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Community Development - Religion and Australian Politics - Literature Review Assessment Answers

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Internal Code: 1IEAF

Task: Community Development - Literature Review Assignment

Write a literature review on the existing scholarly works related to a specific research topic of your choosing. 
  1. Definition: What is literature review?
Literature review is an integral part of any research publication. Usually appearing in the early part of the research work (be it a book or an article), it discusses the research other scholars have already done on the same question/issue you want to explore. This is what we mean by ‘literature’, which is shorthand for ‘scholarly works’ in your field of study rather than literally mean literature (narrowly defined as novel, poem, etc.). Apart from a very brief opening on the kind of question/issue you are concerned with, there are two key components in every literature review: First, a discussion on the differences (whether in their conclusions, arguments, or approaches) among the existing scholars, either among individual scholars, or among different schools of thought, or both. Often, when you read articles/books and see sentences or paragraphs starting with something like ‘Some scholars argue...; others challenge this....; and still others believe....’ you will know this is literature review, even though there is no subheading called ‘literature review’. These differences need to be real differences among those scholars you have reviewed, and you can demonstrate this by citing their debate among one another. Please do not simply summarise the main points of a few books/articles’ one by one in isolation (e.g., Author A writes X; Author B argues Y; and Author C believes Z) Without discussing how their main points (e.g., X, Y, and Z) are different and/or have something in common. Second, and more importantly, a literature review is not complete unless you have identified their common ‘holes’ or common ‘failings’, if you like. That is, the main purpose of your literature review is to reveal what has NOT been adequately studied in the existing literature. The existing scholarship may have covered X, Y, and Z, for example, but your literature review needs to explicitly point out that in the existing literature, no one has touched on T or S, for instance. In other words, your review of what has already been done is designed to show what has not been done (or at least not been done adequately or satisfactorily in your view) or what has been overlooked, hence the need for more research (which you will undertake). This is the punchline all good literature reviews should contain (otherwise it is not clear why your research is needed and why the reader should read it). Therefore, both the first and second components are essential and need to be included in your literature review assignment!
  1. A step by step guide to completing your literature review
Literature review is often half of your research, and so do not underestimate the amount of time required to complete it. That’s why you should start as soon as possible on this assignment task.
  1. Start from week 1, think about a topic most interesting to you. The topic should be as specific as possible. Usually the more words contained in your topic, the more specific it is. For example, ‘religion and Australian politics’ is too broad; ‘the revival of religion in the speeches of contemporary Australian political leaders’ is more specific. Of course, you can make it even more specific by focusing on a particular leader, a particular religion, and a particular period of time. You may start off with a few different topics to begin with if you cannot immediately decide on which one to pursue, and then hopefully you can quickly settle on one topic.
  2. Whether you have just one or multiple topics, it is now time to start searching relevant academic sources on those topics (with various combinations of keywords or phrases drawn from your topic). From the library website (http://www.deakin.edu.au/library#), you can search the library catalogue (for books available in the library), Google Scholars (for books and articles, some may be unavailable from the library), databases (often journals and journal articles) and so forth.
  3. First skim through the search results and then download and carefully read (!) those you think are most relevant. Identify the main arguments, focuses, and/or methods/approaches in those sources. In this process, you will also have an opportunity to see and learn how they write literature review (and from their literature, identify additional relevant sources). Please note that arguments presented in their literature reviews are usually not their own arguments.
  4. Do not read and present their arguments in isolation; always read to compare them, and see what these authors have in common and where they differ. Write down those common and different themes or points (you may draw a table to help you organize your thoughts and discoveries) as you read through. Make sure you are reading and comparing works that have the same issue as their common focus (for example, they are all substantially concerned, say, with how to deal with the North Korea crisis). Please do not include works that are talking about something else or only tangentially relevant.
  5. How many sources should you read and cite? A really rigorous piece of research should be confident that it has covered most, if not all, of the relevant existing research. But for the purpose of this assignment,
  1. Students planning to write a 5,000-word research paper later in your MA study should find and read at least 10 relevant sources (ideally a mixture of both academic books and articles, occasionally non-scholarly sources such as media commentaries are fine, especially if the topic is about a current affair). In the final assignment, at least 5 should be cited and reviewed.
  2. Students planning to write a 10,000-word dissertation later in your MA study should find and read at least 20 relevant sources (ideally a mixture of both academic books and articles, occasionally non-scholarly sources such as media commentaries are fine, especially if the topic is about a current affair). In the final assignment, at least 8 should be cited and reviewed.
(f) Decide how you will organize your review, according to, for examples,
  1. schools of though
  2. disciplines of though
  3. eras of though
  4. thems
  5. methodologies, or
  6. any comination of a-e.
Generally, do not organise your review according to individual authors and their works (unless those authors represent different schools of thought). Rather, you should combine similar arguments/approaches of several authors, and compare them with those of other authors. This not only helps save space, but also allows the reader to have a better and clearer overview of the main arguments on and approaches to the relevant topic (g) While doing your research and reading, always keep in mind it is what is commonly missing or inadequate in the existing literature or debate is what you are looking for. This is commonly known as a ‘gap’ in the literature. Before you are confident that the gap is real, then you should do further, more specifically targeted search (yes, it is called re-search) to make sure someone else has not already filled that gap. Please remember that even if it turns out that someone else has indeed done research in a way that you want to do it, do not easily give up. It is always likely that you and the other author may have different focuses, emphases, angles or approaches. Making that difference clear in your literature review will show where you can make a distinctive contribution to the literature. (h) Your distinctive contribution can be in the form of:
  1. A new question which no one has asked before (though this doesn’t happen very often)
  2. A new approaches or new angle to tackle the same question
  3. New important evidence to address the same question
  4. A new conclusion/argument to the debate
  5. A new theoretical framework to analyse or interpret the same question
  6. A new aspect of the question that has been overlooked
Please notes the keywords ‘new’. Only one of the above will be sufficient reason for you to argue for further research. Your ‘new’ approach need not be entirely of your own intervention (it can be borrowed from a different field of study or a debate on a different topic, but no one has yet to applied that approach to your specific topic)
  • To conclude the literature review, you may briefly justify why your identified gap is worth filling and needs further research (as you know, sometimes the reason no one has done that kind of research is because it is trivial), and indicate what argument you want to make in differentiation from the existing literature. Here, you do not have to show how you are going to fill that gap or start substantiating your argument. Outlining how you are going to fill the gap concerns methodology and methods, which are normally part of your research proposal. Substantiating your argument should be the job of your actual research paper.
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