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Author Guidelines

Cultural Anthropology, the journal of the Society for Cultural Anthropology, publishes ethnographic writing informed by a wide array of theoretical perspectives, innovative in form and content, and focused on both traditional and emerging topics. It also welcomes essays concerned with theoretical issues, with ethnographic methods and research design in historical perspective, and with ways cultural analysis can address broader public audiences and interests. The following criteria are used to orient the reviews of the editors and reviewers:

  1. Is the essay empirically rich?

  2. Is the essay richly contextualized, describing, for example, political-economic, technoscientific, and demographic dynamics critical to its topic?

  3. Does the essay use empirical material to enhance theoretical insight?

  4. Are theoretical frameworks sound and clearly articulated?

  5. Does the essay make a novel theoretical contribution?

  6. Does the essay address topics of particular timely relevance?

  7. Does the essay illustrate or otherwise contribute to innovations in research design?

  8. Is the essay textually innovative?

  9. Does the writing meet a high standard of clarity, elegance, and/or compellingness?

  10. What communities of people are likely to be engaged by this essay?


YOUR MANUSCRIPT SHOULD BE NO LONGER THAN 9,000 WORDS INCLUDING NOTES AND REFERENCES. WE STRONGLY ENCOURAGE A SHORTER INITIAL SUBMISSION, IN ANTICIPATION OF REVIEWERS' REQUESTS FOR REVISION. You must submit your manuscript online to the editors through the Open Journal System (OJS) used by Cultural Anthropology. It can be reached at http://ojs.culanth.org/. If you have difficulty using this system, you can email the editorial assistant at ea@culanth.org. Additionally, we have developed a frequently asked questions list for those submitting documents to OJS. Manuscripts are reviewed anonymously. Please prepare your manuscript to facilitate the double-blind review. Avoid references to your own work or cite it formally without self-reference. Manuscripts submitted to Cultural Anthropology should not be under simultaneous consideration by any other journal or have been published elsewhere.

Revised Submissions

Revised submissions must include a detailed cover letter indicating the changes made to a manuscript, and how the author has responded to the comments of the reviewers and any editors comments. Authors must upload revisions to OJS as a new submission, with a note including the previous OJS manuscript ID#.

Abstract and Keywords

Abstracts and keywords should be carefully thought out and precise. Abstracts will be used to draw in potential reviewers and readers. Keywords have a significant impact on how widely read your article will be when electronic searches are done.

Formatting

Cultural Anthropology follows The Chicago Manual of Style (14th ed., University of Chicago Press, 1993) for most matters of style, including hyphenation, capitalization, punctuation, abbreviations, and grammar, and Webster's Tenth New Collegiate Dictionary (1993) for spelling. Manuscripts must comply with Chicago Style guidelines in order to pass through our initial internal review process. For a guide to the Chicago style, we recommend looking at: http://www.aaanet.org/publications/guidelines.cfm. Manuscripts must be typed double-spaced and in a 12-point font, preferably Times Roman or equivalent. This applies to block quotes and excerpts, notes, references, tables, and figure captions. Margins throughout the manuscript (top, bottom, and both sides) must be at least 1 inch; the right margin should not be justified.

References

References appearing in the bibliography must be cited in text, and vice versa. In text, references are cited in parentheses, with last name(s), year of publication, and, where necessary, page numbers. The reference list should be in the style of American Anthropologist: ordered alphabetically by author’s last name; author on one line, primary author last name first; date of publication indented on the next line, followed by title and then publisher’s city and name. All subsequent lines should be indented beyond the date. No underlining or boldface should be used in the reference list.

Tables

Tables should be embedded in your text. Number tables consecutively in the order in which they appear in text. Each table should have a caption. The caption and body of the table should be double-spaced.

Figures

Figures should be embedded in your text. Number figures consecutively in the order in which they appear in text. Artwork or figures must be camera-ready—that is, a photographic print of line art, such as a map, graph, or drawing, or a photograph. When possible these supporting documents should be uploaded into the OJS system. Each figure should have a caption that articulates the relevance of the figure to the manuscript argument or narrative.

Text Boxes

Text boxes (for historical contextualization, for example) can either be embedded in your text or submitted as a separate document, indicating where in the text it would best fit. Text boxes should be numbered consecutively in the order in which they appear in text.

Enriched Content

Supplemental content is important as the journal tries to extend its online presence. Visual and audio material is welcome and encouraged. Please reference in your manuscript where this material would be relevant, encouraging readers to move beyond the manuscript. Such material can be developed after a manuscript has been accepted for publication. Materials submitted with a manuscript will not be returned.

Contact Information

The journal's office can be reached by email at ea@culanth.org.

 

Submission Preparation Checklist

As part of the submission process, authors are required to check off their submission's compliance with all of the following items, and submissions may be returned to authors that do not adhere to these guidelines.

  1. The submission has not been previously published, nor is it before another journal for consideration (or an explanation has been provided in Comments to the Editor).
  2. All essays in CA are Blind Peer Reviewed. You should ensure that your name is not mentioned as the author of the document, and references to your own work are either avoided entirely or cited formally.
  3. The submission file is in the PDF document file format. For instructions on converting documents to PDF, see http://www.culanth.org/?q=node/323. (Note: if your manuscript contains large images, please remove the images for the submission process - you may upload the images as "supplementary files" after the manuscript has been submitted.)
  4. The text adheres to the stylistic and bibliographic requirements outlined in the Author Guidelines, which is found in About the Journal.
  5. When available, the URLs to access references online are provided, including those for open access versions of the reference. The URLs are ready to click (e.g., http://pkp.sfu.ca).
  6. The text is double-spaced; uses a 12-point font; employs italics, rather than underlining (except with URL addresses); and all illustrations, figures, and tables are placed within the text at the appropriate points, rather than at the end.
 

Copyright Notice

Cultural Anthropology follows the author agreement dictated by the AAA. The full author agreement can be found here:

http://www.culanth.org/?q=node/12

Relevant Sections Listed Below (Only Applicable for Accepted Manuscripts):

AUTHOR'S RIGHTS

The Author is hereby reserving the rights to use his or her article in the following ways, as long as Author acknowledges the published original in standard bibliographic citation form and does not sell it or give it away in a manner which would conflict directly with the business interests of the American Anthropological Association: 1) To use the article for educational or other scholarly purposes of Author's own institution or company; 2) To post the article on Author's personal or institutional website; 3) To post the article on free, discipline-specific public servers of preprints and/or postprints; and 4) to publish the article or permit it to be published by other publishers, as part of any book or anthology, of which he or she is the author or editor, subject only to his or her giving proper credit to the original publication by the American Anthropological Association, unless the anthology is drawn primarily from Cultural Anthropology.

LICENSES TO THE ASSOCIATION

The Author grants and assigns exclusively to the Association for its use, any and all rights of whatsoever kind or nature now or hereafter protected by the Copyright Law of the United States of America and all foreign countries in all languages in and to the above named article, including all subsidiary and derivative rights, and electronic rights. This includes among other rights, the Association right to license the Author’s article in educational photocopying, secondary publishing and abstracting/indexing agreements. Some of these agreements also encompass document delivery, CD-ROM and electronic reproduction and distribution of journal articles.

SUBSIDIARY RIGHTS AND COMPENSATION

Should any fee or royalty be charged for use of his or her article, all monies will be divided equally between the Author and the Association; in the event that the Association is unable, for a period of three years, to locate the Author or his or her heirs for the purpose of disbursement of fees or royalties, the Author agrees that said fees and royalties shall be deemed to be a contribution to the Association. The Author agrees to refer to Wiley-Blackwell any inquiries regarding permission to reprint or use in any manner the material and further agrees to promptly report to Wiley-Blackwell and the Association any unauthorized reproduction. The Author will be given the option to purchase offprints through Wiley-Blackwell. Should the Association receive any requests to reprint, reproduce or translate all or any portion of the Author's article in another publication or medium, the Association will ask requesters to make a reasonable attempt to obtain the Author's approval for the requested use. (For articles written by more than one author, the first listed author will be contacted for approval.)

 

Privacy Statement

The names and email addresses entered in this journal site will be used exclusively for the stated purposes of this journal and will not be made available for any other purpose or to any other party.

 


ISSN: 1548-1360