If You Are a Culture Studies Student Trying to Write a Research Paper or Dissertation - Read This
So you into culture studies or culture and social science major or a Masters, Post-grad or Research/PhD student who has to write about cultures and customs. You have never written an essay before, so how do you do it? There are certain steps you must follow. You don't have to do field visits or visit people of different cultures and customs to study them, but doing field visits could be a good thing. You could in fact come up with a schedule on how to do field visits and meet people from different customs and cultures for an appropriate focus on the right kind of questions in the study of culture.Culture studies need to be focused on specific cultures or customs and practices. Knowing culture is also about knowing customers and practices and studying human and social activities is part of understanding culture. Should you do your culture studies purely with field culture studies and first-hand knowledge of culture with your own unique cultural experiences, or do you want to focus more on the secondary literature and literature review available in the area of your study or research topic?
Culture studies can be less challenging once your know how to handle your research topic. Your topic must be socially and culturally relevant and feasible, that is the most important. You may have to do extensive field studies and actually distribute questionnaires to people to understand culture and customs within a region. Culture is closely related to history and customs and societies can be studied better with extensive questionnaires and surveys given to the people of specific customs and cultural affiliations. Usually surveys are the most effective tools to gauge people's beliefs, attitudes and cultural affiliations. Your field studies could include surveys and questionnaires, but finally you must understand culture by going through secondary literature or a thorough literature review and comparing it with your findings when you conduct cultural surveys, interviews or distribute questionnaires.Your culture studies thesis or essay is not just about understanding customs and attitudes of people but also about understanding how cultures or customs have been changing and how you should study or interpret these changes. Culture studies help move you forward with your ideas or interpretations on culture and customs and writing an essay or thesis will only provide you with a broader perspective on cultural analysis and customs.
Culture and customs are part of society's wider identity and if your thesis has to stand out and become significant in terms of research, you must do detailed studies on the people within the culture, the customs followed as well as analyze the literature review available on the topic of your research. Remember, culture studies is a pretty broad area of research and you must come up with a research question that is focused and streamlined. The research question will direct you to your research paper and you should be able to come up with an effective research paper once you have a strong thesis or focus area on cultural analysis. So, what would be some of the steps to writing a great research paper, essay or thesis in culture studies.
First, choose the culture you want to focus on. Is it a general cultural studies or specific culture like African culture or Chinese culture or Peruvian culture that you want to write about? Once you know your area of study, you should be able to focus on the specific research question and move on to the more specific issues in your research. You must consult your guide or supervisor to understand what methodologies would be most appropriate for your research area. A sociological research area with a focus on culture would consider social changes and social customs or practice within a cultural context. Culture studies could diversify to other areas and merge with organizational culture, group culture, family culture and so on... so culture studies is a very comprehensive area of research and has a wide range of topics to choose from. Choosing your area of research and study is a very important focus and you must be able to do that with the comprehensive guidance of your supervisor.
Culture studies are focused on understanding culture and customs and your thesis dealing with a specific research question would show how a specific culture or custom is affected by certain factors or culture can be defined with certain factors. Usually your research paper would look for a causative or a correlational approach to research in culture and customs. White choosing your topic, focus on whether the research topic fits your area of study and whether it solves a problem or asks a relevant question and then helps you to answer the question, using some problem solving approaches. Culture studies helps you to understand the social aspects of a phenomenon in the real world and your culture studies paper or thesis is expected to provide insights on the cultural aspects of society or new customs and practices. Your analysis or paper is meant to help researchers understand the significance of culture and customs in human life. Keep this in mind and provide a detailed and accurate analysis of the cultural impact of social phenomenon you are looking to study.
As a rule, it is best to start with a wide research area, understand the essential cultural elements in this area and determine how cultural elements can have a direct impact on social phenomena or other phenomena you are looking to study in your research. Once you chosen the topic area, determine the research question, the methodology that you will follow and look up library resources for the best papers and relevant research in your areas of study. Once you have all the material resources and a research topic that is unique or original in some way, you should be able to write a great paper on culture, customs, beliefs or social phenomena.