CIA cultural Intelligence in Action paper Topic proposal 150 words, Draft 800 words, Final paper 1800 words

THIS ASSIGNMENT IS NOT A CONVENTIONAL RESEARCH PAPER, where you write about a particular topic from a detached perspective. Instead, this assignment is more of an exercise of your imagination, albeit with guardrails. You are being asked — okay, required — to imagine yourself actually being directly and personally engaged in carrying out some type of project in a cultural or subcultural context that differs significantly from your own cultural context. (Obviously we don’t have sufficient time within the duration of this course for anyone to actually carry out a project of this dimension and complexity that entails direct contact with a specific culture other than the class member’s own.) This could be done solo or as part of a group. But for those of you envision it as a group project, you need to presume that you have some degree of responsibility for leading the group — particularly when it comes to applying Cultural Intelligence (CQ) to navigate the cross-cultural challenges that you would be facing in carrying out the project. Why you? Because you should assume that no one else in the group has taken Cultural Anthropology with professor at university or has had any other serious exposure to the concept of Cultural Intelligence prior to embarking on this project with you as a participant in the group.

So, what kind of project might you propose? It does not have to be any type of mission trip, although that is certainly a legitimate possibility. The most successful CIA projects in this Cultural Anthropology course over the years are those that somehow gave expression to a serious interest or concern on the part of the author, whether that interest or concern was of an academic nature, or personal, professional, cultural, charitable, scientific, vocational, avocational, artistic, athletic, medical -- or something else. In theory, your project might possibly be carried out in any culture or subculture in any part of the world. But it helps if you have identified a culture-specific need for your project to address. For example, one member of the 2020 class proposed to teach swimming to youth in Bangladesh, because he ran across a story about exceptionally high subteen drowning rates in that country. Someone else in the same section, drawing upon previous archival internships, proposed to work with members of the Navajo nation in making sure that their official archives adequately reflected that people’s perspectives and priorities, rather than just the U. S. Government’s priorities.

Obviously these last-cited projects reflect fairly specialized skill sets on the part of the authors; please don’t allow yourself to be intimidated by these examples. With an eye toward further stimulating your thinking, here are a few other recent CIA project topics that turned out to be notably successful, in no particular order:

Mediation program to provide counseling for Mexican-American immigrants in Texas

Providing cultural and legal orientation to Syrian refugees in Troy, Michigan

Conducting seminars/workshops to promote STEM education and careers to Diné (Navajo) youth on their reservation in Arizona

Teaching English (oral and writing) to South Korean university students in OKC

Nonprofit bicycle ministry to homeless people in the Netherlands, starting in Amsterdam

Counseling for Syrian refugees in Germany

Doing Bible translation for specific language groups in the country of Georgia

Delivery of sunscreen and cancer treatment to albino people in Tanzania, along with a public educational awareness campaign regarding albinism

Starting a Mexican restaurant in Seoul, South Korea

Awareness campaign directed to women in Durban, South Africa, aimed at building self-worth and promoting “baby-boxes” in order to provide an acceptable alternative to abortion, while also combating drug addiction

This is just a sampling of the topics upon which members of my most recent Cultural Anthropology courses at university have based their Cultural Intelligence in Action projects.

Now, here is where the “guardrails” on the infinite potential of your creative imagination come in. From the standpoint of academic assessment, this assignment is integrally related to this course’s overall goal of fostering enhanced cultural intelligence on the part of its students. It is a means of assessing how well each student demonstrates the ability to apply concepts taught in the course in a hypothetical real-world situation. Each student is required to propose and describe a specific short-term project (of two years or less in duration) that he or she theoretically could carry out, either alone or as part of a team, within a particular intercultural context. This project might be related to your major or to your future career plans, or it could be something completely unrelated. A couple of examples of previous projects have already been mentioned. Yours could even be a project that you are actually planning to undertake, perhaps as early as this summer. Alternatively, it may be something that you actually have no intention of actually carrying out in reality. Regardless which of these scenarios applies, the proposed project must be something that could realistically be accomplished in reality within a two-year time frame.

While not a conventional research paper, this project will require some research regarding the particular designated culture or subculture you have in mind in order for you to be able to incorporate and correctly apply specific cultural concepts taught in this course. In other words, if the paper turns out to read like something that could have been written at the beginning of the semester, it will not be successful. This means that it must explicitly reflect course content concerning cultural differences, as well as specific course content regarding David Livermore’s approach to the concept of Cultural Intelligence (CQ).

Regardless of the specific characteristics of the project proposed for this assignment, the project must include some mode of engagement with people from a culture (or subculture) notably different from the author’s own culture. That other culture may be local, national, or international in relation to the Cultural Anthropology student’s cultural background or current status. (Given the requirements of this assignment, the context needs to be limited to one and only one culture or subculture besides the student’s own home culture.) The fundamental reason for this requirement is that you are required to properly apply at least three of the specific types of cultural differences that are examined in this course (some of which we will not yet have studied prior to the deadline for submitting the proposal for the project) in explaining how your proposed project would actually be carried out. This means that this paper should demonstrate a proper understanding not only of the specific cultural differences highlighted but also of how those specific cultural differences would need to be navigated in order to be able to carry out the proposed project successfully in a manner consistent with sound cultural intelligence. In other words, the cultural challenges to be confronted in Culture A would likely differ to some degree from those that would need to be addressed in Culture B.

In the final version of the paper, which must be a minimum of eighteen hundred (1800) words in length (show the word count), the student should describe the nature of the proposed project and its goals. The paper may also include intended objectives for the project to accomplish and/or specific challenges to be overcome. In addition, a key section of the paper must describe the specific culture or subculture in relation to which the proposed project would be carried out and how the proposed project will address the circumstances of people living in that culture. (This is where the research comes in; at least one authoritative source rating or describing specific characteristics of the culture or subculture that is the focus of the project must be properly cited in the paper and properly listed, either in a bibliography or a list of works cited.) The ideas or writings of other people may not be plagiarized; instead they should be properly cited, either in footnotes or end notes or parenthetically within the body of the text. Quotations should be used sparingly and properly cited. Either APA, MLA or Turabian is an acceptable citation system to use for citations, so long as consistency is maintained. As an indicator of student authorship, the paper must explicitly cite at least one of the assigned, required, or recommended sources listed in the syllabus. It does not have to be one of the two main textbooks; it can be any reading that is included either on the original syllabus or on a revised course schedule