Anthropology of the Everyday Assignments and Writing Prompts

For this piece of writing, students practiced their observational skills. Students were instructed to to do the following: Choose a place in your home, neighborhood or surrounding area where you can station yourself for a half hour in order to conduct a deep observation. This should be somewhere that is familiar to you and where you spent time regularly in your everyday life. There should be activity and social interaction in this place. However, this activity is based solely on your observations and you should refrain from using any interview techniques. Your goal is to collect and interpret information about this space through participant-observation and then to construct a narrative on what you have observed. This is your chance to start thinking and seeing like an ethnographer! Step 1: Take notes and observe the activity in your chosen space for approximately 30 minutes. Use all five senses to take notes on everything that is happening around you. These notes will inform your narrative. Gather enough data to allow for some reflection and analysis. Be descriptive! Describe the scene, paying attention to all sensory perception. Indicate when you observed the space (i.e. time of day). If it seems useful, draw a map of the setting, indicating the position and movement of persons. Observe the following kinds of things as you take notes: -Describe the setting. -Who is present? Who is absent? -Look for structure: are the people differentiated from each other? Does someone appear to oversee the space? -How do people interact with each other? -Do there appear to be spoken or unspoken rules that dictate behavior in this space? Step 2: Write up these rough field notes into a narrative with full sentences describing the details you have recorded. Here you will set the scene of your observation and you might even add a layer of analysis and interpretation about what you have observed. The above questions will help shape your analysis. In writing your summary and interpretation, try to avoid judgements in descriptions (i.e. ugly building, cute child); also avoid descriptive words needing background knowledge or a particular set of assumptions (i.e. ‘middle-class couple’). Instead, try to describe your seen as though your reader will have no insight into what you have observed. The length of your writing is up to you and will be based upon the depth and detail of your observations. This will be shared in tomorrow’s class.

To conduct an ethnographic interview, students were instructed to do the following: Choose someone who is a part of your everyday life to interview about an aspect of their experience that is relevant to your own life or of interest to you. Your goal will be to conduct an open-ended, informal interview reflecting their experiences. Step 1: Draft three to five open-ended interview questions or prompts that will allow your interviewee to tell the story of their experience. Step 2: Conduct your interview. Carve out time to talk with your interviewee and ask them the questions you’ve drafted. You do not have to strictly stick to these questions. Open-ended interview questions mean that you can go where your interviewee’s answers take you. During Step 2, you will take notes as your interviewee speaks. Try to follow as they speak while writing down key words or phrases that will jog your memory when writing up your interview notes post-interview. Try not to ask your interviewee to slow down or stop; instead, follow the flow of their conversation writing minimal notes-you will be surprised how much you recall later. Step 3: Write up your interview notes in narrative form. As soon as possible to when you complete your interview, sit with your notes, and write them into full sentences detailing what you asked and how the interviewee answered. Try to capture as much first-person dialogue from the interview as possible. You will paraphrase to an extent but strive to capture your interviewees language and phrasing as closely as possible. Tips for The Ethnographic Interview: A great interview can really enhance an ethnography or autoethnography. Ask open ended questions and encourage storytelling! Let people know that you want to hear all about them, as much as they can tell you—stories, anecdotes, everything they’re willing to share! Avoid yes or no questions and make people think they’re the most interesting person on the planet to you. Take notes sparingly and write up your interview into prose soon after you’ve completed it. Be creative! Don’t be afraid to leave things out that seem of less relevance or interest to you and the story you want to tell. Use direct quotes to add color and dimension to your writing!

This piece of writing is designed to prompt students to practice the writing fundamental to “show and not tell.” We all love a good character—someone who is complex yet relatable, full of all the human foibles we are aware of and who may act differently from what we could ever anticipate. For this piece of writing, students attempt to write a kind of self-portrait and/or to draw on a specific memory and re-create it vividly. Students were encouraged to draw on their senses and attempt to include dialogue in an attempt to illustrate, or demonstrate the relevance of the memory without summarizing why it matters. Students were instructed to use a “device” to help them to move through personality traits, interesting qualities, or amusing actions to form a narrative that lets the reader see them at their best and their worst. Students were given the following prompts to chose from: 1) Something, someone, some place that you loved, have loved, or hate or have hated? 2) Something (a person or experience) that changed you