Writing your literature review based on the “Cross-Reference” column of the Conceptual Synthesis Excel Dump (CSED)

Earlier this year, I was invited to Memorial University of Newfoundland (in St. John’s, Newfoundland, Canada) as the George M. Story Distinguished Lecturer (thanks to Drs. Amanda Bittner and Arn Keeling who successfully submitted an application for and won a grant to bring me to MUN).

I gave a public lecture, a research talks and a couple of workshops for graduate students. As I was preparing the one on academic writing, I got an insight that I hadn’t realized when presenting earlier versions of this talk: you can, if you want, write your literature review based on the “Cross-Reference” column of my Conceptual Synthesis Excel Dump (CSED).

In an annotated bibliography, you could simply dump your Synthetic Notes/AIC plus abstract: https://t.co/ECT6Rfw6I2 HOWEVER, in a literature review you MUST demonstrate that you know how different authors and bodies of work dialogue with each other. THAT is the purpose of…

— Dr Raul Pacheco-Vega (@raulpacheco) November 8, 2019

For example, this article I’m reading argues that waste pickers aren’t always precarious. If you remember the seminar I presented at @MUNGeog and @MemorialPoliSci I also mentioned that there’s enormous variation in degrees of précarité across waste pickers and across countries. pic.twitter.com/6CN1Sff55X

— Dr Raul Pacheco-Vega (@raulpacheco) November 8, 2019

Note how the paragraph above the purple highlight and the next one actually discuss how different scholars have argued about the variability in degree of precarity across waste pickers’ case studies. THAT is the kind of stuff I would write in my “Cross-Reference” column.

Basically, once you’ve surveyed the field, your “Cross-Reference” column gives you the foundations to start writing the literature review, because it allows you to see how the work you’re reading is connected with your own and with others’ scholarship.

Hopefully this blog post will help those who use my CSED method to write their literature reviews.

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