Most students and scholars learn the disciplinary conventions regarding citation and never think about them again. But citation practices vary widely both between and within disciplines, and once you’re past the dissertation, you have far more flexibility in choosing your own citation style than you think. To be sure, academic journals have their own house styles for articles. The 2009 style guide for all journals of the American Anthropological Association states: “All references must be cited in author-date form; all author-date citations must be referenced,” and the guide provides detailed instructions for how to use the author-date format for e-mails, websites, brochures, and other eclectic materials.
But where did these conventions originate and how did they come to anthropology? The standard of in-text author-date citation derives from something called the “Harvard style,” which originated in the field of zoology. In 1881, the zoologist Edward Laurens Mark published an important paper on the garden slug wherein he included the first parenthetical author-date citation. This system spread out from zoology to other natural sciences where the author’s name and the date of the publication are the two most important pieces of information. Prior to Mark’s invention of the author-date referencing system, footnotes were sprinkled randomly throughout the text and signaled by asterisks and other printer’s marks. The author-date system streamlined citations and favored brevity and clarity.
As those working in the social and behavioral fields increasingly aspired to be considered “scientists,” they adopted the author-date system. Footnotes and endnotes were too humanistic for hard-boiled anthropologists, sociologists, political scientists, economists and psychologists, and so it became necessary to scatter parenthetical citations throughout social scientific publications, ensuring that the work appeared more like biology than like history or literature.
Although journal style guidelines and dissertation norms dictate author-date citations, ethnographers should consider using endnotes whenever possible. Alfred Kroeber once said that, “Anthropology is the most humanistic of the sciences and the most scientific of the humanities,” and the kind of qualitative research methods that inform the writing of ethnography places the genre even further on the humanities side of the humanities-natural sciences spectrum. Endnotes are less distracting to a reader than author-date citation, which have the effect of constantly reminding that the article or book is a scholarly treatise. In text citations interrupt the narrative flow of a text with information that most readers find superfluous. If someone is truly keen to know your sources, they will check your endnotes.
Author-date citations are ill suited to the citation of works that have multiple editions (e.g. Marx [1848] 1974), or to prolific authors who publish multiple articles or books in the same year (e.g. Slavoj Zizek 2009a, 2009b, 2009c, 2009d). Furthermore, author-date citations prove unwieldy when citing non-academic references such as legal documents, websites, newspaper articles, blog posts, tweets, brochures, pamphlets, or other difficult to attribute sources.
Although I follow journal requirements for articles, I always use endnotes in my books. I wrote my dissertation with the requisite author-date citations, and it was in dialogue with my first editor at Duke University Press (the phenomenal Ken Wissoker) that I made the decision to switch to endnotes as I was revised the thesis into a book. Making the change from author-date to endnotes was a tedious process in those days before citation management software, but today I could press a button. Endnotes allow readers to concentrate on your words, and render books more welcoming to non-specialists and undergraduate students.
To investigate the relative distribution of author-date versus endnote citations., I pulled down a few armloads of books from my shelves. David Vallentine’s Imagining Transgender, Katherine Verdery’s The Vanishing Hectare, Amy Borovoy’s The Too-Good Wife, Carla Freeman’s High Tech and High Heels and Tom Boellstorff’s Coming of Age in Second Life all used in text author-date citations. On the other hand, Ruth Behar’s Translated Woman uses endnotes. Paul Stoller’s Embodying Colonial Memories: Spirit Possession, Power, and the Hauka in West Africa uses endnotes, as do Michael Herzfeld’s Evicted From Eternity: The Restructuring of Modern Rome and The Body Impolitic: Artisans and Artifice in the Global Hierarchy of Value. In Body and Soul, sociologist Loci Wacquant uses footnotes, as do Anne Allison and Ester Newton in Nightwork and Mother Camp respectively. A variety of different presses published these books, and even books published by the same press had different citation formats.
My brief survey shows that, at least for books, the citation format is a decision author’s make. If you find yourself in a position to make a choice, do not blindly follow disciplinary conventions because you think it will make your work appear more “scientific.” Many university press editors prefer endnotes, and will be more than willing to accommodate your choice. Citations exist so you can acknowledge the influences on your work and the work of the scholars that came before you. It shouldn’t matter what style you use as long as the necessary information is there.
Kristen: Thanks for this interesting overview, especially of the origins of the AAA style of citation. My own small preference for that, or footnotes, over endnotes, comes from the endnote distraction of having to stop reading the text and flip to the end of the chapter or the end of the whole book — I have to use two bookmarks, one to mark where I stopped reading, the other to mark where I am in the endnotes. I found it odd that you would say that endnotes are less distracting than author-date citations, since I have exactly the opposite reaction. I often start off by looking through the bibliography to see what sources the author has used, and when I see (Smith 1967:254) in the body of the text, I know what the author is referring to. If the author has inserted a ‘note-mark’, I have to turn to the end of the book to see if it is one more citation of Smith 1967, which wasn’t worth halting my reading to turn to the back of the book, or if it is a substantial note that I would actually benefit from reading. Different strokes, perhaps, but I don’t think there’s any objectively clear benefit to endnotes for readers, though there are benefits to whoever handles the page layout at the publisher. Barbara
<
blockquote>As those working in the social and behavioral fields increasingly aspired to be considered “scientists,” they adopted the author-date system. Footnotes and endnotes were too humanistic for hard-boiled anthropologists, sociologists, political scientists, economists and psychologists, and so it became necessary to scatter parenthetical citations throughout social scientific publications, ensuring that the work appeared more like biology than like history or literature.
It would be interesting to me (and possibly to no one else) to read a history of how this process played out. Up through at least the early ’50s the Southwestern Journal of Anthropology employed a hybrid footnoted author/date style. And the 1966 book from which this blog takes its name was, of course, footnoted.
I’m with Barbara on this one. We ask our authors to include in-text citations, not because we want our books to appear more scientific, but because it’s easier for the reader interested in the source of information in the book to see it while not interfering with the flow of the main text. We do have endnotes in many books but those are reserved for parenthetical comments, not for references. Footnotes at the bottom of the page would serve the same purpose as in-text citations, but anyone who has read a research volume in history knows that footnotes often overwhelm the main text, become a distraction from the main thread of argument.
I, too, would love to know how this process played out, and it might be interesting to look at successive generations of AAA style guides to ascertain when the author-date citation format became mandatory for all journals.
RE: “It’s easier for the reader interested in the source of information in the book to see it while not interfering with the flow of the main text.”
I absolutely agree with Barbara and Mitch that, as a scholar, author-date citations are easier for the reader who is interested in the sources. I, too, have used the double bookmark system so I can flip back and forth to the end of the text with ease, and it is an extra step that sometimes exasperates.
I am talking here about ethnographic books that might want to appeal to a wider audience: non-specialists, undergraduate students, and perhaps our own informants, outside of the field of anthropology. If a book is targeted primarily at the academic community, and university library shelves are its main destination, then endnotes may feel unnecessarily tedious, and author-date is the way to go.
If, on the other hand, an author is interested in engaging readers who are not established scholars, endnotes prove less distracting. These readers are less interested in the source of every claim or in references to similar research done before.
To be clear, I am not recommending endnotes for all ethnographic works, I am only suggesting that authors should consider endnotes if they are interested in making their work more accessible and welcoming to readers beyond their disciplinary subfields.
Should anyone be interested, there are two very good books on the history and mechanics of footnotes out there: http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/37030661 http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/47237323
“It’s easier for the reader interested in the source of information in the book to see it while not interfering with the flow of the main text.”
Short comment on that: in English-written books it seems to be the case that notes are usually endnotes. That’s not the case in all languages and countries. In Portuguese (in Brazil, at least) most books have footnotes, not endnotes, which make reading them way easier. One does not have to flip to the end of the book before knowing whether information on a given note is just reference to a book/article or brings more information to the reader.
As I read this interesting post, I kept thinking of The Nuer, and how little references there were back then in anthropology (Evans-Pritchard’s book is but an example). One could write detailed ethnographic accounts and discuss matters important to anthropology of that time without making reference to so many authors and texts. Of course there were not as many articles and books to refer to as it does nowadays. In any case, shouldn’t we question whether we refer and quote too much?
“shouldn’t we question whether we refer and quote too much” – I couldn’t agree more. Economists have done this kind of soul searching about their own citation practices, with very interesting results: http://www.nber.org/papers/w13891.
There might be a then and now element to that, but my impression is that in today’s world European practice is to cite minimally and primarily to source material, and American practice is to interlard endless strings of in-text citations that often amount to citation to and for authority rather than to source material.
I can’t comment on your (Matthew’s) impression on Europe versus America citing practicing, since I never noticed this difference. I do think, however, that quoting too much might indicate academic immaturity. I include myself there, as a Master candidate, and struggle not to cite everything I ever read on a certain topic to prove I know the literature and not be questioned on this. What I have noticed is that established scholars don’t cite as much, for they don’t need to prove they have read it all. As a matter of fact, they know they don’t have to read everything on a given region/questions/topic to write their ethnographies properly and to present relevant and interesting questions and theories. How not to overcite and at the same time not being accused of not having read enough – proof of reading is presenting a large bibliography at the end of the dissertation/thesis/article – at an early stage of academic life is a question I ask myself all the time. (Again, I am speaking from my academic experience in Brazil).
As for Evans-Pritchard’s comment I made earlier, I think you are right on the “then and now” element, and from what I notice, not only in Europe.
[Sorry for English mistakes I’m sure are present in my comments. Long time I haven’t written in English…]
As an anthropologist of anthropology, I observe that when E-P was publishing The Nuer, there were only a handful of anthropologist and not a great deal to cite. Today’s world is one in which there may be thousands of possible citations; a Google search for common terms like “religion,” “network,” or “symbol” can produce millions of hits. Thus, who and how to cite becomes an element in career strategy. It is vital to cite those who edit or publish frequently in the journals to whom we submit our work. They are the gatekeepers on whom our own success depends. It may also be important to cite important boundary spanners — scholars whose work is published and cited across multiple disciplines, for that is the only way to escape the increasingly narrow specialization that fragments the academy as a whole.
As a reader, however, I find the scientific author-date format annoying, especially when the author feels compelled (and I have been guilty of this myself) to include a long string of names and dates that distract from the ideas being discussed. I would infinitely prefer to have the author-date citations in footnotes, since lowering one’s eyes to the bottom of the page to see who is being cited is not like having to read through a mass of references in endnotes, and have tangential remarks in endnotes, where they can be perused at leisure.