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Participant Observation Exercise
In this Participant Observation exercise, you
Participant Observation Exercise
In this Participant Observation exercise, you will practice an anthropological technique called “de-familiarizing the familiar.”
Read Nacirema FIRST, (even though it is a spoof) so you understand how this works, and you may want to watch Motel of the Mysteries.
1 Choose an unfamiliar place (for instance, retail space, coffee shop, restaurant, park, lobby, office space) to do your “participant observation” for at least one hour. Do NOT choose a Starbucks or the student center.
In your essay: start by stating the place you observed, when you did it, for how long, why you chose that place.
Then write up a detailed description of what you have observed and if you participated, though it is best if you do not interact. Every interaction changes the environment. Make sure you don’t conclude anything about what you describe.
Also, pay attention to your assumptions when you describe something. Imagine your description as something you do to a Martian or a person from a different country who is absolutely unfamiliar with the environment you are trying to describe.
For every sentence you write, you should be able to answer the question: HOW would I know this?
For instance, don’t write something like, “The street is filled with millennials bustling off to work.”
Do not assume that person knows what “millennials” or “bustling” or “work” and “going to work.” is all about.
Instead, you might write: “Men and women wearing suits, pressed shirts, clean double-breasted overcoats, carrying attaches which looked like they were made of leather, walked briskly down the block. I watched several of these people enter the large building. I did not see any of them speak to each other.”
You will be making assumptions of common knowledge at some point, so using the words’ suit’ and ‘pressed’ and ‘men and women’ is permitted, because you would be able to answer the ‘how would you know this’ question.
What you are de-familiarizing for this exercise are the cultural signifiers. So do not say ‘they spoke for a long time’, because what is a long conversation is not long in a different context or culture. Say,’ they talked for 12 minutes.’ Do not assume emotion, so no ‘happy’, or ‘annoyed’. You can describe their facial features.
At the end of the observation answer the following question in brief sentences (not looking for an essay on this)
1) what does “de-familiarizing the familiar” mean, and why adopt this technique?
2) what were the 2 main things you learned by employing the “de-familiarizing the familiar” technique in your participant observation? Again: saying ‘it was interesting’ does not count!!
3) what were some unexpected questions that came out from this experience?
The assignment should be about 800-1000 words (4 pages) in total. Make sure you proofread it (use Grammarly!). Expect to spend the majority of your time editing while you ask the question, ‘HOW would I know this?’ for every word in every sentence!
You can get a maximum of 50 points for this
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