Posted: September 16th, 2017

Fast Food

Write an essay of five pages in which you demonstrate the use of field research. The focus of the essay is on conducting fieldwork (observation, interaction, conversation/interview, and case study), reporting methodology, presenting the data gathered, interpreting the data, and reflecting upon your findings. You are expected to cite sources in your essay and provide a works cited page in the MLA format.


Choose one of the following topics for an ethnographic report or create your own:


• Through your observations and interviews, report on a practice, ritual, or tradition specific to a culture
• Observe the transformation of farmland into areas of urban development, and report your findings in the form of an ethnographic report
• Study the immigration history of a particular ethnic group 
• As a participant-observer, study a particular sub-culture that you identify with 


Guidelines for structure:
Descriptive introduction: introduce the project, describe the setting and provide some background of the people with whom you worked; state your thesis
Method: describe how you went about collecting information through observation and interviews; discuss the problems and challenges that you encountered; did those problems tell you something about the subject of your study or about your methods?
Report data: paraphrase or use direct quotations; you can group together what multiple people said; you want this section to be descriptive and interpretive, so report what they said and also analyze why they said what they did.
Reflection: describe your own role in shaping the information that you found; what were your thoughts before the study and how did they change or stay the same; what did you learn about your own self ?
Conclusion: what was the relevance of this study or how did it make a difference in your thinking or perception of a particular cultural, ethnic practice?