DUE DATE: THURSDAY November 9th (IN CLASS / IN PERSON)
Worth 60 points
Following the grading rubric guidelines for details on formatting.
For this assignment, you will become a cultural anthropologist and do a mini-ethnography. To do this, you will need to follow the following steps. After completing your ethnography, you will write it up for your midterm essay.
1. Find a subculture that you wish to research, participate, and write about for your mini-ethnography.
RULES FOR PICKING A SUBCULTURE:
a. Pick a subculture to which you DO NOT already belong. You could have participated or been familiar in the group before, but you cannot currently be an active member of the subculture / group.
i. For example, in the past I have participated in the anthropology club, but I have not participated in years. I could write my mini-ethnography on the current anthropology club or another club on campus.
ii. You could write about people you work with, but not about your division. You could write about another division. For example, if you are nurse, you might want to write about social interactions of CNAs, doctors, or nurses in another area. If you are a nursing student, you might want to visit the hospital and observe the actions of nurses for this assignment.
iii. You could also observe many interesting social places, like bars, clubs, fitness centers, sporting events, concerts, restaurants.
b. Try to do participant observation, and participate in the activity. However, I realize that your participation might be limited in some activities. So, give it your best try.
2. FIELDWORK EXPERIENCE – REQUIRED COMPONENTS FOR ESSAY
a. OBSERVATION- Observe this group for at least 2 hours. This could consist of one 2-hour session, two 1-hour sessions, or four ½ hour observation sessions. You can certainly observe this group for much longer. You may need to ask for permission from an authority figure in the group to observe the people.
b. FIELDNOTES – Take detailed field notes and qualitative information including information of how many people are in the group.
i. SOME EXAMPLES OF THINGS TO OBSERVE – (There are many others. BE CREATIVE!) –
ii. Attach your field notes to the final project you MUST turn in!
iii. Are there special clothes or special language? How do members recognize each other?
iv. What does the environment look like?
v. What is the gender division?
vi. What does the group center around?
vii. Is it ideological or activity based?
viii. ETC… BE CREATIVE!!!
c. INTERVIEW – Do an interview with a person in the group, your key informant.
i. Interview at least 1 person from this group.
ii. You MUST include a transcription of the interview as an attachment to your paper.
iii. When writing your mini-ethnography, you can use a pseudonym (false name) to protect the person’s identity.
iv. Transcription should be about a page long.
v. Did you do structured or unstructured questions?
vi. How did you decide to interview that person?
d. DOCUMENT YOUR FIELDSITE – You need to document your field site with photographs AND/OR a map (or both).
i. Take photographs of your site AND/OR draw a map of the physical space. The map does not need to be exactly to scale.
ii. Attach your photographs and/or map to your final project you submit. (REQUIRED)
e. ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION – Write a short essay, (minimum of 2 pages long / double spaced Times New Roman font – it can be longer) addressing the following objectives. It is imperative to cover all the objectives. If this requires you to go over the 2 page minimum length, DO IT.
Objectives:
f. Introduction
i. What group did you study? And why?
g. Methods
i. Where you observed them?
ii. Cover all the details you took down in your field notes, etc. (Some of the information you could cover, but you can also be creative.)
1. Are there special clothes or special language?
2. How do members recognize each other?
3. What does the environment look like?
4. What is the gender division?
5. Around what does the group center?
6. Is it ideological or activity based?
iii. Did you do participant observation? If so, how? Why did you choose to do participant observation? OR why did you choose not to do participant observation?
iv. How many interviews did you do?
1. Introduce your key informant.
2. What questions did you ask the key informant?
3. What did you learn about the group from this person?
4. Were they formal questions? (See ethnography methods lecture.)
h. Results
i. What did you learn about the group?
ii. How has this changed the way you view the group?
CHECK LIST BEFORE TURNING ASSIGNMENT IN:
1) A header / cover page with the following information – your name, date, class, and title of paper
2) Essay with a discussion of your mini-ethnography meeting the above objectives
3) Attached fieldnotes (makes sure you take detailed notes)
4) Interview – attach a TRANSCRIPT of the interview you took
5) Attach photographs and/or a map of the field site
6) If you used outside reference material (not required), you need to include a references cited page.