Assignment #1: Shopping Rules for Social Groups (Due Tuesday, October 4, 2016 by 11:59pm)
This assignment requires that you collect and compare data from your observations of social interaction in two different public settings. Both should be sites of economic consumption (a place where people buy things), but while one should sell things to adults, the other should sell primarily to children and/or adolescents. The two chosen sites should sell similar products (e.g., adult clothing in one setting and children’s clothing in another, or a toy store for kids and a store that sells recreational items for adults like a sporting goods store). Spend about 1.5 hours on 2 distinct occasions conducting ethnographic observations in each setting (i.e., 3 hours in each site and a total of 6 hours of observation). The following is a list of guidelines for planning and conducting these observations.
(a) In each setting, choose occasions that are distinct in the sense that you would expect the persons present and/or the type or pace of activity in the settings to be different. Thus, if you observe during a heavy weekend shopping day on one occasion, try to go back at a time where this less activity, so that you are more likely to see people talking with salespeople and companions and moving at a slower pace. But keep in mind that you should still choose a time when you expect to see some interaction (i.e., when the places are not totally empty).
(b) Also, be deliberate about varying what you are observing in the setting. Change locations once or twice during a given observation period. If you spend some of the time looking at a couple of children playing together, don’t ignore vignettes in which children are interacting with the caretakers who brought them there or in which caretakers are conversing with adult salespeople.
(c) Take copious notes on whatever you observe. Do not wait for something “special”, “exciting”, “unusual”, or close enough for you to hear to happen. These notes are your data: they will constitute the evidence in your descriptive arguments. It will be difficult to know for certain or to argue that something is “unusual” or “special” in some way, if in the end you cannot give a good sense of what the “usual” or “ordinary” looks like and how frequently the “usual” or “ordinary” happens.
(d) Make sure that your notes include more obvious information about the social actors’ social statuses and identities, including such things as approximate age, gender, race, ethnicity, size, visible disability, family status, dress for work, play, or in clothes that indicate wealth or poverty, etc. It is also fine and even desirable to indicate when cues from an individual’s appearance or the way they are interacting with another person make you ambivalent about whether that person is a big two-year-old or a developmentally delayed four-year-old or whether that person is the mother or caretaker of the infant. If this ambivalence affects your reaction to them, it is likely that others who are strangers to them in that setting are also influenced in their interactions by this ambivalence.
Use the data that you collect to write a four to six page essay reporting on your comparative analysis of the norms guiding economic consumption activity in the two settings. For each of the settings, be sure to: (i) describe any informal rules that guide social interaction and tell whether and how individuals who observe or transgress these norms are rewarded or sanctioned for doing so; (ii) discuss how the physical or built environment, including the available merchandise, in the setting facilitates or constrains shopping and other activities in which particular people or groups of people engage; (iii) explain whether and how gender and age influence the socializing experiences and behavioral expectations faced within these settings. Your grade on the paper will reflect the following:
THESIS: Your inclusion of a clear thesis statement that summarizes your argument about the similarities and differences in rules, sanctions, and socialization around economic consumption in the two settings. Feel free to underline, italicize, or otherwise highlight this statement in the draft of your paper that you submit. (3 points)
ARGUMENT: Your use of descriptive evidence from your observations in an argument that supports the above thesis (6 points)
ANALYSIS: Your analytical work on and descriptive discussion of your two chosen settings with respect to: (i) the relationship between physical and social environments and shopping interactions and (ii) the apparent relationships between gender and age, on the one hand and restrictions, role expectations, and privileges within the setting, on the other hand (8 points)
ORGANIZATION: Your paragraph level organization including the ways your particular paragraphs constitute evidence organized around the communication of a single clearly stated point and the degree to which the paragraphs are linked to and flow from one to another. (4 points)
GRAMMAR: Your sentence level grammar and punctuation (4 points)
As you consider whether and how you will complete this assignment, be sure to adhere to the following general guidelines.
DO turn your paper in on time. The assignment is due Tuesday, October 4, 2016 by 11:59pm. Because this is the first of three possible ways in which this course requirement can be completed, no extensions on this assignment will be granted under any circumstances, and no papers will be accepted after the deadline.
DO participate in the class exercises and discussions designed to support your completion of this assignment on September 6th, 12th, and 26th, when students will have the opportunity to practice collecting and interpreting data on social statuses and public social interaction.
DO take advantage of extra help and assistance offered on this assignment by completing most or all of your observations before and bringing your notes from them to the analysis workshop that will take place during class on Monday, September 26, 2016.
DO turn in the assignment in an appropriate manner. Electronic submission is of a Microsoft Word document is required. The document must be uploaded after clicking on this assignment and then “Browse my computer” in Blackboard. Submit before the assignment link disappears from Blackboard’s “Course Content” page at 11:59pm on the due date.
