Topic Development:
Focus & Refine
TAKEN FROM OTHER SECTION ON DEFINING THE BORDERS -
Let’s say you come across several media articles on the growing demand for financial services in various Asian countries, and your interest is piqued. You do a scholarly search and you get too many hits; besides none of them look very anthropological. So you decide to specify your interest a bit more: are you going to look at the rise of mortgage brokerages? Investment advisors? No, it’s hard to see what the cultural angle would be. You decide that life insurance might be a better prospect, figuring that people new to the practice might have mixed feelings about essentially making a bet with a company about how soon they might die. Going back to Google and Google Scholar, you get more promising results: you find media stories about a life insurance ad campaign in India and about the increasing tendency of Indonesian pilgrims going on Haj to take out insurance policies. Google Scholar provides a number of references to articles in business journals (which may or may not be helpful), as well as a couple in of articles in anthropology journals. Bingo! You may have found a viable topic.
Once you have arrived at a promising topic, you are ready to start elaborating your ideas. At this early stage, it is important to make sure that the project you set yourself is feasible as well as relevant.
Is my topic feasible
To make a topic feasible you will need to have a ‘motivating question’ (e.g., a thesis to prove or a question to answer) that can be addressed within the space provided. For instance, what is feasible in a 90-page senior thesis would be too much in a 7-page paper, and vice versa. Usually, the shorter the page limit, the more specific your motivating question will need to be. For instance, if you are interested in indigenous land rights and human rights but you are only expected to write a 15-page paper, you may want to choose a specific court case through which you can examine how a particular group asserted their rights to the land. If you were to opt, instead, for a broad overview of indigenous land rights movements worldwide, your 15-page paper might end up rather shallow.
In addition to any requirements or guidelines your course might have, your topic will also need to fall squarely within the scope of anthropology. Because anthropology is such a broad field, you will not find yourself too constrained. Bear in mind, however, that not every question that motivates you will be appropriate. If you are interested, for instance, in writing about the Kennedy dynasty and their presence in the political life of the United States for your 20-page seminar paper, you will need to ensure that your motivating question falls within the purview of anthropology rather than, say, political science. If you were to ask something along the lines of “how the Kennedy name affects a candidate’s likelihood to be elected,” your question, though important, is unlikely to culminate in an illuminating anthropological analysis. Instead, your question might be something like this: “how are cultural and social capital transmitted within the Kennedy’s dynastic kinship structure?”
Is my topic revelant
“Be prepared for the possibility that your focus and motivation may shift during this phase of discovery as you learn more about your (still provisional) topic. Few scholars can execute a lengthy writing project without hitting a dead end or going off on a wild goose chase but do consider taking one or more of the following steps to avoid veering too far off track.