Mini Ethnographic Essay

While conducting my ethnography I have interviewed five All-Girl members, and four Coed members of the Spirit program. By interviewing one more All-Girl members I hope to even out my biases due to being a part of the Coed team. Yet, before defining the differences found between the two teams, I will share the apparent similarities. Both teams show strong linguistic accommodations which I have observed at numerous appearances, such as changing the way one would speak due to their audience. When present at an appearance all members of the Spirit program are expected to intermingle and socialize with attendees. During the course of this exchange it became apparent that accommodating for the age of audience drastically changed the way the team members spoke. For example, when Jules Wazny was speaking to an elderly man she reduced the tempo at which she spoke and asked questions about the game and respectfully shook his hand; yet when she was speaking to a child she spoke in a higher pitch tone, offered the child her poms to play with, and asked questions such as how old the child was. These actions represent convergence, changing ones language to better fit the style of the recipient, which was not only found with All-Girl Cheerleader Jules Wazny, but also throughout the program. An example from a Coed member was Vivi Benbrook changing how she spoke with a middle age male, in a calm and respectful manor asking questions of the game such as where his seats where, and if he thought we were going to win. Contrast this to when she spoke to an elderly women, she used a higher pitch when asking if she was excited, and telling her to stay warm in this cold weather. All members, once wearing affiliated attire, whether it is practice gear,

But there is more than what meets the eye. Hypnotism at it’s finest “The mall exploits our acquisitive instincts without honoring our communal requirements, our eternal desire for discourse and intimacy, needs that until the twentieth century were traditionally met in our marketplaces but that are not met at all in giant shopping malls. “ (162) When people think of a mall the last thing that comes to mind is coming together as a community and having a festival and enjoying ones company. People have turned the mall into a place of need.

While reading “Science of Shopping" article by Malcolm Gladwell, he brings readers into the world of a man that study been studying the patterns of shoppers for over fifteen years, which is Paco Underhill. Before reading Gladwell’s article, I knew of such

Political expert Mia Waldron explains, "Capitalists' solution to the current economic downturn is to …increase consumerism, a system of economy driven by consumer spending." (MtHolyoke.edu) However, consumerism leads to materialism, or the need for excess. People who do not have the means to shop, are being manipulated into spending more. In "The Science of Shopping", Gladwell provides evidence of this, "…if you can sell someone a pair of pants you must also be able to sell that person a belt, or a pair of socks, or a pair of underpants." (Gladwell 98) Store owners' priority is to ensure that shoppers leave the store with more than they came in for. By using strategies like surveillance, tracking and arranging the store to be a sort of obstacle course, this is how customers are convinced that they are making their own shopping choices when in actuality, it was by design. Consequently, people who cannot afford to are shopping in excess; this in turn, creates greater economic

Make art, make a difference! I anticipate to learn more skills and become more experienced by going to college. Art Academy of Cincinnati, home of the Stinkers, is a private non-profit college, and offers the majors I am most interested in pursuing; photography and digital design.

One of the most exciting places to go is The Pyrenees in Europe. The converse, it is extreme with a bunch of amusing activities that residents And tourist like. With Nature, including its course, the landscapes bring tourist attraction. Most importantly, facts are important, like how many geologists know many different factors to this National Park, which is why it brings out the beauty, the prehistoric times that went on, including how the transformation of the park was made. “The whole object of travel is not to set foot on foreign land; it is at last to set foot on one's own country as a foreign land,” (G.K. Chesterton) the Pyrenees is crossed by two rails, one from Spain, the other connecting France. So basically, Spain, France, and Europe are somewhat connected (Pyrenees Crossing).

I set out to find a place to begin my observations, not knowing what to fully expect, what I may find. So I decided to look around at what is close to my home that isn’t a place I frequent or have even visited at all. Then it came to me, the Starbucks that is only about a mile away is a perfect place for me to observe subjects that I would consider different from myself, seeing as how I consider such obscene prices for coffee ridiculous. Starbucks is a very popular chain of coffee vendors that describe their product as more about quality than what Americans are used to in typical coffee joints.

I spotted this one girl I use to be in class with back when I went to Dunwoody High, I turned the corner to try to get away from her and that's when I noticed that I went to middle school with the cute cashier at dairy queen. I decided against going and making conversation with her and just went about my business. I start to notice a trend as people with Shopping bags seem to be the happiest ones at the mall making me start to suspect that this could be a direct causation. I began to think back on times when I would go shopping here and would find myself behaving a bit more friendly and eager to have a conversation. The case was the same for me even when I was younger, whenever I would buy something regardless of what It was I was often happier and open to buy something else. This all was something that I never noticed as a

Anthropology is field where research plays the biggest part in dissecting and understanding a topic. Surveys and questionnaires, are not as effective in this field as it would have been in engineering is because, anthropology deals with people. According to me people would not be slight bit interested divulging the details of their life with a stranger, whom they just met on a piece of flimsy paper. Even if they are willing to do that, they may only give a vague sketch of their life or the worst case scenario, where the participants are illiterate. Thus Field work regardless how excruciatingly long and hard it is, it is very important because it gives the holistic view on a topic as an outsider as well as an insider.

For my ethnographic report, I focused on my responses and those of the people I interacted with in person on 8 November 2016 upon willingly choosing to give up all gadgets and devices with internet capabilities for 24 hours. Ideally, the decision to disconnect on the 8th revolves around the recently concluded Presidential elections in the United States. The goal was to ascertain my responses towards every ongoing off-line aspect in my life without any forms of online interaction in order to gauge my personal understanding of socio-political events and debates related to the election. The twenty-four-hour disconnection began at midnight and ended on 9 November. The morning of the election was particularly difficult due to the excitement caused

"The average American woman makes 301 trips to the store annually, spending close to 400 hours a year shopping. This amounts to 8.5 years spent shopping during a typical lifespan " (www.becomingminimalist.com). Imagine how much time and money we waste. After reading "17 statistics About our Shopping Habits" and several different articles, by different authors, shopping seems to affect us differently. Consumerism is a huge part of our lives. We can spend hours and hours window shopping. We lose track of time .Sometimes we just walk around stores just looking at clothes or other materialistic things and we don't buy anything. Yet when we do it is usually something useless. "Americans spend more on shoes, jewelry, and watches ($100 billion) than on higher education " (www.becomingminimalist.com). This is just sad and disappointing that we

For my ethnographic study I chose to interview my schoolmate about her language learning experiences which relate to her culture. The main focuses of this ethnographic study are to enhance the teaching quality and facilitate positive curriculum development through the interview.

In conclusion there are many types of shopping behaviors, some may include, bargain shoppers, dressing room junkies, or even the worst ones, the time-consuming shoppers.

1. Chapter 4 suggests that shopping at an outlet mall is work, rather than leisure, in several ways. First, Shell mentions that outlet malls are located well outside population centers. This causes would be shoppers to drive sometimes an hour or more to shop at an outlet mall. She mentions that “visiting the outlets demands an investment in time, deliberation, and energy beyond what we invest in most other leisure activities” (Shell 91). Furthermore, Shell also uses several images throughout the chapter that convey a sense of work at an outlet mall; she conjures up images of “all that time, all that gas” (Shell 91), and “most customer look exhausted and not what you’d call fashion forward” (Shell 97). This suggests that shopping in this form is a labor instead of a leisure activity. Apart from exercise, what activity that induces exhaustion is considered a leisure activity? Leisure activities are supposed to be enjoyable, and unlike exercising to exhaustion, shopping to exhaustion does little to improve one’s figure. However, the outlet mall experience has been marketed as cost saving even though its foundation is sunk costs.

My initial research question was whether grocery shopping is more common among males or females. In order to investigate this question, I chose the location of Jewel-Osco in Lake Forest, Illinois. This location, I felt, would provide me with a population that is representative of the common residents of the Lake Forest suburbs. On Tuesday, February 7th, 2017 at 7:00 pm, I began my observational research. After receiving permission from the manager of the grocery store to observe the customers, I positioned myself on a bench at the front of the store where all of the checkout lines were visible.