Pasupula_FieldWorkJournal2

Anthropology 104 Fieldwork Project 2 | Participant Observation This material is the intellectual property of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. All rights reserved. Project Journal Name: TA Name: Discussion Section Number: Semester and Year: Getting Started Welcome to your journal assignments for Fieldwork Project 2! Please add your information to this template (above), rename and save it in Microsoft Word .docx or .doc format. Make sure the filename includes your name and the name of the assignment (FWP2). (Example) FWP2F Wendy Liu.docx Submission: The project journal will be completed in several steps. You will be submitting this same journal file multiple times in different stages of writing, in response to each journal assignment below. If you do not submit the file to Canvas by the deadline you will not be awarded points for that journal assignment. For example, for the first assignment you are only expected to complete Journal 2.1 (the others will still be blank). By the end of the project, all the assignments in your journal will be filled in. Journal 2.1 | Reading Response Instructions & Expectations Before you begin this writing assignment, read the excerpts from Shapeshifters by Aimee Cox (available as a Word Doc on Canvas). Write 2-4 sentences in response to each of the question below. The first question has been completed as an example. DUE DATE: This assignment needs to be completed by 11:59pm the day BEFORE your Discussion Section in Week 5 . (Example) Why did the girls at the Fresh Start Homeless Shelter think that no one would notice if aliens descended on their shelter and that the aliens wouldn’t even want to stay there? The girls drew from their experiences of feeling excluded as citizens in American society. As young, Black, poor, homeless, female Americans (and more than all of that), they understood that not all human life was perceived as equally valuable. 1. Based on Cox’s statements on pages 2-4, can you reconstruct her main research questions when she started her research with the Fresh Start Homeless Shelter (FSHS)? The main research questions based on Cox’s statements during her research with the FSHS were - What can one gain from listening to the perspective of Black women, with the intention to educate 1 Anthropology 104 | Field Work Project 2

and aid rather than solely listening? - What can be done to shift the focus from the obstruction of Black girls to the change that can be made in societal, political, and cultural issues through learning form their experiences? 2. Why did Cox think the FSHS would be a good place for her to conduct research? Cox believed that the FSHS would be a good place for her because she believed she would be able to connect with the young black woman as a young black woman herself. The woman would feel more comfortable talking to her as they felt as though they physically connected to her. 3. How did Cox’s identity and position within GGC impact her research? In choice sections, the author highlights how her position as a highly educated Black woman influenced her interactions with both the GGC staff and participants. She also mentions that she had found herself perpetuating norms that she aimed to disrupt when interacting with the girls. 4. Throughout Shapeshifters , Cox reveals the working of racial and gendered scripts within U.S.- American society. She illustrates how the residents of the FSHS seem acutely aware of these scripts and are adept at responding to them. What scripts are in play during the girls’ outing to the ranch? Explain. Do you see any class-based scripts in play during girls’ outing to the ranch? Explain. Some class based scripts that I noticed that I’m not sure if they count as scripts but just mannerisms can clearly be representing the girls classes. Some of these include the type of conversations they have with each other, and the things they discuss. This can represent what kind of life they are living, where it is more contemporary and involving their own personal life than just in general. 5. Based on this article, what do you think are some of the strengths and limitations of participant- observation as an anthropological research method? What did Cox learn through participant observation that she could not have learned from interviews alone? Participant observation’s strengths can include being able to connect with the participants and actually speak with them during the study to gather more details apart from just the data collection. Some of the weaknesses/limitations can be perspective, where the researcher might not be able to see every aspect of the observation as they would be able to if they were reflecting on the data and analyzing the situation. 6. Ethnography differs from other types of scientific writing. Based on this example, what did you find most interesting, important, and/or confusing about ethnographic writing? The main advantage of ethnography is that it gives the researcher direct access to the culture and practices of a group. It is a useful approach for learning first-hand about the behavior and interactions of people within a particular context. 7. What have you learned from this article that may be useful to you when you conduct participant observation yourself? When conducting participant observation, I think there are many factors to keep in mind so that the observation doesn’t have any skewing of data. For example, one thing to exclude is implicit bias. Another thing that I found useful is to make sure you cover all aspects of the observations, and make sure not to leave any details out since you never know when that detail might be important. Journal 2.2 | Research Questions Instructions & Expectations Anthropologists typically ask “how” and “why” questions. These are open-ended questions that explore processes, relationships, and meaning. They generally don’t ask closed questions, such as yes/no questions or questions related to quantities (e.g. “how many”). 2 Anthropology 104 | Field Work Project 2

Succeeding in your Participant Observation Here are some questions & ideas that may help you:  What's the space around you like? How do the characteristics of the space – for example, if it’s inside or outside, big, or small – shape what people are doing there? What are the sights, sounds, and smells?  What is your activity like, physically? How do you feel doing it? How might the way you are experiencing this activity be different from the ways other people experience it?  What are other people doing? Why are they doing it? How are other people interacting with each other? What do you think the relationships between the other people are? How might aspects of other people’s identities (e.g., gender, age, etc.) be shaping their involvement in the activity and their interactions with one another? In other words, what social scripts are at play?  How does what you're noticing help you answer your research question? What ideas do you have at this point?  What else do you notice? Write down anything that sticks out to you as interesting or important. You have two options for submitting your field notes: You can type your notes into the space below and upload your journal to the Canvas assignment for Journal 2.3 (doc, docx, PDF) OR you can submit a photo or scan (pdf, jpg, jpeg, png, tiff) of your handwritten notes to the Canvas assignment for Journal 2.3. DUE DATE: This assignment needs to be completed by 11:59pm the day BEFORE your Discussion Section in Week 6. Field Notes - Nicholas Recreation Center - Monday evening, so relatively busier than usual - Had wait times for the benches since I was doing an upper body workout - My first observation was that the benches were populated more by men than women, but the lower body workouts such as those targeted towards the legs regimen of the bodies were more populate by owmen - Considering the gym in general, the use was definitely a pretty even ratio, but depending on the machine and regimen of workouts the balances were different o Cardio had more women than men o Power house had more men than women o Upper body machines had more men than women o Lower body machines had more women than men - Did not really feel out of place at the gym since I usually go there 5-6 times a week, but did feel abnormal trying to spot out the different gender balances of different workout types and areas throughout the gym 4 Anthropology 104 | Field Work Project 2

Journal 2.4 | 2 nd Fieldnotes Instructions & Expectations Participant Observation  Do your activity again for one hour.  This time, engage more actively with the people around you. Talking to people is a key part of participant observation. Learn from them. Find out what they're doing and why. Ask questions that you think might help you better answer your research question. When you approach someone, briefly explain to them that you're working on a class project and that you would like to ask them a few questions. Anthropologists always make it clear to the people that they're working with that they're conducting research. People will not necessarily behave the same way once they know someone is conducting research. This is okay! Anthropologists don't work in a controlled setting like a lab: researching human life involves interaction, which means some people may choose not to take part. It's important that anthropologists acknowledge how their presence affects things. It's also crucial that anthropologists are specifically aware of how aspects of their identity (e.g. their gender, age, etc.) might affect how people interact with them. Anthropologists also need to be aware of how their identity shapes their own interpretation of the data they collect. The term for this awareness is reflexivity. Taking Field Notes  Take field notes while do you your activity, or immediately after completing the activity.  You can use the same method as you did previous, if the way seemed effective to you. Alternately, try some new approaches to taking notes. Succeeding in your Participant Observation Here are some questions that may help guide your second hour of participant observation:  How is what you're observing this time different from what you noticed during your first hour of participant observation?  Why are the people around you participating in this activity? What's its significance to them? You can ask them these questions directly.  How might your presence be affecting other people? What is your relationship to them?  How might aspects of your identity shape the ways that you're interacting with other people? How might your own identity shape how you interpret what's going on? Be reflexive.  How does what you're learning help you answer your research question? What new ideas do you have this time, versus during your first hour of participant observation?  What else do you notice? Write down anything that seems interesting or important. You have two options for submitting your field notes: You can type your notes into the space below and upload your journal to the Canvas assignment for Journal 2.4 (doc, docx, PDF) OR you can submit a photo or scan (pdf, jpg, jpeg, png, tiff) of your handwritten notes to the Canvas assignment for Journal 2.4. DUE DATE: This assignment needs to be completed by 11:59pm the day BEFORE your Discussion Section in Week 7 . Field Notes - Nicholas Recreation Center - Wednesday evening, so relatively busier than usual 5 Anthropology 104 | Field Work Project 2

and/or challenges? What do you feel you learned? What surprised you about the experience? I think personally the observation was not very difficult since it didn’t make me do anything that was not already in my day to day schedule. The high points were that collecting observations were also very easy, since all I had to do was just periodically look around during my workout. One challenge that I went through was accounting for rest days in the days I was observing, since it could skew the results based on what schedule people are on, but I think in a such a large gym such as the Nicholas Recreation Center, the few people on rest days that could skew my observation could be nullified by the total number observed. 6. Recognize | How might your presence and identity (e.g. your gender, age, etc.) have affected what the people around you did during your participant observation? How has your identity potentially shaped your interpretation of what you observed? I do not think that my presence would have affected the people around me during my participant observation since I did not change anything from the usually environment, and my observations did not require any intrusive actions for me to get more data. I think my identity personally may have just changed my interpretation of my observations in the way that I would reason why per say men do upper body workouts vs women more towards lower body or cardio. 7. Critically reflect | What do you think are the strengths and limitations of participant observation as a research method? What kinds of data does it allow you to collect? Participant observation definitely has benefits regarding research questions when involving actual people, and the data can be more based on the perception of the author writing their report, whereas research has much less interpretation and more of just numbers that cannot involve identity to change perspective of the data’s meaning. 8. Reflect | What have you learned about yourself while completing this project? (1-3 sentences) Personally I do not think my thoughts have been changed, as the results of my research were just what I expected. 9. Advise | What would you do differently if you did this assignment again to achieve a more in-depth answer to your research question? (1-3 sentences) One thing that I may do differently would have one more week to collect data, just so that I can make sure that my data does not rely on the day of the week that I choose to observe. However, I understand that due to the course length provided by the semester length, this may not be possible. 7 Anthropology 104 | Field Work Project 2