Question

The purpose of this exercise is to practice writing an abstract of an academic work. An abstract is a concise summary of the topic, goals, content, and argument of an academic work. Learning to write a good abstract is a key step in developing a critique of an academic work—you cannot provide a good critique of an article or book until you are able to first summarize the author’s argument and the evidence she uses to support it.

Assignment:

For this exercise, write a 150-200 word abstract of chapter 5 (“The Phenomenology of Terror”) in Buried Secrets by Victoria Sanford.

Your goal is to provide a succinct summary of: the topic of the chapter, Sanford’s thesis in the chapter, and the data she uses to support it.

Guidelines:

The first sentence(s) should describe accurately and concisely the main theme of the chapter: What is it about? What is the main topic??Where, when, and with whom was the research done?

The following sentence(s) should concisely state the author’s thesis and how she argues her position. Remember that a thesis must be stated in the form of an argument, not a statement of fact.

The next sentence(s) should briefly outline the information that the author uses to support her thesis. For example, is the data ethnographic or is it historical or a combination of both? Does the author draw primarily on media sources or did she conduct interviews? With whom did she conduct interviews and why? How does the author present or organize her data to support her case?

Your abstract should end with a summary of the implications of the chapter: Why is this chapter significant? What does the author accomplish or hope to accomplish by presenting this data?

Answer 1

Chapter 5, The Phenomenology of Terror” describes the Guatemalan army’s activists in 1978, the same year as the Panzós massacre occurred. It traces the selective campaign of political disappearance and assassination in Guatemala City and other urban centers by the Guatemalan army along with the accelerated construction of military bases throughout rural Guatemala. The author held that this was the time when the military presence and infrastructure of the Guatemalan army saw a significant rise using testimonies from massacre survivors, interviews with members of the forensic team, human rights leaders, high-ranking military officers, guerrilla combatants, and government officials. She concluded that the army grew to have a significant presence in the Ixil area with large army bases, along temporary locations which were used by the army as jails, torture and interrogation centers, and clandestine cemeteries.