-text citation documents the use of sources of data and ideas, just as reference (bibliographic) footnotes do, but in-text citations are used instead of such footnotes in anthropology. You do not use reference footnotes or endnotes when you write a paper using the in-text citation format.

The important thing to understand, then, is that in-text citation replaces reference footnotes. Here's what in-text citation looks like:

The evidence for this hypothesis is suspect (Burns 1969:32).

Tonkinson (1978:27) notes that the Aborigines of the Western Desert...

As you can see, the in-text citation supplies, in parentheses, the name of the author, the year of publication, and the page(s) on which the material cited can be found [NOTE ADDED BY JM: when citing journal articles in the natural sciences, page numbers are usually omitted unless it is a direct quotation--most articles are short and if the reader wants to find the item, s/he can read the article. Not true for a 300 page book...]. Note the punctuation: this is exactly how it should appear in all your anthropology papers. Also note that when the name of the author is used as part of the text, as in the second example, only the year of publication and page numbers are placed within the parentheses.

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Now, if I'm interested in finding out more about something I read in your paper (because it is just so bizarre or wonderful that I have to know more about it), then I turn from your citation to your reference list at the end of your paper. This list of all the works cited in your paper provides information needed to locate sources in the bookstore or library. The citations and the reference list make it possible for the reader to track down material that may be useful. Your paper becomes a link in a citation chain when you cite from publications connected in this way.

The citation format used in anthropology is less work than the footnote format because you only have to type out the complete bibliographic information for a source once--in the reference list. (Complete bibliographic information includes titles, publisher, place of publication, and so on). In a paper using reference footnotes, you have to type that information twice--once in the footnote itself, and then again in the reference list.

Since anthropology papers do not use reference footnotes, you never have any reason to use Latin abbreviations such as "ibid" or "op cit." In the footnote format, you use these expressions when you refer more than once to a single source. But when you use in-text citation, you give the same information every time that you refer to a source: the author's last name, year of publication of the work cited, and the page(s) on which the idea or data you use appears.

What if you refer to two different books or articles by the same author? How do you let the reader know that two different publications are being cited? You simply use the year of publication to distinguish them. They will be listed chronologically under the author's name in the reference list. What if they were published the same year? Then you can add lower case letters after the publication date.

(Stone 1979a) (Stone 1979b)

What happens if two authors have the same last names? In that case, you use the initials of their first names, or their full names if they have the same first names, so that it is clear in your text which author you mean. So, if you cite both Karl Marx and Groucho Marx, you would use the initials of the first names in the citations, even though the years of publication are different.

(K. Marx 1853:334) (G. Marx 1949:24)

If two sources have the same first and last names, then you may have to use middle initials, if available. The general rule is always to try to give enough information so that the reader will know exactly what individual or publication in the reference list you are referring to.
If there are two authors for a publication you wish to cite, you cite them this way:

(Stone & Burns 1956)

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If there are more than two authors, then you can probably get away with using the name of the senior author--the one whose name appears first in an article, or under whose name a book is cataloged--followed by "et al." which means "and others."

Smith, Burns, Garcia, and Sullivan 1980:87 can be cited as (Smith et al. 1980:87).
Smith is the senior author; do not use the alphabetical order of authors' names in deciding what names to use in a citation. (Note: American Anthropologist, a major journal, now prohibits the use of et al. in the text, because it is undemocratic. I recommend the use of et al. --not because I'm undemocratic, but because it seems to me that a citation with three or more names interferes with the ease of reading the text, and I do not believe many instructors would object to this use of et al. in term papers. In your reference list, you must use the names of all the authors. Unless you are undemocratic.)

An Exception to the Ban on Footnote: Multiple Citations

There is an exception to the rule against using reference footnotes for citing your sources. If you have many citations for one sentence (in other words, many sources for one piece of information), then you may use a footnote to avoid cluttering the text and disrupting the reader's attention to your reasoning.

Beagles are fond of bagels (Collins 1967:67; Crenshaw 1934:98; Morton 1978:81-89 & 1979:97). This means that...

becomes

Beagles are fond of bagels.1 This means that.....
(rest of page)
____________
1. see Collins 1967:67; Crenshaw 1934:98; Morton 1978:81-89 & 1979:97.

Using the reference footnote makes this easier to read without losing the sense of the text. The idea is to avoid doing anything to distract the reader's attention from what you have to say.

Unless an idea is very complex or profound --like Beagle bagelphilia- or the data very technical or surprising, you rarely need to use many citations for one particular chunk of information. A single citation will generally do. Sometimes you may wish to use several citations in order to direct the reader to a particular literature or to important examples of something. A footnote is appropriate in such cases. For example, for the statement "Beagles are fond of bagels," you might use this footnote:

______________
1. The best references on Beagles and bagels are Collins 1967, Crenshaw 1934, and Morton 1978 & 1979.

Footnotes should go at the bottom (foot) of the page. Some publishers put them at the end of the book. They claim this saves typesetting money (although with computerized typesetting that is no longer true). The real reason is that they hate readers. In any event, term paper footnotes should go at the bottom of the page. It not only keeps the professor from cursing your future posterity as s/he fumbles his way to the back in search of a note, it also improves the chances that s/he will actually pay attention to them. (Nothing is more infuriating, by the way, than to make one's way to the back of the book in search of footnote 73 from chapter fourteen only to find that it says "op cit" in reference to something last discussed six chapters earlier.)

Cite corporate authors (organizations or groups) by their corporate names.

(National Anthropological Institute 1989)

A very long corporate name may be abbreviated. The National Institute of Mental Health can be cited in the text as NIMH. However, the full corporate name must be used in the reference list. And you must be sure that you always provide enough information that a reader can find the source in the reference list without problems. If an individual can be identified as the author, the person rather than the organization should be cited.

Occasionally, you will run across a work that has neither a personal nor corporate author. In that case you can use a few identifying words from the title of the source, which are placed in the author position in the entry in the reference list.

There are as yet few employment opportunities in the field of Martian anthropology ("Martian Anthropology" 1986:569).

This citation corresponds to the following reference list entry:

Martian Anthropology: An Overview of a Non-field. 1986 Encyclopedia of the Inner Planets. Abridged. Space City L-5:L-5 Publishing Matrix.What Needs To Be Cited?

You must document, by giving a citation, each and every case where you use someone else's ideas or information, except where it is reasonable to assume that the information or ideas are "common knowledge" in the field in which you are writing.

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Quotations

Other people's exact words must be placed within quotation marks, or set off from the text by indentation and single spacing. A citation must be placed near the beginning or at the end of the quotation, so that it is clear who is being quoted. You could acknowledge a quotation from Clifford Geertz as follows:

"Culture is the fabric of meaning in terms of which human beings interpret their experience and guide their action; social structure is the form that action takes, the actually existing network of social relations" (Geertz 1957:533).

Here's another way to cite this quotation:

In an article critical of functional analysis, Geertz (1957:533) distinguishes between culture and social structure: Culture is the fabric of meanings in terms of which human beings interpret their experience and guide their action; social structure is the form that action takes, the actually existing network of social relations.

Note that no citation is needed at the end of the quote. Finally you might choose to incorporate Geertz's works into your text in the following manner:

According to Geertz, culture is the "fabric of meaning" by which people "interpret their experience and guide their action" (1957:533).

Note: when you put somebody's words inside quotation marks, be sure to quote exactly--spelling, grammatical errors--everything must be just as it is in the original.

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Paraphrase or Summary

Even when you put other people's ideas or information into your own words, you must cite the source of the idea and date.

For example, suppose that for a paper on socialization or cultural transmission I want to use T.R. Williams' idea that children take an active part in their own socialization into society. Williams calls this the "generative function of socialization." He defines this as comprising all of the ways children reflect upon, think about, and sort out the content of culture, in order to develop for themselves a cognitive map of adult culture (Williams 1972:224).

I don't want to quote him, though, because I know using too many quotations is a cheap trick. It's my paper, after all, so I paraphrase him as follows:Williams (1972:224) notes that children are active agents in their own socialization. They do not merely absorb the norms and values of adult behavior in a passive manner. Rather, they think about their experience of cultural behavior, and develop their own theories about their position and roles in the system of social interactions that surround them.

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Data and Specialized Knowledge

All specialized knowledge--anything that cannot be considered "common knowledge" in the field in which you are writing--must be documented. Data from a source must be cited.
Naraun society is divided into three "status classes." The highest rank (temonibe) consists of descendants from the eldest daughter of the woman who founded the clan (Alkire 1972:44).
Data from an ethnography on a group is often specialized knowledge --anthropologists are "specialists" on the people they study.

Common Knowledge

How do you know if something is common knowledge?

There are fuzzy areas, of course. Generally, though, you can rely on common sense. You don't have to document the fact that the Plains Indians hunted buffalo on horseback in the nineteenth century. But if you describe the life of the Sioux before they got horses or moved onto the Great Plains, or describe a fight the Pawnee had with the Sioux while on a buffalo hunt in 1858, then you need to provide a citation referring the reader to the source of your information.

Common knowledge means common in the field in which you are writing. (That anthropologists are mostly geniuses is common knowledge--among anthropologists. Others may disagree--but they don't know the field.) Most anthropologists know what clans, lineages, cross cousin marriage, and classificatory kinship are, but only specialists can be expected to know the difference between Aluridja and Kariera type kinship systems, and so if you write a paper on how a particular group of Australian Aborigines combine features of both, a reference citation is called for, such as:

(Elkin 1954:49-79)

A pretty good rule of thumb is that if you knew it before you started your research, you probably don't need to provide a citation, unless you read about it recently. But if you learned it in the course of your research you'd better cite it. When in doubt, go ahead and cite.

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How Do You Use Citations?

How are citations related to sentences and passages in the text?

A citation must identify quotations. This can be done in several ways. Short quotations can be incorporated in a paragraph by using quotation marks and a citation. If you have more than a couple of lines, you can show that you are quoting by indenting and using single spacing. Here is an example of a longer quotation in a sample text:

Language requires and reinforces "shared understandings." There has to be some level of agreement concerning the meanings and use of words and sentences in order for communication to be possible. So it is reasonable to assume that language, in some sense, standardizes the understandings of individuals.

However, language also differentiates individuals. In spite of the fact that language acts as a socializing and uniformizing force, it is at the same time the most potent single factor for the growth of individuality (Sapir 1933:27).

But you could quote Sapir in your text, if you wanted to. For example, you could do something like this:

Language requires and reinforces "shared understandings." There has to be some level of agreement concerning the meanings and use of words and sentences in order for communication to be possible. So it is reasonable to assume that language in some sense standardizes the understandings of individuals. However, Sapir, for one, notes in this context that although language "acts as a socializing and uniformizing force," it is, rather paradoxically, "at the same time the most potent single factor for the growth of individuality" (1933:27).

Remember, using citations is just like so many other things; it takes some practice. So don't worry if it doesn't feel right at first. You'll get the hang of it, and soon you will be doing it automatically.

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What about paraphrases?

A paraphrase is a rewording of someone's ideas or information. Suppose I want to use some information I find in Tools for Thought by C.H. Waddington, for a paper describing the impact of the "information explosion" on anthropological research. In a section of Waddington's book entitled "Complexity of Information in the Modern World," he discusses the number of scientific journals published as an index of complexity. Here is the passage I'm interested in.

The first two journals wholly devoted to science-- The Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London and the French Journale des Savants--were both started in 1665. A number more were started at regular intervals during the next century. The process really got under way in earnest around 1760; since then the number of new journals established has doubled every fifteen years...By now well over 100,000 scientific journals have been founded. Not all have persisted, and nobody knows quite how many journals are being published at the present time. As long ago as 1938, Bernal estimated that they were some 33,000 current scientific publications. Another estimate in the late 1960's put the number at 50,000, containing about 1 million separate scientific papers per year.

One attempt to handle this mass of material has been the foundation of secondary journals, whose function it is to summarize and abstract the papers published in the primary journals. The first of these appeared as long ago as 1714 in Germany. By the time there were enough of them to form a representative sample, they also started to multiply, at the same exponential rate as the primary journals, doubling in numbers every fifteen years, and reaching a total of 1,900 by the mid 1960's. By this time there had been developed a tertiary level of periodical publications, giving information about the abstracting journals (Waddington 1977:32- 33).

I want to use some of these facts in a paper on how this flood of information affects anthropological research. First I make a point and then I paraphrase Waddington in support of that point. Then I go on to cite another source.

The library is a sophisticated information retrieval system. It is designed to give us access to the information we need. But we have to learn how to use it strategically, not haphazardly. This is especially true in anthropology, where the literatures used are both extensive and diverse. The general need for sophisticated library research strategies becomes apparent when we consider the volume of information that confronts us. Waddington reports that the first scientific journals were established in 1665. Since 1760 over 100,000 journals have been established; it was estimated in the 1960's that as many as half of that number were still being published. These 50,000 surviving journals publishsomething on the order of one million papers a year.

Efforts to manage this flood of information include the use of secondary journals to condense and make accessible the contents of the primary journals. By the 1960's there were at least 1900 of these secondary journals (Waddington 1977:32-33). The situation in anthropology is the same. In 1875- 76, the library of the Peabody Museum, perhaps the first specialized anthropological library in the United States, had less than 1000 publications in its collection; by 1975 it had 130,000 (Currier 1976:16). The third edition of Murdoch's Ethnographic Bibliography of North America, published in 1960, contained 17,3000 entries for books and articles; the fourth edition, published in 1976, contains an additional 28,000 entries for books and articles published between 1959 and 1972 (Currier 1976:27).

Note how the citations identify the source of the information. A citation is not needed for every sentence; a series of sentences (or passages) may only require a single citation, as in the paraphrase of Waddington above, if it is clear that the information contained in the entire passage is from a single source (and from only a few pages of the source). If you pull together information from different places in a book or long article (as I did from the article by Currier), then you need to use a citation within the paraphrase to indicate the different pages in the source where the material you used can be found.

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Transitions from one source to another obviously require you to position a citation in such a way that the reader can see that you have switched from one source to another. The crucial thing is that it must always be clear what ideas came from where. If it is not clear, then it is wrong.

When discussing a single book at length, you do not have to acknowledge the general concepts, concerns, or themes in it each time you mention one. But it must be clear to the readers that you are in fact discussing an idea or theme from that particular book. You must, of course, cite the pages where more specific data or concepts are found, when you use them, so that the reader can find them.

For example, you don't have to cite page numbers every time you state or imply that Frederik Barth, in his book Political Leadership among Swat Pathans, is interested in political leadership and authority, because that is the grand theme of the book. It runs all through it. Therefore, you don't have to cite specific pages when you say something non-specific about Barth's book.

Barth shares this concern about the problem of political leadership. His study of the Swat Pathans (1959) is a good early example of an approach to politics developed within social anthropology.

Once you have clearly established that you are discussing Barth's 1959 study of the Swat Pathans, you can drop the (1959) --as long as the reader knows you are referring to Barth's general theme or conceptualization. But as soon as you go on to discuss Barth's specific formulations, then you have to provide the reader with page numbers.

Barth states that among the Swat Pathans, "Politically corporate groups are created by the actions of leaders" (Barth 1959:72). These "corporate" groups are person-centered. The leader is the focus of the group; the group only exists in terms of and by virtue of his authority. The group includes anyone the leader can get to join him in collective action in response to threat, crisis, or conflict.

Note that since the quotation and paraphrase come from the same page, one citation is adequate to identity both. Compare the paraphrase with the original:

Politically corporate groups are created by the actions of leaders. Any such group consists of all the persons whom a leader is able to mobilize in the event of conflict. Its limits are undefined except in relation to the leader, and its solidarity derives from the latter's authority (Barth 1959:72).

In theory, if you are not indebted to someone for an idea or date, you do not have to cite him or her, even if you come across their statement of that concept or information. However, in practice, it is usually better to go ahead and cite such a source, if the material is pertinent. If nothing else, you strengthen your argument by indicating that reputable scholars have made the same point.

Besides, citing a source entitles you to list it in your bibliography and shows the professor how hard you worked. You don't want the professor to think you have done a slap dash job of research because you have failed to use a significant source. Also, you don't want to risk an unfair suspicion of plagiarism--See Avoid Plagiarism! for more information on that.

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