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Summary
You will write a 1200-word essay drawing on your ethnographic research into the social activity of people in a specific site or subculture.
Ethnographic research
To inquire into the social activity of a site and subculture, you should conduct fresh ethnographic research or draw on your past direct experience with a subculture.
The authors of each of our readings draw on fresh ethnographic research to support their interpretations:
- Campbell, in “Connie and the Sandman Ladies,” spent time with a New York gang.
- Anderson, in “Mary Kay: American Dream in a Bottle,” participated in meetings of Mary Kay consultants.
- Katz, in "The Cave," observed and interviewed two self-described geeks in their apartment.
Ethnographic research enables these authors to test their own attitudes against others' experiences, to discover new ideas, and to support their ideas with evidence.
Your research should similarly seek to test your own initial attitudes against others' experiences, to discover new ideas, and to support your ideas with evidence you can present in your essay.
Choosing a research site
Exercise 6.1 in The Curious Reader (p.243) offers examples of sites and subcultures that would be both appropriate and accessible for your ethnographic research.
To discover other possible sites, keep this assignment at the front of your thoughts as you move through various communities over the course of a week.
Where do people gather into communities? What are people in these communities doing?
What activities or objects could be interpreted through ethnographic research?
Consider . . .
- your educational community (e.g., students in dorms),
- your work community (e.g., staff in the kitchen of a restaurant),
- your recreational community (e.g., the locker room of your sports team),
- your spiritual community (e.g., your church or mosque or synagogue, etc.),
- your cultural community (e.g., on the streets and gathering spots of your neighborhood).
Chose your site, your research participants, and your observational agenda carefully;
it can take a lot of work to re-do field research if the first
session does not produce informative observations. If you are relying on past experience, it is of course impossible to go back in time to produce more informative observations.
Observing a subculture
Before you start your observations, see p.247 of The Curious Reader to plan how you will take relevant field notes. At your research site (or in your memory), observe and take field notes of the subculture's . . .
- artifacts
- language
- rituals
- use of space
For examples of these, see p.245 of The Curious Reader.
A common challenge for students doing such research is tapping enough details and meaning
from their site observations to merit an essay. To help interpret your observations, interview members of the subculture and supplement your primary research with secondary research.
Taking photographs
To record your observations, consider bringing a camera.
Include photographs in your essay if they clearly depict artifacts, (body) language, rituals, or use of space.
Add a caption to each photograph identifying the main features we see and calling attention to the artifacts, (body) language, rituals, or use of space that we should notice (e.g., "Figure 1:" These members use this artifact. . . .) .
In your essay's text, refer to each photograph (e.g., "As shown in figure 1. . . .") at an appropriate point in your exposition.
Insert each photograph right after the paragraph in which you refer to it.
We'll count each photograph and caption that usefully advances your essay as the equivalent of 100 words.
Ethical research
The practices of researchers toward their research participants have been the subject of considerable controversy. Be honest and respectful toward prospective participants in your research site:
- When approaching prospective participants at a site, explain your research, their potential role in your research, and your research activities at their site.
- Tell them what you will do with your observations (i.e., use them in an essay).
- Tell them that your professor may have to know details about their identity, and tell how much confidentiality or anonymity you can otherwise offer them.
- Ask for their consent.
- Be as inconspicuous as possible. Unless you yourself are a member of the community you are observing (a participant observer), do not disturb the activites of that community.
Audience and purpose
The audience for your essay is literally your classmates, your instructor, and other English Department professors.
However, we choose writing in order to communicate to people with whom we cannot speak directly, so you should orient your essay to a broader but literate audience beyond your immediate circle.
The ethnographic research readings in The Curious Reader were published in scholarly venues with an international readership.
Similarly, imagine writing to people beyond the cultural world we share as members of the LIU community in Brooklyn.
Most of these people should be "outsiders" unfamiliar with your chosen subculture, but some might consider themselves to be "insiders," members of similar subcultures.
Through your writing, you will want not just to transcribe your field notes but to interpret the activities and objects of your subculture. The interpretation is the purpose of your essay, and your observations are the evidence.
Your interpretations should be plausible to outsiders but also fair to insiders.
Organizing your essay
Typically, it's best to organize your essay as follows:
- Introduction, in which your introduce and motivate your subculture or site;
- Methods, in which you describe how you conducted your research or, if drawing from past experience, how you were a participant in this subculture;
- Observations, in which you describe in detail what you observed, focusing on artifacts, language, rituals, and use of space;
- Interpretations, in which you explain the meaning of the artifacts, language, rituals, and use of space. Typically, present your observations and interpretations together.
Then write a separate Conclusion, in which, recalling how you motivated your chosen subculture or site in the Introduction, you could summarize and explain the Interpretations we have learned about the subculture or site.
Evaluation criteria
Complex thinking, research, and writing cannot be readily reduced to
a mathematical formula. Our syllabus offers general criteria for all course
assignments (see "evaluation criteria"
on the syllabus). Important criteria for this assignment include . . .
- the resourcefulness of your research;
- the interpretation of your field observations into plausible perspectives that your audience would find relevant and significant;
- the organization of your observations and interpretations into a cohesive essay.
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