Guidelines for assignment

An ethnography is a written account of a culture based on first hand interaction. It is an attempt

to both understand and give an account of another culture from the “native’s” point of view—
that is from the view of the person living in that culture. Ethnographies tend to cover all aspects
of a culture from traditions, to family, to religion, to fast food culture, to youth culture, to gangs,
to online delivery etc.

For this paper you are going to write a “mini” ethnography. You are expected to use the
information you gained through first-hand interaction about any culture/community/
place/problem/phenomena etc. You have to write e a short ethnographic account about a
particular aspect of the chosen area of study.

For this paper, you should explore the topic of your choice in depth. To get the information
you need, you, as the ethnographer, must use ethnographic inquiry to get the information
required. That is, observe the particular phenomena/subculture and respondents in their natural
setting, ask lots of questions about the topic. When they answer those questions, ask them to
further explain and elaborate. The idea behind this is to get a good understanding of not
just what is going on in the other society, but why it is the way it is. You will be able to do
some of this through observation in the selected filed of research, your chat sessions and video
linking, but e-mail interaction will also be an important tool for this task.

This ethnography have to be submitted in two parts.

Part 1 Mini Ethnography (As a group of 5 members)

 Page limit -The paper will be no longer than 4-5 (1.5 spaces) pages.
 Font- Times New Roman, font size-12, page layout- 1inch each side.
 Abstract- 100-150 words
 General introduction to topic and country (1 -2 paragraphs)
 Descriptive and explanatory account of the topic in question. (1.5 – 2 pages): What is
going on here? Why is this important? How do they explain it? What does it mean to
them?
 Reflection and Conclusion (1 – 1.5 pages) How does this particular topic you covered
help us understand their culture in general? How does it compare to what you are used
to?
 Impact on your perspective about the culture you studied?

Part 2
Once you complete ethnography as a group work. Write individual reflections about the
topic.

 Write half-one page about your reflections and how your perspective changed,
provided you more in-depth understanding about the particular culture.
Format of assignment
Part 1 Mini Ethnography

I. Introduction-
 What are you interested in and why?
 What is the question, issue, group, event, etc. that you studied?
 Introduce it to the reader. What is the background?
 “What’s the story?” and “Where’s the culture?”

II. Research
 What methods you use?
 Different actors in the story
 How you selected the field/participants
 What they have to say about their stories.
 The socio-cultural settings/gestures/actions of actors
 Place, timing
 How did you do the research? (Participant/observation, interviews, surveys, etc?)
 Add details, complications, etc.
 Have you found anything written about your topic before? (Library research!)
 What did you find?
 What information did you get?

III. Analysis and interpretation of the information:

What does it mean?
Did you have a thesis, and did what you find confirm or contradict your thesis?
What others have written on the topic?
What does your information reveal about the culture of what you studied?
What topics in the text or brought up in class does your project relate to?
Tie material into the course as much as possible.
IV. Conclusion Sum up the paper and your analysis.

Par 2: Individual Reflections

 What assumptions did you have going into the field? What did you expect to see, and what
did you actually find?
 Which initial impressions turned out to be part of your final piece? Which ideas did you
discard?
 What strategies did you develop to analyze your data? What didn’t fit?
 What is your favorite piece of data — or data source — and why?
 How much of your voice is or will be in the final project? How much of your informants’
voices?
 What was your most significant experience as a fieldworker?

Add photographs from the field in the last part apart from the 4-5 pages ethnography.