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Purpose of an abstract

• 200-250 word summary of your research project
• should entice potential readers to read your entire paper
• should indicate the scope of your paper, your methods, and your ultimate conclusions

Features of an abstract

• Problem: present your topic as something that warrants further explanation
• Significance: Why is this important?
• Approach: How did you go about investigating this?
• Results/conclusions: What did you find/observe? Include an abbreviated version of your thesis

In this article, I explore a particular form of exchange in which food-selling farmers and food-buying urban consumers interact beyond simple economic terms at a U.S. urban farmers’ market. By actively distinguishing their “alternative” exchange from the dominant capitalist exchange, participants objectify processes of production and consumption as well as their own “idealized form of being” (“liberal open-mindedness”) while undermining the dominant ideology of the neoliberal economy. By co-constructing this market as a “third place” where basic distinctions between commodity and gift are blurred and transgressed, customers and farmers produce a “conceptual shift” from Marxian alienated exchange to Maussian inalienating exchange by infusing market transactions with new meanings and new spatial fixes.

Islamic consumption promises to correct the ills of consumption yet relies on the logic of consumption for its appeal. Fashionably pious women in Indonesia have become figures of concern, suspected of being more invested in the material, and hence superficial, world than their virtuous appearances suggest. Arguing that consumption and religion are interdependent systems of faith, I show that women bear unusual semiotic burdens at the borders of materiality and piety. This approach reveals how pious Indonesian women must frame acts of pious consumption as disavowals of consumption and as expressions of beauty and modesty.

Functions of the Introduction

• gives your readers what they need to care about what you have to say
• provides a road map for the rest of your paper
• presents your research topic as a problem
• presents your thesis

Types of Effective Introductions

• A straightforward explanation of your research problem/question + your thesis
• A provocative example + explanation of your research problem/question + thesis
• A vivid anecdote or vignette + explanation of research problem/question + thesis
• All introductions should also present your specific field site

Ineffective introductions

• General, broad, and uncontestable statements
• "Since the dawn of man..."
• Lacks research problem/question
• Lacks a thesis

Questions to check yourself

• Have you identified the problem, stated the research question, and asserted your answer?
• Does your reader know why you will be discussing this topic?
• Do you establish why your audience should listen to you?

Methodology

Content of Method Section

• describe how you chose or recruited your subjects/informants
• describe what tools you used to collect data
• describe how you designed and conducted your interviews
• if you conducted participant observation, on who, what, and where were you conducting this observation

Literature Review

Purpose of Literature Review

• provides an expanded discussion of what the discipline already knows
• demonstrates that you understand the topic and also gives your reader further background on the topic
• situates your own research amongst certain bodies of existing literature
• reveal any gaps in the literature

Content of Literature Review

• the summary and synthesis of key sources pertaining to your topic
• recap any academic debates on your topic
• provide new interpretations of the research that are particularly relevant to your project