Final Proposal
Due: Tuesday, December 11 at 5pm to dropbox
Your final paper for this class will take the form of a research proposal. As I will say in lecture, this is because no one is able to make valid anthropological conclusions based on just a few sessions of fieldwork. Therefore, instead of asking you to make any explicit conclusions, I am asking you to articulate good possible research questions and link them with anthropological themes we have learned in this course.
Your proposal should be written as a proposal for hypothetical future research (that, of course, you don’t actually have to do).
If you had more time, more money, and more resources, how would you do research about the location or community in which you have located yourself? Your final proposal should be between 2400 and 3000 words and should include the following sections:
1) Introduction to the location or community -- what is going on there? Explain it to the reader.
2) Significance -- Why is this location or community signifiant? What can anthropologists learn by considering it more closely? What would you hope to learn? How would this project relate to the themes that have come up in our readings? I recommend you go through the topics we’ve discussed and link your site with them.
3) Research Questions -- What questions would you try to answer in your research in this location?
4) Research Methods -- How would you try to answer these questions? What would you do, exactly?
5) Problems or Limitations -- What can you imagine shaping your research? Can you anticipate any problems?
6) Reflection on this process -- Reflect on the project you have already accomplished. What was hard for you? What surprised you? What made you uncomfortable? What felt good?
