final ethnography pt 2
TRANSCRIPT
8/20/2019 Final Ethnography Pt 2
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/final-ethnography-pt-2 1/2
Since the Tyson’s mall was located in Northern Virginia and we
observed a huge variety of people from this region, many of their
behaviors were also varied, but they all seemed to conform to certain
behaviors that were similar. Most of the people that we observed
during our experience were at the mall to either buy merchandie, or
to socialie. !e divided these type of people into those two groups" we
classi#ed those who intended to buy merchandise, or seemed as if
they intended to buy merchandise as $roup %, and we classi#ed those
who intended to &ust be at the mall to socialie, or seemed to be at the
mall simply to socialie as $roup '. (ne of the #rst things we noticed
was that $roup % vastly outnumbered $roup ', showing that in this
culture, the individual was given preference over the community most
of the time.
$roup %, similar to the entire population of the mall, was
composed of people of a great mixture of gender, race, and age. %
large number of the people in $roup % traveled and shopped with their
families, but there were some who chose to shop by themselves
)observed *+ times. The people in $roup % also did not pay attention
to people outside of their family. They only communications with
-outside members of the mall were when they ac/nowledged co0
wor/ers or other ac1uaintances )observed twice, or when they
participated in our observations, in which we let a small boy wander by
himself in the mall with our number written on his arms. !ith regard to
8/20/2019 Final Ethnography Pt 2
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this child abandonment, half of the people in $roup % paid notice to
the small boy )pointing him out and around *23 of the people called
the number on his hand. This demonstrated that the people in $roup %
showed some concern to the well being of young children in their
community, especially those who were abandoned.
There was a very di4erent dynamic in $roup '. Most of the
members of $roup ' were adolescents who were either 5aucasian or
%frican %merican. The members of $roup ' did not seem to travel with
their families, but rather as individuals in a subgroup of four to seven
people. The members of $roup ' fre1uently tal/ed with the other
people in their subgroup, often in vulgar language if the group was
made up of mostly males, but interestingly they almost never
communicated with other members of the mall. %s part of our
observations in which we -abandoned a small boy in the middle of the
mall, we noted that very few member of $roup ' showed any concern
towards the abandoned boy and absolutely no one in $roup ' chose to
help the little boy #nd us, his guardians.
(ur observations of $roup % and $roup ' show how the -mall
society operates. Those of $roup %, prioritied shopping in the mall,
and those in $roup ', prioritied socialiing in the mall participated in
many di4erent behaviors and too/ radically di4erent approaches to the
ob&ective of our observations.