Assignment Four

For the week of September 12-16: Study very informally and very briefly a culture immediate to you. Use whatever means you want to gather and record information. This culture might be your family, dorm floor, cohort, etc. Or it might be the same culture that you used to practice taking field notes. On your blog, write a micro-ethnographic account about your chosen culture. Focus carefully on one small part that seems important. Some parts/categories you might consider are things like dress, unique language, habits, etc.


I am a leader in the Women's Ministry at our church, HopePark.  Before you immediately think that makes me very high and nightly spiritual, please know I am pretty much the opposite, and I do what I do to show other women you do not have to fit a mold to have good friendships and a relationship with God!


So part of my roll is encouraging the facilitators of classes.  I host meals in my house, mainly, to talk and open up.  I had such an event last week, where 8 women came over and I cooked for them and we spent the evening talking and connecting before our fall semester of classes begin.  I took this project and what we have been learning in class and applied it to this event where I studied our dynamic/culture.


The group of 9 of us shared a casual meal, with good food and laughter.  We talked about specific needs/situations that occurred at our recent women's retreat as this group prepared to begin facilitating classes in a few weeks. These particular 7 women are an interesting group, prior to the women's retreat none of them have ever lead a group.  The have created a definite cohort, they speak in a supporting tone with each other at all times.  An example of this, when one says I do not think I can do this, the others encourage her even though they feel the same way.  
Different that general conversation with others, God and His influence on situations is of high importance.  The group elected to pray together at the end of the night and share a connecting moment together.  The event ended the same as usual dinner parties break up, but with a promise to see each other again soon for their shared event of Women't Ministry.

My Ethnographic Study

I am bouncing between one or two idea ...

My husband and I are adopting.  We have our home student tomorrow morning at 10:30 (I cannot believe it!!) and we are so thrilled ... so really I know my heart would like to do a study regarding the culture around adoption.  However, this is a tricky one because most people prefer for this to be a closed situation, only open to friends and family.  We are approaching it widely, however I am not sure what kind of response I would get.

My second thought is an observation of the 30-something demographic of Belmont student life. I would like to use the "campus life" as my location: Bongo, Curb, etc. It is a narrow arena, there is not a comparable group in relation to undergraduate students.  I would like to dig into what the 30-something student gets from their involvement with Belmont educationally as well as "campus life", and compare that to the mission and goals of the university.

I think I am going to attempt the latter, simply because the information will be more readily available.