Peer Critique and Anthropological Next Steps

1) Descriptive (summarize the argument back), 2) Evidentiary (what observation supports each claim?), 3) Interpretive (does the concept illuminate the data?), 4) Ethical and reflexive, 5) Prose-level edits — done last, not first.

Put the draft away for 72 hours, print it, read it aloud with a pen, and read it as if written by someone whose conclusions you distrust. Reading aloud catches bloated sentences; distrust catches unearned claims.

At least one passage of concrete, sensory, particular detail — a scene the reader can picture. Geertz's wink-vs-twitch distinction works because he gives us eyelids.

Thick description explains what an action means to participants; thin description only reports what it looks like from the outside.

Participants' own categories and words appear (emic), while an outside analytic frame (etic) is also brought in — without the etic frame steamrolling the participants' meanings.

Not generalizing beyond your evidence. A three-hour observation of one laundromat can't explain 'American individualism' — but it can say something about how strangers manage co-presence in semi-public space.

Use pseudonyms or anonymization where needed, include no identifying details of people who didn't consent, and expose no one to harm or ridicule.

Highlight description in one color and analysis in another. Beginner drafts are usually 90% one or the other; a healthy essay alternates scene, interpretation, scene, interpretation in rough balance.

Beginners warm up in public; the real opening is usually buried on page two, often in a moment of surprise.

Citing at least two anthropological sources and stating explicitly what your essay adds to or complicates in them.

Explain practices in their own context rather than ranking them — while still being allowed to state your own position explicitly if you take one.

Boas trained a cohort, Geertz argued in print with Obeyesekere, and ethnographies get 'member-checked' by the people described in them — critique and exchange are built into the discipline.