ANT 302 Ethnographic Assignment: 7 pages. Due December 14th at noon.

Directions: Use ethnographic techniques (interviewing, observations, spatial analysis,

etc.) to identify a cultural aspects of American life. You can use a variety of these
techniques or concentrate primarily on one. Then write up your findings in a seven page
final paper, accompanied by a 50-word abstract (submit this as a Word file).

Task: Develop a cultural question about some routine setting that you can examine via a
series of observations and interviews with people, either on or off campus. Draw upon the
lectures and readings to formulate this question. In interviewing people, listen for the
ways discourses or ways of articulating cultural identities might surface through
particular remarks, references, stories, or images. Analyze these components of your
interviews and formulate an assessment of how cultural dynamics inform these people’s
daily lives. How do their comments reflect or expand upon issues we have examined
during this course?

Topics: You have the option of either formulating your own question or developing one
that derives specifically from ethnographic literature. These questions can either concern
a particular cultural category (or identity) or it may be comparative.

Criteria: This project involves 1) developing an analytical perspective on culture; 2)

applying this perspective to a set of interviews and/or observations on cultural dynamics;
3) articulating what you think you have discerned regarding how culture operates.

Purpose: The goal of this assignment is not for you to generate broad conclusions or
generalizations about culture, but rather for you simply to identify some of the cultural
aspects of everyday life. Your aim is to recognize commonplace dimensions of cultural
dynamics. Remember, the point is not to get at individual opinions, per se, but rather to
discern cultural patterns and ways of thinking by following linkages and associations,
avoidances and resistance, enthusiasms and uneasiness.

Preliminary tasks:
= Identify your own cultural assumptions and orientation.
= Formulate a cultural question or frame of analysis.
= Tap existing literature related to your topic.
= Practice techniques of observation and interviewing.
= Identify relevant units of analysis.
= Analyze portions of interviews.

Guidelines: Ethnographic research involves studying human beings in social settings,

ideally comprehending the interactional aspect of peoples’ thinking and actions. In every
instance possible, you need to 1) inform people that you are conducting research,
particularly in the course of interviewing, and 2) in a straightforward manner relate to
them your subject of inquiry. At each stage of your project you must ensure the
anonymity of your research interlocutors. Any quotes in the final paper should be
attributed anonymously; use pseudonyms.