Cultural Anthropology Final

For the final, you will be required to design an anthropological research plan (minimum 750 words).

(THESE ARE THE DIRECTIONS FROM MY PROFESSOR)

1. Choose a problem or question you want to study. This problem or question can be anything you are interested in better understanding. If the problem you want to address isn’t already in the form of a question, come up with a question about the problem that you can study. Write this research question at the top of your assignment.

I think the kind of things applied anthropology studies might be the easiest to use for your research question (so it might be useful to review the readings and lecture on applied anthropology first), but it can be about any social issue or problem you want to understand better.

So, for example, it could be something as simple as “Why do people tend to litter in a certain area of campus?” or something as big as “How does socioeconomic background affect graduation rates at Montclair?”

You are not actually going to have to do this research, so don’t be intimidated by the size of the question. Choose a research question that you are actually interested in to start.

Here’s a personal example to show you what I mean. When I was developing my dissertation research, I knew I wanted to do something related to the way that people treat animals and to better understand what cultural practices and values supported animal-based industries. However, I finally settled on the question: “Why do some people rescue and care for farmed animals?” because I thought understanding people who challenged dominant cultural practices might also give me insight to those practices.

1. Design a research plan to find data to answer your question. This will be the bulk of your assignment. I do not expect you to know everything about anthropological methods, so don’t worry about using specific research terms. But review the readings and lecture on fieldwork (ATTACHED BELOW), and design your research plans accordingly.

To answer your question you will need to do some combination of participant observation and interviews. Describe in detail who you will observe, where you will observe them, and how this might give you information that will help you answer your question.

If you need to do interviews (which I think most research questions might require), what are the general questions you will ask? What kind of responses do you think you might get? How will these help you answer your question?

So, to use my example, when I designed my research plan, I decided to volunteer at animal sanctuaries to observe how people cared for rescued farm animals, and I asked them questions about why they got into that work, how they felt about animals in general, what they thought about the way animals were treated in U.S. society, and so on.

1. Consider all the topics we have covered in class (race, gender, sexuality, class, species, etc.) and specifically address how these factors might relate to your research question. This should be incorporated into you research plan, so either address how these factors could affect what you’re looking for or how and why you will incorporate them into your interview questions. Use examples or supporting details from the readings wherever possible. It might not always be obvious that a factor is relevant, but I really want you to try hard to think about how it could play a role before dismissing it as not relevant.

For example, for the question “Why do people tend to litter in a certain area of campus?” it might seem like gender is an irrelevant factor, but all of these categories – including gender – can affect the way people experience public space. Maybe you would find that women ended up littering in a certain area more than men because there weren’t enough garbage cans in a safe, well-lit area, and women did not want to walk to another area that felt less safe to throw away their garbage. You might not discover this unless you were looking for gender differences in behavior while observing people or you specifically asked women about how they felt about safety.

I do not expect you to know what you will find in advance, but you do need to hypothesize what you might find and think creatively and critically about how different topics that we have covered this semester might affect the answers to your research question so that you can anticipate what you should be looking for and what kind of interview questions you might want to ask.

Research Plan Assignment Summary (minimum 750 words):

1. Write a research question.


2. Design a research plan for collecting data to answer the question.


3. Make sure to address the different topics we’ve covered in the course in your research plan (as many as are relevant to your question) and describe how you will consider them in your research (and use examples from or refer to the readings).

Let me know if you have any questions.

DUE THURSDAY AUGUST 6TH BEFORE 11:59 PM