A proposal should set out what you want to do, how you hope to do it, and why it’s worth doing. It should indicate that you have enough understanding of the topic to make some sense of the data. It should include an estimation of costs, in time and money, that will show not only what you want but how well you have thought through questions of the practicality of the project. For advice and examples, see the proposal file in the Anthropology library.

     Anthropologists don’t expect each other to do what we plan to do. Fieldwork is an interactive process that depends on other people and is largely aimed at understanding what is important to others. So a proposal is read only in part as a statement of what you will do – in part it is read as evidence of how well you can formulate a problem, think of ways to investigate it, and link it to other issues.

     I suggest that you cover the following topics in your proposals:

1. Introduction: in a paragraph, what do you want to do, how and why?

2. Background

A. Ethnographic background: Identify the research site and topic. Mention comparable studies and show how this research is similar to or different from others. What will this research add to our knowledge of this part of the world?

B. Theoretical: What ideas do we have available to understand this topic? How does your study relate to them, i.e., does it allow us to test out old assumptions, to find out whether they’re relevant to a special case, to develop a model that covers this case and perhaps others, etc….  In short, how does this study promise to advance our understanding of the world? State here the main research questions guiding your work.

3. Methods

A. What methods will you use? To get what sort of information?

B. How do you see these methods producing information that you can link into an argument or description? How do your methods provide cross-checks on one another, or ways to understand more fully the data gained from one style or another of gathering data?

C. If your methods are a signal improvement on existing ones in the field, offering the promise of more precise, more reliable, more abundant or more complete results, say so, and say why.

D. Analysis: Be sure you indicate not only what you want to find out from people, but how you plan to make sense of it, e.g. how you are going to organize the data once you get it. Also, make sure you are going to gather the contextual information needed to support any argument involving what happens in a determinate context.

4. Risks to Researcher and Subjects

What risks/ethical issues are conceivably involved in doing, analyzing and writing about this project? How will you anticipate and deal with them?

5. Timetable and budget

Include all estimated expenses, as well as a list of what you want the department to support.

6. Results

What kind of substantive and methodological results do you expect from the study (e.g. what kind of ethnography do you plan to produce at the end of this: a life history, a problem-oriented ethnography, a comparative survey, a personal narrative, etc.)?