LITERATURE REVIEW ASSIGNMENT
This assignment will help you to achieve the following Course Objectives:
• describe the role of culture in health, illness, and healing and medical anthropology's contributions to individual and public health in domestic and international contexts
• describe the local and global political, social, and economic factors that influence individual and public health to shape programs and policies
Your Literature Review is an "authentic assessment." It asks you to complete tasks that anthropologists actually perform.
The Literature Review assignment is worth 15% of your overall grade. See the Course Schedule for Due Dates.
Among the critical skills an anthropologist (or any scientist) must have is the ability to understand, analyze, critically evaluate, and use the work of other scholars.
In this assignment, each student will summarize cross-¬cultural research findings in anthropology journals on ONE (1) health/illness¬-related issue of interest to him/her and then describe how the articles contribute to a cross¬-cultural understanding of the topic, comparing and contrasting the articles' findings as appropriate. For example, if you or someone in your household had a cold; you would look for articles about colds or, more broadly, acute respiratory infections in different groups of people. Perhaps you or someone in your household is a vegetarian for health¬-related reasons; you would look for articles about vegetarianism, or more broadly, eating and health in cross¬-cultural perspective, that is, in different groups of people. This doesn't just mean different ethnic groups. People in the same family with the same ethnic heritage may have many different culturally constructed ideas about eating and health.
*NOTE* There is no formal page length requirement. This assignment is as long as it needs to be for you to adequately address the requirements as stated in this description. However, to clarify, and as the SAMPLES indicate, most strong submissions range anywhere between 4 to 6 or so pages. Try not to focus so much on page length. Instead, direct your attention to adequately addressing the specific requirements and tasks asked of you for this assignment.
A minimum of FIVE (5) separate and distinct references from anthropological journals are required. Use the UMUC library databases (for example, Social Science Citation Index and Anthrosource) to find relevant journal articles on your topic (See below for names of some journals).
You may include more than five references and you may use references from journals that are not on the list of anthropology journals, but at least five of your references must be written from an anthropological perspective and published in at least one of the journals listed above. References should be cited within the paper and at the end of the paper using proper APA citation practices.
For additional information regarding APA citation please refer to the "APA Citation Help" link in the Webliography under "Course Resources."
In your Literature Review you must demonstrate the following:
1) Identify the research questions the author(s) investigated in this study (What does the author want to know?)
2) Summarize the previous research the author(s) reviewed
3) Detail the methods the author(s) used to collect data
4) Summarize the results of the study
5) Discuss the implications of the study for the health/illness-¬related issue the study How can these findings be used to improve health?
6) List any limitations to the study the author(s) acknowledges or that you identify
7) List future studies suggested by this study and your own suggestions
Use the UMUC library databases (for example, Social Science Citation Index) to find relevant journal articles on your topic. Some major anthropology journals are listed below:
• Anthropology and Medicine
• Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry*
• Curare*
• Global Change and Human Health*
• Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine
• Journal of Ethnopharmacology
• Medical Anthropology Quarterly
• Medical Anthropology: Cross-Cultural Studies in Health and Illness
• Social Science and Medicine*
• Human Organization