Cross Cultural Research Project

Cross Cultural Research Project

You will choose nearly any public site in and through which you will observe “culture.”  Your site may be a specific public place (e.g. ISU Commons, shopping mall, grocery, hair salon, dojo, etc.) or a practice, ritual, tradition, habit you observe in multiple places (e.g. weddings, funerals, meals, competitions).  You can also choose a static/artifactual site (television program(s), films with a common focus or genre, online role-playing games, musical artists or genre). 

Once your site is identified, you will: 

- collect data (observations) published to your Fieldnotes; some of these may be guided by a prompt, but most will be the ongoing notes/jottings you collect and document during your planned observations of your fieldsite.

-publish field journal to the appropriate Discussion Board (Field Journal) (your field journal is developed from your field notes as you organize your observations, insights, and discoveries) (due app. April 23)

-publish a Field Report (a critical synthesis of fieldwork) (due during our final exam week session)

Field Notes

You will conduct planned and recorded observations of your site and post field notes to your fieldwork project space.

Note (as discussed): Field notes are descriptive, cluttered, heuristic, messy jots and codes you record “in situ.”  You are capturing as much data as you can, mostly unreflected as “notes.”

“Try to be one on whom nothing is lost.”

More is always better when we are talking about field notes--bits and pieces of observation (i.e. data with notations

Field Journal

You will publish a field journal nearing the end of your fieldwork project.  Your field journal entries are produced when you “write through” your Field Notes (reflective and reflexive).  Your journal writing will feature the shift from description to interpretation (making meaning), while maintaining an critical/interrogative posture.  Field Journals contribute to the crafting of your Field Report.

Field Report- This is your crafted report of your work encountering culture in your chosen site. 

Your Field Report will feature thoughtful, rehearsed, synthesis of data that offers a critical interpretive analysis that supports evaluative conclusions.