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Mini-Ethnography Paper

Instructions

Paper –

2. 6 pages double-spaced, Times New Roman, 12 point font, 1-inch margins, page numbers on the bottom right of each page.

7. Your paper must have a strong and clear thesis statement (your main argument). Your thesis should drive your entire paper. You will need to complete your research and data analysis before you begin your paper because that is the only way to establish your thesis. You cannot start writing your paper before knowing the main argument you are trying to make.

8. A final draft of your paper is due before class Wednesday, April 17th. You need to upload your paper onto Canvas AND hand in a hard copy at the beginning of class. Make sure your paper is stapled with your full name on the front.

12. You will design a 10-minute presentation describing your topic, background research, methods, and findings.

13. You may use either poster board or PowerPoint for your presentation.

How to Approach this Assignment

On Choosing a Topic

2. Ethics: Consider your impact on the environment. Is the setting a public place that does not require you to inform people that they are being observed? How might you inform people that they are part of a research project? Consider how to apply anonymity¹.

2. As you observe, write down everything you see (you will have to turn in your notes with your final draft). While you may not recognize something as important when you first see it, your observation may reveal more as you revisit your notes. Record your field notes on notebook paper at first. Then transcribe² them into a Word document within 24 hours. I will be looking for detail so be meticulous. It should feel like you are being too detailed. Don’t forget to record what day and time for each entry.

7. Try to find emic categories and terms that the participants themselves use. How do these emic concepts organize the activities that you are observing?

8. Systematically look for discrepant cases or anomalies. If most people seem to be doing an activity the same way, notice who does it differently. What seems to be going on here?

Turning your observational notes into analytical notes:

As you are observing, you should take notes (handwritten) and keep these to hand in with the assignment. Feel free to write in a notebook. After each period of observation, you should spend at least 15 minutes examining your notes, and then writing at least a paragraph of meta-level observations. In other words, what have you noticed about what you observed? Go through these steps systematically each time you engage in observation.

You should not only restate what others have told you, but should develop your own conclusions from your observations. However, all of these conclusions must be supported by observation or other research. Detailed descriptions and quotes must be included for your ethnography to be complete.

4. Reflections: What have you learned about yourself in the process of studying this subculture? For example, if you researched a comic book store, do you now understand what aspects of the store surprised you or intrigued you? What have you learned about the group you studied or society as a whole? This section, along with your positioning section, is the place where you return to your thesis and make sure you’ve proven it. Finally, in this concluding section, consider how others should write about this topic in the future. Are there things that still need to be explored that you didn’t have time to investigate properly given the time constraints of the assignment?

Imagine you are trying to instruct an alien from outer space on how to investigate the essence of “coolness” in your old high school. The alien knows nothing about American culture so you have to do a great deal of handholding. How would you go about guiding the alien to discover that information? While you probably don’t realize it, you know a lot about the unwritten codes of style, popularity, and coolness in your old high school. So who should the alien interview? What should it observe? Why? How can you point it into the right direction of understanding the essence of coolness and the organization of popularity in your old high school? What would it have to do in order to understand the culture and subcultures of the students in your high school? How would it discover the patterns that make up their lives? How would it avoid imposing their own alien ideas, categories, and values on their analysis of the high school students?