Ajtz'ihb

Hi Shaiya,
 
You're much better positioned as an applicant for graduate school in the US than you think. You say:
 
Getting ANY form of research experience is so hard in my country, because anthropology is still very new here and research isn't valued (it's all about going corporate).
 
Tell them that in your statement. Explain that you want to attend graduate school in the United States because there are no opportunities for you to grow as a scholar in your home country. That's the important thing: you have the intellectual seriousness to want to grow as a scholar, and you've done enough to exhaust the options available to you (and you understand the social reasons why that is the case).
 
Frankly, it doesn't matter that you don't have any publications. I didn't have any and I was accepted to 50% of the schools I applied to (a good rate), including the best program in my area of specialization. 
 
Professors are looking for students with intellectual maturity, a reasonable degree of focus (such as your interest in gender, sexuality, and religion), and seriousness. It has to be obvious that you're going to graduate school because you truly want to be a scholar, not because you don't really know what else to do. You don't have to know exactly what you want to do your dissertation on--you should change your mind in graduate school anyway, since it's a sign of growth. But you should be able to communicate what interests you, why, and why you feel this is important.
 
The single most important thing you can do to help your application is to be in touch with your prospective advisor (POI in forum-speak). Reach out to them, explain why you're interested in the program, ask questions about it. Explain that you don't have much fieldwork experience but are eager to begin, and ask what sorts of opportunities are available for students. How many faculty projects are there that you could work on? What's funding like for fieldwork? Etc.
 
To your specific questions:
 
1. Present yourself as a Pakistani interested in gender, sexuality, and religion. Say you've done research for coursework but fieldwork opportunities are limited. You've done projects on globalism, fundamentalism, and food. Explain how some of the projects you've done--even if it's online or library research--have impacted your thinking on the topics you list as your main interests. Etc.
 
2. Your research interests do not need to be streamlined. Mine are fairly sprawling. But what you do need to be able to do in the SOP is communicate what you're interested in, why it interests you, and why that matters. The one thing that will sink your SOP is vagueness or obfuscation. Be honest.
 
Finally, it's not a bad thing that you have disparate research interests, it's an asset. New ideas and innovative studies come about when somebody connects things that not a lot of people think to connect. Gender, fundamentalism, food, and religion all intersect in a thousand ways all around the globe. Maybe you could look into how those things intersect in Pakistan--perhaps, even, how they intersect to limit opportunities for researchers such as yourself.
 
Don't worry. You'll be fine. Your first step should be to look for scholars whose research interests align with your own in some way--somebody whose book you liked, or someone you see cited in literature you find interesting. Learn a bit about the departments where they work. If the program seems appealing, e-mail away.  

This is excellent advice, and as another currently enrolled Ph.D. student I enthusiastically endorse it. I also agree that Academia.edu is a great resource for scoping out what other people in the program are doing, allowing for the fact that it's a selective and imperfect sample. 
 
I'll add a few random thoughts from my own experience:
 
Visit if you can
 
By visiting you can put a name with a face for faculty and you give yourself the chance to talk with them in a more informal setting, which makes it easier to ask questions based on what they tell you and generally gives them a chance to get to know you somewhat. This will also give you the chance to meet other graduate students and hear what they think of the program.
 
Pick the right letter writers
 
You want to get letter writers who both know you and your potential as a scholar and who are unlikely to be total strangers to your POI. Of course this can't always be helped if you're coming from a wildly different background. But wherever possible, you want your letters to come from people your POI knows or knows of, because this gives them a frame of reference for evaluating the recommendation.
 
And finally, for the statement of purpose, I basically concentrated all my efforts on Dan's Paragraph 5. I didn't have a topic picked out so there was nothing for me to cite, but I did have a general sense of my goals as a researcher and I was very detailed and very explicit about what those goals were and why the places I was applying to were good fits. I also tailored every letter very closely to the program it was meant for. 

The University of Arizona, Vanderbilt, Tulane, and Brown are all places I would suggest taking a close look at. @bioarch_fan is correct that your main concern should be finding a program that combines (1) a potential advisor who can supervise the specific analytical work you want to do, and (2) potential committee members who are experts in the geographic/culture area you want to work in. While it can be great to have an advisor who does both, it's not always the best fit, and sometimes it can stifle your own creativity because you wind up doing a dissertation project that's very similar to your advisor's own work.
And you really should consider funding very carefully. It can make or break your success as a researcher, and it certainly contributes to the overall sense of support or competition within a department.
I'm a Mayanist and I'm doing my Ph.D. at Tulane, so if you have Maya-specific program questions feel free to ask me.

@eggz Congratulations on your acceptance! Madison is a fantastic city and a wonderful place to be a student. 

Also, somebody mentioned the GRFP. Everyone--everyone--needs to apply for this. Apply your first year and if it's not accepted, try again your second year. It's a big chunk of no-strings-attached money and you can combine it with your university stipend assuming you're offered one.
A lot of undergrad advisers neglect to mention the GRFP to their students who are applying to grad school, and some PhD advisers I guess just assume their starting students already know about it. It's a complete dereliction of duty on both counts. Everyone should be applying for this fellowship.
Seriously. Apply.

Also, somebody mentioned the GRFP. Everyone--everyone--needs to apply for this. Apply your first year and if it's not accepted, try again your second year. It's a big chunk of no-strings-attached money and you can combine it with your university stipend assuming you're offered one.
A lot of undergrad advisers neglect to mention the GRFP to their students who are applying to grad school, and some PhD advisers I guess just assume their starting students already know about it. It's a complete dereliction of duty on both counts. Everyone should be applying for this fellowship.
Seriously. Apply.

Yeah, sending out emails just around the beginning of the academic year is a good idea. People won't be too busy yet so they're more likely to have time to respond. 

A couple things:
1: Your background in no way flags you as a strange candidate for a Ph.D. program. Anthropologists of all people are interested in diversity, and any advisor you'd actually want to have as your advisor will likely see your background as a plus. You're clearly read up enough to have a general sense of debates and perspectives in the discipline, so don't feel like you're handicapped.
2: The single most important thing you can do in support of your application is reach out to potential advisors--better yet, several professors in the programs you're interested in--before you apply or during the application process. It's the most reliable way to let your POI know that you're interested and serious. They might not respond to your e-mail right away or even at all, but you should still write them.
3. Publications are fine, but they're not really important for getting accepted. More important is to think hard about what topics you're interested in and what sorts of projects you might want to take on for a dissertation. You're obviously not expected to have a dissertation plan starting out--if you do, it'll change dramatically over the first two or three years anyway--but you absolutely need to demonstrate that you've put some time and effort into working out what you'd like to do.
4. I'm an archaeologist and you're a cultural anthropologist, so the specific expectations for an SOP in your sub-field will be slightly different from mine. I didn't cite a single source directly in mine, although I attributed a few quotes the way a journalist might. In any event, it's true that the SOP is the most important part of your application, and you want it to do three things: (1) demonstrate intellectual seriousness and depth of knowledge about the discipline as a whole as well as your particular area of it (which means you'll need to have some sort of topical or areal focus); (2) demonstrate that you've thought about what you might like to do, although you're not expected to be married to a project; and (3) state very plainly, explicitly, and it detail why you think the foregoing make you a good match for the particular program you're writing to. Absolutely mention professors by name and explain why each of them in turn appeals to you as someone to study under or work with. Do the same with on-campus resources like libraries or research centers. This shows that you're not applying on a lark and that you're taking the application seriously, which will prompt professors in the department to do the same.
 
Hope that's helpful!

The Leisure Club in Pensacola is great, and they do good food in addition to coffee. There's another place down at the end of Palafox called Bodacious Brew that, despite the unpromising name, is also quite good.
I'll have to check out The Cappuccino Trail, sounds awesome.
I'm an archaeologist working in Guatemala, so my actual area of research is pretty far off from yours, but coffee is something I try to stay close to. 

A couple things:
1: Your background in no way flags you as a strange candidate for a Ph.D. program. Anthropologists of all people are interested in diversity, and any advisor you'd actually want to have as your advisor will likely see your background as a plus. You're clearly read up enough to have a general sense of debates and perspectives in the discipline, so don't feel like you're handicapped.
2: The single most important thing you can do in support of your application is reach out to potential advisors--better yet, several professors in the programs you're interested in--before you apply or during the application process. It's the most reliable way to let your POI know that you're interested and serious. They might not respond to your e-mail right away or even at all, but you should still write them.
3. Publications are fine, but they're not really important for getting accepted. More important is to think hard about what topics you're interested in and what sorts of projects you might want to take on for a dissertation. You're obviously not expected to have a dissertation plan starting out--if you do, it'll change dramatically over the first two or three years anyway--but you absolutely need to demonstrate that you've put some time and effort into working out what you'd like to do.
4. I'm an archaeologist and you're a cultural anthropologist, so the specific expectations for an SOP in your sub-field will be slightly different from mine. I didn't cite a single source directly in mine, although I attributed a few quotes the way a journalist might. In any event, it's true that the SOP is the most important part of your application, and you want it to do three things: (1) demonstrate intellectual seriousness and depth of knowledge about the discipline as a whole as well as your particular area of it (which means you'll need to have some sort of topical or areal focus); (2) demonstrate that you've thought about what you might like to do, although you're not expected to be married to a project; and (3) state very plainly, explicitly, and it detail why you think the foregoing make you a good match for the particular program you're writing to. Absolutely mention professors by name and explain why each of them in turn appeals to you as someone to study under or work with. Do the same with on-campus resources like libraries or research centers. This shows that you're not applying on a lark and that you're taking the application seriously, which will prompt professors in the department to do the same.
 
Hope that's helpful!

Yeah, faculty understand that people with MAs will have more fieldwork and will have had more time to narrow down their focus. Don't worry about it too much. Also bear in mind that every program is just a little bit different, so while Duke may want to you write some epic, massively-cited beast of an SOP, a lot of other places won't. 
OP, the level of specificity you indicate for your interests should be fine as the basis for an application, but I would begin thinking about what part of the world you'd like to do fieldwork in and what sort of questions jump out at you from the body of theory you find most compelling. For instance, you're into relations of power and marginalization. Okay, are there holes in the arguments of thinkers that get cited a lot--Foucault, say--that you think could be filled in? Is there a particular instance of marginalization that you think cries out for fieldwork? These are the kinds of questions that will get your started on finding a specific research topic.

Master of Research is going to be the name of my academic metal band. 

Too often, Ph.D. students think they need to be a clone of their advisor. That's not the case. You're looking to work with a person or people who can grasp what you are trying to do and provide helpful criticism of your work and your methods to prepare you for the academy. 

I think the idea that you need to apply to "at least" 5 schools is ridiculous. Apply to the schools that interest you and seem like good matches (and offer decent funding), and not one more. You'll only wear yourself out. And yes, throwing your energy into the NSF rather than a bunch of applications that your heart's not really in is a good idea.

I think you're probably being too narrow in your search overall. Does the entire department's theoretical approach need to match with yours or do you really just need 2-3 people who are comfortable with the approach you want to take (even if they don't themselves use it)? Would you be okay with having a POI who uses the same theories but doesn't do research in the same area of the world? Would it be okay if they did research in a nearby country (e.g., you work in Madagascar, they work in Kenya)? That is, do you want someone who you can copy or are you comfortable having to pull expertise from multiple people (some in the department, some in other departments on campus)? 
Here's why I'm asking. My PhD advisor didn't do research in the same area of the world or on the same focus that I did. I was explicit about what I wanted to do in my applications, naming a topic, a region of study, and a theoretical framework. Only the latter of those was what my advisor did. This may help you picture it. Let's say I did ethnobotanical work in the highlands of Ecuador and my advisor primarily did work with coastal communities in Papua New Guinea. When I applied, I was clear about my desire to do ethnobotanical work in South America and I knew my POI didn't do that and didn't know much about it. But, my advisor was willing to learn about it, in no small part because the research methods were similar due to using the same theoretical framework. To explain further, there were a variety of theoretical approaches in the department including some that I wouldn't be comfortable taking but, it didn't matter to me since I knew those folks would not be on my dissertation committee. Does all of that make sense?

While this is of course a little bit tangential, I'd like to give my two cents on the two questions KNP asks.
Anybody applying to graduate school these days should be fully aware that the prospects for a tenure-track academic teaching job are horrendous and, frankly, will never improve short of a major society-wide realignment. The "adjunct crisis" is a real thing and it is partially a result of young scholars insisting on sticking with a college-level teaching career in the hopes that something, some day, will turn up (all the while playing right into the hands of those who seek to corporatize universities and cripple academic practice). This is the way things are, and everyone contemplating graduate school should know it.
But.
I don't think most of us go to graduate school because we want to be tenured professors more than anything--we go because we are intellectually curious, because we want to do research, because we want to contribute to a better/fairer/safer world, etc. There are a thousand useful (and well-paying) things you can do with a Ph.D. in any discipline, including Anthropology. You just need to be open to the fact that academic careers will never again look like they used to, at least for the vast majority of us, and make peace with it. Consider all of the "Plan B's" and alternative careers you might be able to pursue out of graduate school: nonprofits, CRM, government work, museums, journalism, starting a business that does things the way you wish other businesses would...these are the things you should really have in mind. 
If you go into graduate school planning for a cushy professorship at the end of it, you are likely to be bitterly disappointed (as are many of those who give you the panicked "don't go to grad school whatever you do" speech). If you go in because you love your field, want to contribute to it, and are content with a wide variety of possible career outcomes, by all means go for it.

My experience matches farflung's. You may be able to count on a consultation or maybe assisting them with a "loose ends" kind of project that they're just now getting around to, but you absolutely should not apply to any program specifically to work with an emeritus/emerita professor.

My experience matches farflung's. You may be able to count on a consultation or maybe assisting them with a "loose ends" kind of project that they're just now getting around to, but you absolutely should not apply to any program specifically to work with an emeritus/emerita professor.

If you are applying to schools in the top 50—as judged by pretty much any ranking of prestige you choose, whether by the university overall or anthropology-specific—most of them should offer full funding. "Full funding" means "full tuition reimbursement and a stipend for your work." Nobody (who wants an academic career) should ever go to a US PhD that expects you to help pay tuition, or that does not offer a stipend. This is not unique to you, trust me! We are all looking for this, and if you get admitted to a top 50 program, it is likely that you will be "fully funded." Just glancing over one list of top 50 universities, there are only three that I know do not offer full funding to their entire admitted cohort. (Indiana at Bloomington, for example, does not fund all their admits, although it probably varies by department). That said, I don't know about the funding in about 20 of these universities, but there are about 27 of them that I do know fully fund all of their admitted students.
But! There is another, related issue, that I think may be the concern you're trying to express. "Fully funded" sometimes still doesn't provide very much stipend money; UNC pays like $12,500. (Although I will note that that is an exceptionally low stipend. They do also have opportunities to win university-wide fellowships that pay more.) When you say that you need full funding, do you mean that you can't go anywhere unless they offer a stipend over X thousand dollars, because you have living expenses that can't be met with less? That should be more or less easy to figure out from the university websites, or the various "grad school funding spreadsheets" floating around this website. If you need $16,000 to be happy and $18,000 in higher cost-of-living areas, you can certainly figure that out before you apply, and save yourself the application fees!
PS Please excuse the bolding and italics, I've been writing my NSF essays and their over-formatting bug has bitten me. (And good suggestion about the outside funding!)

I'm a Mayanist doing my Ph.D. at Tulane currently. Your list looks good to me; the only (possible) addition I would suggest off the top of my head isthe University of Arizona (Tucson).
Brown does indeed sound like a good choice given your interests, although I suggest you spend a couple days in Providence before you commit (assuming you get in) to see how you like it. Some people love it, but the city isn't really my cup of tea. I've met Scherer a few times though and he seems like a nice guy, and his work is excellent (of course). 
Penn State is a very large program and one that puts a lot of emphasis on human-environment interactions and Mesoamerica. One thing to be aware of, however, is that the general theoretical stance on human-environment issues there (well, at least among the Mayanists) is pretty old-school, and still fits pretty squarely within Steward's cultural ecology. Not a dealbreaker by any means, but just be aware that the spirit of Bill Sanders continues to loom large over the Mesoamerica program there (see Webster and Murtha's chapter in Tikal: Paleoecology of an Ancient Maya City (2015) for an example).
Tulane is a great match for your interests so I suggest being in touch with Verano and other relevant members of the faculty (Canuto, Balee, Nesbitt, Rodning, Murakami...) to see how interested they might be in your application. Verano and Canuto both have a lot of students presently so it's conceivable that they'll pass on bringing anyone new on until they've moved a few of their current students through. Nevertheless, it never hurts to inquire.
 

Yeah, you should absolutely e-mail every professor you have an interest in working with. They may not reply, but you might be surprised by the feedback you get. Plus, as Bioarch_fan suggests, some professors may not be taking (or planning to take) graduate students in a given year--better to find that out now than later so you can plan accordingly or try to chip away at them.
 
Professors expect people to be proactive in graduate school, so you're not doing any harm by reaching out unless you pester someone with a bunch of e-mails (I would say no more than two unless you get a reply). The worst that can happen is you don't hear back, which doesn't necessarily mean anything other than that the POI is busy, forgetful, or bad at the internet.

I've been reading up on linguistic anthropology, because some of it is really interesting and relevant for me. It's funny. Some of these articles are wonderful and clear and so interesting. Some other ones seem to be basically just a headache distilled into words. 

A late note, perhaps, but you have a flair for imagery and write with style. If you are able to follow rising_star's advice about further coursework at a different university, I think you could really tell a strong story about why you should be admitted to a graduate program. SOPs are what make successful applications, and I'm confident that you'll be able to create a compelling one.

Consider doing some searches on Google Scholar or Web of Science on subjects like "Black Atlantic" or "afro-caribbean anthropology." You'll likely turn up scholars working on subjects that interest you that way, and then you can follow up by looking at those people's programs.
 
Bear in mind that you won't just be applying to a school, you're also applying to work with an individual. So you should focus your efforts on identifying particular scholars you'd like to work with and then figuring out how good a fit their overall program seems like it would be for you.
 
I'll put in a shameless plug for my own program here: Tulane has a huge number of faculty and students working in the regions that interest you, both within and beyond the anthro department. Plus, I mean, New Orleans...

Apply to a handful. Strong application SOPs are tailored to the program, singling out faculty members you'd like to work with or take courses with, facilities you would like to have access to, etc. They want to see that you've done your homework and really want to attend that school in particular, rather than just any ol' place. 
 
You'll go crazy if you try to write an essay like that for 8-10 schools.