The Holy Grail: In Pursuit of the Dissertation ProposalMichael Watts, Institute of International Studies, UC BerkeleyTo Page 1 of this essay Page 5 of 5 Warnings, Pathologies, and ConclusionsParenthetically, it is precisely that these principles are often intractable and demanding that one can better understand certain 'pathologies' that attend the crafting of a research proposal: the flight into high theory (to avoid the demands of 'operationalization') or the flight into data and empiricism (to circumvent the demands of theorizing a problem). All of this in terms feeds the necessary/inevitable panic and self-doubt that is associated with a first stab at thinking about a dissertation project. To have the opportunity -- formal or informal -- to share these anxieties, and to benefit from the experiences of others (in preparing a proposal, collecting data, and writing the dissertation itself) is the sort of collective experience that one would have thought they would be institutionalized in some way in every Department. And yet it rarely is. It all seems to be ad hoc and word of mouth. On the Berkeley campus it is almost impossible to find a course on fieldwork, ethnography, or writing a proposal. The moral of the story being: create such opportunities, seminars and courses in your own program! Organize! Organize! Finally, I want to turn to one last issue. The research proposal that you craft is ultimately a "big hypothesis". I mean this in at least two senses. First, you may discover in the course of your research that things are not quite what you expected; the problem of out-migration is less significant than you thought, or the ease with which you can study domestic violence has been greatly exaggerated. The second, is that the world -- and the world of your research site -- changes. You may find yourself in a war zone; you may get sick for long periods of time; you may simply be unable, for reasons of sensitivity, to approach a problem because of shame or embarrassment or the threat of violence. All of these sorts of contingencies -- the necessary and inevitable risks and uncertainties of doing research -- drive home the point that the proposal -- however theoretically brilliant and methodologically sound -- may, and often does, confront a real world and lived experience, including it needs to be said your abilities to do what you think you can do, which demands flexibility, improvisation and an ability and willingness to go back and think again, or tweak the research, or perhaps at its worst abandon the project. All of which is to say that the research process is dialectical and recursive; there is a complex feedback between the document you prepare (and may have received funding for) and the risks, unknowns and contradictions of actually "doing research". Perhaps none of this can be prepared for. But even the best-laid research plans can and never should be cast in stone. It is, for this reason, that good advisors (and funders) constantly reinforce the need to write regular reports on what you have achieved, how things are going, what are the ups and downs of data collection, and for a return trip from the field at some point during your research. Standing back from the day to day grind of what you are doing -- seeing the wood for the trees -- is a key prerequisite for conducting a research project, and for having the vigilance and self-reflection to see where and how you might be going off the rails. To emphasize the contingencies of research, of research in action, takes us far from where I began. The same can be said for the completion of data collection and the long and arduous process of making sense of your fieldnotes, surveys, interviews and so on; and not least of writing the bloody dissertation. Now is not the time or place to reflect upon how we organize our field notes, how we prepare for our return to the University after a spell in Africa or France, or how to begin the difficult and sometime arduous process of writing. But they are part and parcel of this complex thing called "doing research'. Writing a research proposal is of course foundational to this process. My remarks are not intended to invoke first or second order panic (or depression). But it is perhaps inevitable that making explicit the silences and absences in our training and formation in graduate programs -- of actually talking about and taking seriously the business of doing independent research -- raises the bar in a way that can seem simply overwhelming. But it isn't, or need not be, and moreover doing research can be the source of enormous energy, insight and yes, fun. Hang with it!! A Short BibliographyBowen, W. and N. Rudenstine, In Pursuit of the Phd. Princeton, Princeton University
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