Assignment
Activity 1 Instructions
Research an Indigenous Tribe
You will have had the opportunity to learn about anthropological research. by now in this course. This activity gives you an opportunity to apply your skills to writing a Mock Research Proposal outline. In other words, you will be playing the role of anthropological researcher and write a short proposal explaining the steps and ethical issues involved in studying an indigenous tribe of your choice.
You are not actually doing any research. You will be developing a "pretend" or mock proposal. This will be more of an outline and look over the steps to doing research in your book. Think of all the information you would want to include if you were trying to receive funding for research.
Have fun with this and think about studying a culture that you find interesting.You will need to read and review the materials for this topic to complete this activity, but as you will soon learn, planning and preparing early for research (and studying) in another culture is very important.
This activity is worth 30 points.
See When Assignments are Due for the due date.
Other directions:
• Your proposal should be typed
• No larger than 12 inch font
• No larger than 1 inch margins
• Include page numbers
• Save as an .rtf file before uploading into class and or copying directly into drop box
• Proposal should be 2 pages to 3 pages long.
• You can use and include section headings such as Introduction, Literature Review, Methodology, Ethical Considerations, Conclusion, and Bibliography. Basically you can make an outline with the above headings and just fill in the rest. The material you write should be in paragraph form.
Step 1: Identify an indigenous tribe that you would like to research.
What is an indigenous tribe? Where can you find a list? Here are a couple of good resources to examine:
Indigenous node of the World Wide Web Virtual Library
Wikipedia List of Indigenous Peoples (Not the best list but a decent place to start)
Once you have identified your group, you are ready to research and start your proposal.
Step 2: Write your proposal.
Sections to include:
Title: Your title should be concise.
Research Objective:Why are you doing this research and what specific issues are you hoping to study? This can be a paragraph.
Literature Review: In most research proposals, the literature review notes all the previous research ever done on this group. For this activity, you just need to write a paragraph about one study that has already been done on your indigenous tribe. Briefly summarize the study and be sure to cite it in your proposal and include it in a list of references at the end of your proposal. See the module on how to cite research in this class for further assistance.
Methodology: This is where your textbook will come in handy. Explain to the best of your ability how you plan to study the group you have chosen. Keep in mind all of this is hypothetical, so use your anthropological imagination and really think about all that you would need to do. Include a list of things you would need to do in order to even prepare for this study (language, funding, etc). Here are other questions you should answer:
1. Where will you do your study? Include a map of the location you have chosen (you will have to read a little on the location of your indigenous people and do the best you can with imagining a good location).
2. What methods will you use and how will you use them? (See textbook on data collection methods and choose at least three of them to explore your indigenous people. Be sure to write in detail about this. It is not enough to say I will take photos or I will conduct interviews). For example, if you do interviews are you going to videotape them or write them out.
3. How will you get to this location? Do you have an informant? Do you have contacts with these people? Think about all the logistics and write about them. How are you going to track your information? Are you going to take a computer in the field?
4. What problems to you think you might encounter?
5. Estimated time table
Ethical Considerations: In a paragraph and thinking back to the American Anthropological Association s Code of Ethics, what ethical issues do you think you might encounter? What ethical issues could arise? For example, if you are studying an indigenous group with a disease, might the issue of medicine availability be a problem. The two most critical ethical considerations are: 1) Informed consent: how will you obtain it? Be specific! 2) Confidentiality: how will you ensure it? You should also ensure readers that no harm will occur to your subjects as a result of their participation in your study, and that any "risks" of participating in this research are minimal.
Step 3: Conclude your paper with a paragraph on why you are interested in studying this group of people and what you hope to learn from conducting this study.
Step 4: Be sure to list any sources you used in this proposal. You should at least have one source to reference based on Step 2.
Example Outline of Activity 1
I. Introduction (1 paragraph)
Introduce topic, title and research objective
II. Literature Review (1 paragraph)
III. Methodology (1)-This will be the most detailed part of your proposal. You can use subheadings. Be sure to note ethical considerations.
IV. Conclusion (paragraphy)
V. List any sources you might use.