High School Basketball Ethnography

Being six foot four means I get a lot of stares and attention when I walk down the street. Most people will look at me in astonishment and say things like “wow you’re tall!” or “how tall are you?” when they see me. But the question I get asked the most from random strangers is “Do you play basketball?” Depending on what kind of mood I’m in, I answer in one of two ways. In both ways I tell the person asking “no,” but my attitude while doing so differs. Most of the time I find this question rather annoying. Just because I’m tall doesn’t mean that I play basketball, nor have I ever. It’s a question that I’ve gotten practically my whole life, but anymore I tend to spend more time thinking about the bigger picture behind it.

It all began on November 3, 2015 during my first middle school basketball tournament. The grey brick walls of the gymnasium looking more like a prison than a school. The school’s “Lincoln Park Elementary School” sign had graffiti and missed a couple letters from the name. The court was terribly small, but we began by playing the superb team of Jam on It. We were blown out and I headed back up to my mom and dad in the parent filled stands. The game wasn’t even fun to play and we looked like third graders playing them. I looked up to my parents as sad as could be.

Ethnography tells about a culture and the members that comprise this culture. A definition is the scientific description of the customs and individual people of a culture. The process of doing this assignment allowed me to explore another aspect of a cultural group. I was able to learn extensively about interactions between individuals and how see them as a culture. The group that comprises my ethnography is a cultural group very common to Utah. The culture I focused on was the LDS culture, to be more specific I studied a sub-culture of this group. My subculture was a group of 12 year old adolescents that are a Sunday school class in this culture.

Answer: Ethnographic research is different from other social science approaches to research because it goes more in depth. With an ethnographic research you are required to eat, sleep, and breath what is being studied. In order to get a better understanding you will need to incorporate such living (as that of the culture being studied) into your life. It’s more of a research to gain the knowledge of a current situation as oppose to something that has happened in the past. For example Sterk was researching prostitution. She followed the lives of many

Anthropology is something we should value because it allows us as human beings to learn about our origins and also to understand the cultures in the world outside of our own. Anthropology uses many techniques to learn and study such cultures that we do not understand. Ethnography is the gathering and interpretation of information based on intensive firsthand study of a participation culture -or- the written report of this study.

In this analysis I will cover the different aspects of sport subculture and what it means to be a recognizable member within a group. I will give examples of what it means to be a part of such subcultures. For example, shared ways of dressing, group status and credibility, as well as some of the groups norms and rituals. The specific group I will discuss will be my basketball team and the role I play within it. Because my team is at highly competitive level, our norms may be unlike to other teams’ especially those of less competitive teams. Each and every team has their own culture and practices, and it is through these that they identify themselves as being different from other teams along with giving them an identity and a

There are many high school basketball phenoms that are scouted by pro teams even when they are in high school. A select few in the past have gone straight to the NBA out of high school and had a lot of success, while some players go to college all four years to develop their skills at the next level. However, there are athletes that will waste one year at the college level just so they could get to the NBA. Why would you waste one year of your life when you could have already been in the NBA a year earlier? Basketball players should either go to college all four years and enhance their skills and get a solid education. If not, skip college and go straight to the NBA, rather than wasting a year of your life, and possibly a classroom seat for a person who wanted to get an education.

How does playing basketball for a school can help a student academically in high school from a structural-functionalist perspective? You notice that playing basketball for a high school can help physically, mentally, socially, and academically. Not only does playing basketball for a school not only build friendships between team members, but could also give them that competitive edge to become better than who they are physically and mentally. For a student to continue playing basketball for a school, he’ll have to stay in shape for the season and be able to keep the grades above average. Academically, at a college level, basketball is a good and bad thing. Majority of universities pay attention to the student skill level at the sport rather than his grades, just to ensure the schools success.

There are over 5,000 different types of sports. Basketball, a popular and world renowned athletic is a subculture Paul cuffee student Ramses cruz is part of. Especially now when the season is just beginning and being part of the Junior Varsity team is his main focus.

Ethnography is a qualitative method of research in which the researcher takes part in the activities of a group such that they are able to complete their observations over a period of time in a natural, real-life environment.

As we begin to go on an excursion through literature, it is important to understand the concept of what an ethnography is. Ethnography is known to be a descriptive type of work that analyzes culture and customs of individual people. James Clifford has implemented this work into his studies and has influenced many others to do the same. I saw through the books I have read, ethnography makes these books become vivacious for a reader.

To play in the NBA you must have an extensive amount of skills to outthink and out compete the other players who have been in the league longer than you. Coming out of high school you obviously do not have the same amount of skills or time put in working out as a kid coming out of college. I had an interview with my father who played in the NBA for eighteen years and he told me, “When you are in the NBA they (coaches) expect you to already have the skills to contribute. The coach’s job is to make sure that you, understand the plays, are conditioned, and to give you a workout plan as far as lifting weights”. Being fresh out of high school I personally know that there is not enough time to, maintain a good grade point average, go to your team practice, work on your skills individually, and also get enough sleep to do all of these things proficiently.

My family was born to play basketball, both of my brothers had the size and athleticism to play professionally, and my dad towered over others standing at 6’6”. At a young age I was expected to follow in their footsteps. However, I did not have the size that the rest of my family did, and struggled to compete due to my small stature. In the seventh grade I tried out for my middle school basketball team and was promptly told I wasn’t good enough to play. I came home crying feeling that I disappointed my family. The next year, during the eighth grade try-outs, the coach said the same thing and broke my heart for the second year in a row. Dissatisfied with these results, I promised that I would make a change before entering high school.

There are multiple characteristics of ethnographic approach. This research is considered to be more of a descriptive type research approach, that is intended for “in-depth research and descriptions of ethnic groups, cultures, large organizations, and their features” (Percy, Kostere, & Kostere, 2015, p. 16). This type of research immerses its selves in the organization or culture they are reviewing, and becoming a part of the culture, so that we can learn about it from the inside out. Therefore, this methodology often involves longer time frame for information collection, and consists of researchers returning a number of times to the location where the research is to acquire more information. Some “doctoral learners tend to avoid ethnographic studies, because of the typical long time-commitments, however, it can be a fruitful approach, even in shorter periods, for understanding the customs, culture, belief systems, and implicit rules of organizations and large groups” (Percy, Kostere, & Kostere, 2015, p. 15)

Within Hollywood’s movies depiction of drug addiction, many have failed to represent all true aspects that come along with such lifestyles. The movie, The Basketball Diaries, is based off a novel Jim Carroll wrote from his own diary entries. As a teenager growing up in the sixties, Carroll reveals his progression of drug abuse which eventually leads him addicted to heroin.Heroin is a white powder derived from morphine found in opium. It is commonly prescribed as a painkiller, but is also a popular street drug.The director casted Leonardo DiCaprio as Jimmy, and concentrates on creating the character as a stereotypical drug abuser. DiCaprio’s most captivating scene is when he is going through heroin