Assignment:
Format: max 1 page (approx. 400-600 words), 1.5-2" spacing, 12 pt. font. Essays should be organized, free of excessive errors, and appropriately formal in tone.
File and Submission:
1) Save your file in .doc or .pdf format - I cannot comment on documents saved in other formats.
2) Name your file in the following format: yourlastname.extracredit
3) Submit your paper at the link on Moodle (top of the mainpage).
Prompt: Consider an ethnographic research project that you would find interesting and that would contribute in a significant way to our understanding of the world and/or of some particular social problem. Your project proposal should be written out in paragraph format rather than bullet points, and you should include the following in your write-up, using the structure below:
1) Research Question: Identify the intellectual question or social problem you want to address in the research in the form of a question: what would you attempt to find out through this research? Be as specific as possible.
In designing your question, you should use at least a few anthropological concepts from throughout the course. Again, be as precise as possible: "I would study how kinship relates to the army" is vague, whereas a clear and specific research question relating to these topics and using course concepts might look like this: "I would examine how the cultural ideal of military service is passed on as part of children's socialization within families. While descent in the U.S. is reckoned bilaterally, the military is an institution that is male-dominated in both ideology and in practice, so I am interested in whether there is any difference between how family histories of military service are emphasized when they are on the mother's side or on the father's side."
2) Ethnographic Context:
Be as specific as possible about the place(s), social group(s), practice(s) or idea(s) that would be the focus of your project.
3) Background and Methods:
What prior anthropological concepts, questions or frameworks of analysis inform your question? How would you connect your research project to work that we have read or heard about in this class-- does it resemble other studies we have seen, or does it help us to address similar questions or perspectives to those that other anthropologists have posed?
You should also make sure your research question is one that is best answered using ethnographic methods (as opposed to, say, large-scale surveys or statistical analysis of existing data). State what makes this an appropriate question for the methods and concepts of cultural anthropology-- that is, talk briefly about how specific ethnographic techniques and procedures will help you answer the question.
4) Implications:
If the goal of your project is to answer an academic question of interest to anthropologists, make it clear what we will learn from this research and how it contributes to our understanding of phenomena or concepts of interest to anthropologists. If you are designing your project with the goal of helping to solve a social problem, be sure to state what the goals of this project would be: how would you intend for your work to address the problem?
Note: the best projects will be ones that focus on issues of current concern in the world or relevance to contemporary anthropology; this means, for example, not treating societies or cultures as bounded, isolated entities or ignoring obvious connections between the society/group you focus on and others.