AAA Style Guide
As of September 2015, AAA style (for all publications) follows the Chicago Manual of Style, 17th edition, particularly in regard to reference citations, which are summarized below.
In-text citations
- Place citations in parentheses and include the author’s name and the source’s year of publication, with no intervening punctuation, at the end of a sentence or before a comma or semicolon, whenever possible: (Herzfeld 2005).
- Always include page numbers for quotations or extensive paraphrases, using an en dash for page ranges: (Herzfeld 2005, 146–47). (Note: they are preceded by a comma, not a colon; this is a major change from the AAA Style Guide.)
- Use semicolons to separate two or more references in a single parenthetical citation and list them alphabetically: (Bessire and Bond 2014; Comaroff 1996; Daser 2014; Foucault 2000).
- Do not include “ed.” or “trans.” in citations (and in the case of books that have been reprinted or updated, do not include the original publication year), as this information will be included on the reference list.
- Use the first author’s last name and et al. for works with four or more authors.
- You may use the following abbreviations: , e.g., and i.e. Do not use ibid., passim, op. cit., and so on. Only very rarely would we use ff., “when referring to a section for which no final number can usefully be given” (CMS 14.156).
Reference list
- Do not embed the reference list in the endnotes.
- Include every source cited in the text and no others, listed alphabetically by author.
- When including multiple works by the same author, list them chronologically, from oldest to most recent.
- For works published by the same author in the same year, add a, b, and so on, and list them alphabetically by title.
The following examples, which illustrate a number of citation scenarios, may serve as a guide for formatting your entries.
Asad, Talal. 2003. Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Bender, Courtney, and Pamela E. Klassen. 2010. After Pluralism: Reimagining Religious Engagement. New York: Columbia University Press.
Bielo, James S. 2016. “Creationist History-Making: Producing a Heterodox Past.” In Lost City, Found Pyramid: Understanding Alternative Archaeologies and Pseudoscientific Practices, edited by J. J. Card and D. S. Anderson, 81-101. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press.
Comaroff, Jean. 1996. “The Empire’s Old Clothes: Fashioning the Colonial Subject.” In Cross-Cultural Consumption: Global Markets, Local Realities, edited by David Howes, 19–38. London: Routledge.
Foucault, Michel. 2000. “Lives of Infamous Men.” In Power, edited by James Faubion and translated by Robert Hurley, 157–77. Vol. 3 of The Essential Works of Foucault, 1954–1984, edited by Paul Rabinow. New York: New Press. First published 1977.
Edited Volume
Stoler, Ann, ed. 2013. Imperial Debris: On Ruins and Ruination. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Translated Work
Mauss, Marcel. 2016. The Gift. Edited and translated by Jane I. Guyer. Chicago: Hau Books. Distributed by University of Chicago Press. First published 1925.
Pirumova, Nataliia Mikhailovna. 1977. Zemskoe liberal’noe dvizhenie: Sotsial’nye korni i evoliutsiia do nachala XX veka [The Zemstvo liberal movement: Its social roots and evolution to the beginning of the twentieth century]. Moscow: Izdatel’stvo “Nauka.”
Note that the original title should be transliterated, if necessary. Do not translate any other element of the reference besides the title.
Bessire, Lucas, and David Bond. 2014. “Ontological Anthropology and the Deferral of Critique.” American Ethnologist 41 (3): 440–56.
Bialecki, Jon. 2016. “Apostolic Networks in the Third Wave of the Spirit: John Wimber and the Vineyard.” Pneuma 38 (1-2): 23–32.
**Yates-Doerr, Emily. 2015. “Does Meat Come from Animals? A Multispecies Approach to Classification and Belonging in Highland Guatemala.” American Ethnologist 42 (2): 309–23. doi:10.1111/amet.12132.
**DOIs should be included only if you really did consult the article online. They are preferable to URLs, being more stable. No access date is necessary in this case.
*Daser, Deniz. 2014. “AE Interviews Catherine Lutz (Brown University).” American Ethnologist website, May 9. Accessed [Month Day, Year]. http://americanethnologist.org/2014/ae-interviews-catherine-lutz-brown-university.
*Note that online references require an access date.
Lemelson, Robert, dir. 2009. 40 Years of Silence: An Indonesian Tragedy. Los Angeles: Elemental Productions. DVD.
Single Author and Coauthors
Meyer, Birgit. 2010. “Aesthetics of Persuasion: Global Christianity and Pentecostalism’s Sensational Forms.” South Atlantic Quarterly 109 (4):741-63.
Meyer, Birgit, and Annelies Moors. 2006. Religion, Media, and the Public Sphere. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Multiple References by the Same Author
Stout, Noelle. 2014. “Bootlegged: Unauthorized Circulation and the Dilemmas of Collaboration in the Digital Age.” Visual Anthropology Review 30 (2): 177–87.
Stout, Noelle. 2015a. “Generating Home.” Cultural Anthropology Online, March 30. Accessed [Month Day, Year]. http://culanth.org/fieldsights/655-generating-home.
Stout, Noelle. 2015b. “When a Yuma Meets Mama: Commodified Kin and the Affective Economies of Queer Tourism in Cuba.” Anthropological Quarterly 8 (33): 663–90.
For additional examples and information, please review Chapter 15 in the Chicago Manual of Style, 17th edition, or the Chicago-Style Citation Quick Guide.
If you have any questions, comments or concerns please contact our Publications team.