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Literature Reviews in Sociology

Guidance, strategies and resources to support conducting & writing literature reviews in Sociology.

Search Terms

Use the main concepts in your research question as preliminary search terms. 

 

Sample article: 

Laster Pirtle, Whitney N., and Wright Tashelle. 2021. "Structural Gendered Racism Revealed in Pandemic Times: Intersectional Approaches to Understanding Race and Gender Health Inequities in COVID-19." Gender & Society 35(2):168-179. doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/08912432211001302.

Extrapolated research question: How do theories about structural gendered racism applied to analyzing the intersectional dimensions of these structural disparities that harm Black women and other women of color help peel back the veil that the pandemic has begun to reveal.

theories about structural gendered racism

Intersectional dimensions

Disparities

Black women

Women of color

Pandemic (Covid-19 - coronavirus)

Conducting a few test searches in library databases can help you locate the best search terms for your topic.

 

When conducting a test search, look for additional terms in the article's:

  • title
  • abstract
  • article headings
  • author or database supplied keywords
  • subject headings (if available) 
If you reference a theory, you may incorporate keywords related to a theory or theorist. 

 

Theory/Lens/Perspective Example Theorist(s) Keywords
Postcolonialism/Decolonialism Abdullahi & Salawu on Ibn Khaldun; Frantz Fanon; Gloria Anzaldúa colonialism, imperialism, the "West" and the "rest", Global South
Class conflict Marx; Du Bois; Mills economic exploitation, proletariat, bourgeoisie, false consciousness, class struggle, economic inequality, revolution
Structural functionalism Durkheim functionalism, modernization, division of labor, collective conscience, anomie, social roles
Bureaucratic states, status groups, and meaning-making Weber political science, bureaucracy, religion, meaning
Symbolic interactionism Weber, Mead, Blumer, Goffman the self, meaning-making, performativity (performing self in society)
Gender analysis/feminism Marianne Weber, Charlotte Perkins Gilman gender roles, patriarchy, misogyny, standpoint theory
Critical Race Approaches Du Bois, Cooper, Wells, Crenshaw, Hill Collins racism, segregation, discrimination, color line, double-consciousness
Intersectionality Cooper, Wells, Crenshaw, Hill Collins, Anzaldúa multiple axes of oppression, identity formation, gender +race+class+++ analysis
Poststructuralism Foucault, Bourdieu Foucault: discipline, punishment, subjectivity, population control, circulation of power (not just top-down); Bourdieu: other forms of capital (not just economic, but also cultural, social, and symbolic), subjectivity/objectivity, embodied social norms

 

From Van Natta, M. (2022) Sociology 100, UC Merced. 

When you find a useful article, look for the article's Subject Headings (or Subject or Subject Terms) or assigned keywords. If available, record these as possible terms to use in your search. You can also search by subject heading in some databases.

 

Your search might include both keywords and subject headings. Controlled vocabulary systems, such as Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH), are pre-set terms that are used to tag resources on similar subjects.

Many databases index articles using their own set of subject headings. Not all databases will have subject heading searching and for those that do, the subject heading categories may differ between databases. This is because databases classify articles using different criteria.

  • Most ProQuest databases have a Thesaurus (found above the search bars) to help you discover subject terms.

For our example, Laster Pirtle Whitney, N., and Wright Tashelle. 2021. "Structural Gendered Racism Revealed in Pandemic Times: Intersectional Approaches to Understanding Race and Gender Health Inequities in COVID-19." Gender & Society 35(2):168-179. doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/08912432211001302.

the Sociological Abstracts databases assigned the following subject headings: 

Subject

Racism;
Health services;
Health problems;
Women;
Households;
Race;
COVID-19;
Intersectionality;
Disadvantaged;
Inequality;
Connectedness;
Sexism;
Pandemics;
Occupations;
Coronaviruses;
Gender inequality

You may also see additional author-supplied keywords in the article record, below the abstract or below the list of subject headings. You may find these to be useful keywords to add to your search.

Identifier / keywords: gendered racism; intersectionality; COVID-19; pandemic

Not sure what terminology is used by researchers to articulate the concepts related to your topic? Doing some background reading can help you become familiar with the terms used to discuss your topic.