"Preconceived ideas are pernicious in any scientific work, but foreshadowed problems are

the main endowment of the scientific thinker." [Malinowski 1922:8-9].

Brief Guidelines for Writing a Research Proposal
(William Kelly)
Writing a proposal is an obvious and essential first step in any significant primary research.
It has at least two benefits. It requires you to think up and think through a research(able)
problem, clearly and concretely. It also forces you to try to persuade knowledgeable others
of the problem's merits and your qualifications. It is thus an excellent means for coming to
terms with a nebulous set of issues.
Proposals are probably the most rewritten and scrutinized prose that any of you will write as
anthropologists. There are various formats, but it is usually best to craft your basic
proposal in about ten pages (2500-3000 words). The most widely accepted framework has
four sections, which are described below.
A. The objective. The proposal should open with a brief statement that declares in
general terms the principal aim of your research. It should also suggest (briefly) the
significance of the question. Get to the point quickly. Within a half page of text, the
reader/reviewer must know your basic question and why it might be important. This
section is usually the last to be written.
B. The background. This section is a short bibliographic essay that answers the
question, what is the scholarship that is relevant to this research project and that has
inspired you? You may organize your review around works or debates or scholars
which/who have contributed theoretically to your chosen topic. Avoid a simple
recitation of references. Introduce the literature judiciously, and do not run off a
laundry list of names. Avoid sheer negativity. It is unlikely that any project is so
thoroughly novel as to pull the scales from our eyes and correct all previous ignorance
and errors. The reviewer wants to know how you fit in as well as how you stand out.
You can usually see further by standing on the shoulders and not in the ashes of those
who have come before you. In short, organize your commentary in this section to
make your project appear as the next logical, necessary step in our understanding of
an issue.
C. The research design. How will you operationalize your general problem and how
will the research proceed? What particular questions and methods do you plan to
use? What is your rough timetable? What difficulties do you anticipate? How will you
handle ethical dimensions of the project? This is what you lay out in this section. It is
usually at least as long as the previous section; when I review a proposal, I take
Most reviewers, especially fellow anthropologists, are not overly concerned with
whether you will follow this design in all its details. Rather, they read this section as
a test of whether you can translate an abstract question into an actual research
program that is feasible, realistic, and imaginative. You must walk a delicate line
between claims that are too cautious (and hence, uninteresting) and those that are
overly ambitious (and thus not credible). This section should include (usually at the
end) a brief account of any preliminary research you have done towards the project
and other credentials (contacts, language and other skills) that strengthen the
likelihood of success.

D. The significance. Why should anybody fund you? What does the project promise to
contribute to our understanding? This section, in effect, makes explicit the connections
between the previous three sections. Be specific. Reviewers (who are likely senior and
more experienced than you) are seldom impressed with hot air ("this project will
present an entirely new understanding of ") or with broken walls of knowledge ("this
project will fill a gap in our understanding of."). The challenge is to express your
project's importance in a way that is neither vain boasting nor underwhelming
modesty.