Ethnography Project--China travel group

Changing China, Spring 2009

Guidelines for Ethnography Project-China travel group

Deadlines:

Project Proposal #1: Thursday, April 9, of week 2

Project Proposal #2: Thursday, April 23, of week 4

Formal Ethnographical paper with your informal journal: Thursday, June 4, of week 10

Project Oral Presentation: Monday through Thursday, June 1-4, week 10, 20-30 minutes for each team presentation.

General Description:

Wikipedia defines "ethnography" as "a genre of writing that uses field work to provide a descriptive study of human societies."

Another definition of ethnography is "research method based on observing people in their natural environment rather than in a formal research setting." (http://www.aiga.org/resources/content/3/7/4/5/documents/ethnography_primer.pdf)

This project provides you an initial opportunity to experiment and explore the observation and writing exercises approximating an ethnographical research.  We are aware that we are not trained sociologists or cultural anthropologists, and we are significantly lacking in scientific methods of data collection and analysis.  But we all have the ability, and right, to observe, identify, record and describe.

Therefore, I am boldly assigning this "ethnography" project and asking you to boldly take on this challenge.  What I would like to see is that, instead of getting yourself into a passive form of "immersion" in the culture and environment around you, you will be actively looking around, sensing, hearing, feeling, noticing, catching, capturing, keeping all channels of awareness and absorption open, and eagerly recording and writing down the images, signals, sensory stimuli and intellectual discoveries you receive all through your journey in China.

The research project is hence in a descriptive style of writing, which describes and concludes with a general statement on one or a few clearly-defined patterns of human or cultural behaviors, societal images, activities or phenomena in the observed society.  This ethnographical writing, which could be anywhere between 3 and 10 pages long, should be extended from your journal writing, which you will conduct every day.  You will turn in both your journal and your final ethnographical paper on Thursday, June 4.  Rose will flip through the journal, but she will carefully read your ethnographical paper.

Project Proposal#1

In this proposal, you will write the following:

I. A one-paragraph definition of "ethnography" which will work for you within the time frame and your capability.  You should have studied and researched the different parameters and criteria in the discipline of ethnography to come up with this personal definition.  This definition will provide you with the direction and goal of what you are looking for in this project.

II. 3-5 possible areas of interest for your ethnography project, with a short description of each interest area.  They could be big or small categories.  The possibilities are unlimited: fashion, dietary habits, college life, traffic, urban design, music, leisure, hobbies, interior design, inter-personal relationship, concepts of time and space, body language...

I will share this list of interest areas with everyone in the China travel group and ask you to form on your own your ethnographical work "teams" (yes, we are applying a Communist term here!).  Each team will ideally have 3 to 5 members (should we say comrades?).  You don't have to do the same thing within one team, but the optimal situation is that some common threads among your individual topics will enable you to share notes, offer suggestions and compare observations.  You will continue to work with your work team when we are in China and to seminar with the whole group on your team research progress.  You will present your research project with your work team during week 10, after we come back.

Project Proposal #2

This proposal should be a team proposal.  One work team only needs to create one team proposal, although each team member needs to submit this team proposal individually via webpage.  In this way, I can track who is not yet in a team.

The proposal needs to include the following:

I. The title of the team, which defines the general direction of the team's ethnography.

II.  The name of the team leader.  This leader is a liaison person between faculty and his/her work team members.  He/she will take more responsibilities in keeping the research on track and facilitating the seminar/discussion between team members.  Needless to say, this person has to have good leadership, organizational and personal skills.

III. The names of all the team members.  For each team member, please list his/her focused and narrowed-down interest areas (could still be 2-3) with a short description of each interest area.

Final Paper and Oral Presentation

Everyone in the China travel group needs to submit your formal ethnographical paper (3-10 page) via webpage and informal journal in person.  Rose will take a quick look at the journal and return it to you right away.  Oral presentations will be conducted by teams, and can be formulated any way you want to, as long as it shows equal contribution from every member.