Cultural Anthropology Program - Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grants

The primary objective of the Cultural Anthropology Program is tosupport basic scientific research on the causes, consequences, andcomplexities of human social and cultural variability. Anthropological research spans a wide gamut, and contemporary cultural anthropology is an arena in which diverse research traditions and methodologies are valid. Recognizing the breadth ofthe field's contributions to science, the Cultural Anthropology Program welcomes proposals for empirically grounded, theoreticallyengaged, and methodologically sophisticated research in allsub-fields of cultural anthropology. Because the National ScienceFoundation's mandate is to support basic research, the NSF CulturalAnthropology Program does not fund research that takes as itsprimary goal improved clinical practice or applied policy. A proposal that uses anthropological methods to understand a social problem but does not propose to make a theory-testing and/or theory expanding contribution to anthropology will be returned without review. Program research priorities include, but are not limited to, research thatincreases our understanding of: Socio-cultural drivers of critical anthropogenic processes such asdeforestation, desertification, land cover change, urbanization,and poverty Resilience and robustness of socio-cultural systems Conflict, cooperation, and altruism Economy, culture, migration, and globalization Variability and change in kinship and family norms and practices Cultural and social drivers of health outcomes and disease transmission Social regulation, governmentality, and violence Origins of complexity in socio-cultural systems Language and culture: orality and literacy, sociolinguistics, andcognition Human variation through empirically grounded ethnographicdescriptions Mathematical and computational models of sociocultural systems suchas social network analysis, agent-based models, multi-level models, and modes that integrate agent-based simulations andgeographic information systems (GIS) As part of its effort to encourage and support projects thatexplicitly integrate education and basic research, CA providessupport to enhance and improve the conduct of doctoral dissertationprojects designed and carried out by doctoral students enrolled in U.S.universities who are conducting scientific research that enhancesbasic scientific knowledge.