Use when positioning an American Anthropologist (AA) manuscript against the literature so it reads as a four-field contribution. AA readers span sociocultural, archaeology, biological, and linguistic anthropology, so the paper must engage the conversations they expect and decenter a US/Anglophone-only canon. Stakes the contribution and citational politics; it does not write the lit review.
SkillScore77Maintained
Automatic
◆Writing & Editing pack
Last verified 8/15/2026
What it changes
Passed 17 of 22 test cases with the skill, and 3 of 22 without it.
Without skill14%
With skill77%
Checks it passed that the model alone missed
Uses exact bracketed header tag 【Gap】
Uses exact bracketed header tag 【Move】
Uses exact bracketed header tag 【Next】
and 13 more in the full report
16 fixed1 passed either way3 still failing2 broke
Pass-rate lift
+64 pp
Tokens
+38%
Agent turns
0%
Response time
-17%
Model gemini-3.6-flashMeasured 8/15/2026v117 of 22 cases passed with skill
Tokens, turns and time describe resource use, not a dollar price.
See it in action
One of 16 test cases the skill fixed. Same model, same prompt, with and without the skill.
1 of 16
Prompt
I have completed defining the live debate, key works, gap, move, citational politics check, and rival reading for my American Anthropologist submission draft on labor migration. What explicit workflow step should conclude this literature positioning block?
What was checked, without and with the skill
Checked
Without skill
With skill
Outputs amanthro-theory-building under the 【Next】 tag
Missed
Passed
case-19 · gemini-3.6-flash · 8/15/2026 · answers are capped and redacted
What's inside
The instructions your model reads when the skill loads.
SKILL.md96 linessingle file
Literature Positioning (amanthro-literature-positioning)
At AA, positioning is not throat-clearing — it is how a four-field readership sees the gap and the move.
The goal is to place the paper in a live anthropological conversation that a reader outside your
subfield can recognize, while practicing the citational politics AA explicitly values (lifting
marginalized voices and knowledges, not only the usual canon).
When to trigger
Drafting or revising the introduction and the "contribution" paragraph
A reviewer said you "missed obvious work" or "don't engage the debate"
Your subfield literature is solid but the paper doesn't connect to anthropology broadly
You need to distinguish your contribution from the closest prior ethnographies/studies
How AA wants the literature engaged
Engage the conversation, not a citation pile. Identify the live debate or open question your
paper speaks to; cite the works that constitute it, including across subfields where relevant.
Four-field legibility. Satisfy specialists (you know the frontier) and a generalist reader —
an archaeologist should follow a linguistic paper's stakes and vice versa. Spell out subfield jargon.
Decenter the canon. AA values World Anthropologies and citational practices that include
scholars, theorists, and interlocutors from the regions and communities studied — not only
metropolitan authorities. A bibliography of only Euro-American theorists is a positioning weakness.
Name the gap precisely. Not "little is known" — say what is undertheorized, mis-described,
contested, or assumed, and why resolving it advances anthropology.
Position the contribution as a move. "Prior work treats X as Y via concept C; this case shows C
fails / is provincial / is better understood as C′."
Pre-empt the obvious objection. Acknowledge the strongest rival reading and say how the
evidence adjudicates it (hand off to amanthro-research-design).
Cross-subfield engagement (a distinctive AA demand)
If your paper is…
also engage…
a sociocultural ethnography of an institution
the broader theory of the phenomenon (exchange, kinship, the state) it illuminates
an archaeological reconstruction
the social-theory or comparative literature the material evidence speaks to
a biological/human-variation study
the cultural/social literature on how that variation acquires meaning
a linguistic-anthropology analysis
the social-theory or cultural literature the language practice indexes
reflexive / methodological
the substantive literatures the argument bears on, where applicable
Use when positioning an American Sociological Review (ASR) manuscript against the literature so it reads as a broad sociological contribution rather than a subfield note. Stakes the contribution in a debate that travels across sociology; it does not write the literature review.