Assignment #1:
Ethnography of Place
Due: Tuesday, February 25
What can you learn about a culture by studying the nature,
form and content of the spaces they occupy?
What can you learn about your own culture by stepping back and
critically analyzing the spaces we construct, inhabit, and circulate in
everyday? As a primarily consumptive
society, a great place to study that is a grocery store.
Your assignment:
Write a 3-4 page paper comparing two grocery stores: the Jewel Osco grocery store (1660 Larkin
Avenue, Elgin) and the Elgin Fresh Market (306 S McLean Street, Elgin). I suggest you visit each location at least
twice preferably on different days of the week and hours in the day, spending
45 minutes to an hour in each, preferably visiting both back to back. You must devise some sort of methodology and
describe it in your paper with a brief discussion of what specific kinds of
data you were looking for and why. The
majority pf your paper should be based upon your findings. How are these places different? What do they tell you about the consumptive
habits of each group? What other
cultural attributes do you find interesting or surprising? Do you see any use for the concepts of
ethnocentrism or cultural relativism at work here? What did you learn from this assignment?
Please refer to the guidelines for writing a paper for me on my course webpage.
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