Sociology

This will require a little bit of fieldwork as well as the essay:

For this assignment you will submit: 1) Your in-depth ethnographic field notes (typed). 2) Your analytic essay which should be typed, double-spaced, and approximately 4 pages long.

Can you really tell someones social class within the first few minutes of meeting them? Erving Goffman noted that we read different aspects of identity by interpreting the behaviors of others and that we become accustomed to others reading our behavior in the same way. This means that our clothing, our speech, our gestures, the cars we drive, the people we hang out with, are all part of our presentation of self and provide information that others use to make judgements about our socioeconomic status. This type of everyday class consciousness, or awareness of our own and others social status, is important for us to understand though difficult to identify empirically.

The Fieldwork

For this assignment, you will conduct ethnographic research to understand more about how we size up other people in terms of their socioeconomic status. First, choose a location to be your field site; it should be a public place with a variety of passersby. You could do something like pretend to be waiting for someone on a park bench or sit in a coffee shop. Spend at least 30 minutes to one hour on this observation (make a judgment call about how many people you have seen).

While there, your role is to observe (fly-on-the-wall) other people. As people go by, ask yourself: what class status does this person hold? What elements or attributes about that person led you to that conclusion? What were the key signifiers? While still in the field, write in-depth notes about the people you observed. Carefully describe the setting, people, their actions, their speech, and your immediate reactions. Note: be discreet! People should not know you are studying them! Look like youre doing schoolwork or texting someone.

The Analysis

First, describe your setting. Then, choose at least 4 individuals from your observations to analyze. It would be preferable if you choose examples that are not all from the same socioeconomic status (or so you think). What kinds of things did you observe about them that helped inform your evaluation of their class statusweight, race, age, gender, hairstyle, clothes, consumer goods, tattoos, jewelry, makeup, etc.? What about their posture, voice, or mannerisms? Their topics of conversation? Their peers? Any other status clues?

In your analysis, reflect on these questions: How easy or difficult was it to identify individuals backgrounds?  How do you feel about the fact that others will also try to figure out your class status? How do assessments that we make about others influence our thoughts, attitudes, and behavior?

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