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?