Eethnic restaurant or cafeteria of your choosing

Eethnic restaurant or cafeteria of your choosing

“You should go to an “ethnic” restaurant or cafeteria of your choosing, but not your own ethnicity, at least three times, and observe the people.  Look for the following:

“You should go to an “ethnic” restaurant or cafeteria of your choosing

These are the directions: Pretend you went to a Latinx restaurant.

“Go to an “ethnic” restaurant or cafeteria of your choosing, but not your own ethnicity, at least three times, and observe the people.

Look for the following: 
a) The interplay of gender roles and norms, observable in how people dress, their habits of speech and communication with each other, and other behaviors.  Did you see a rite of passage in which gender roles are heightened, such as a family party or a romantic date?  Sometimes, expressions of sexuality are also observable.  Often power dynamics are present in male/female relations.  How were the power dynamics expressed?  See in the Culture Counts textbook, pp. 237-252.

b) How socioeconomic class is constructed, again observable by how people dress, their speech patterns, and how they interact with each other.  See in the Culture Counts textbook, pp. 185-195.  One question you ask yourself is how are these people expressing or maybe suppressing their status and prestige?  Often people express their social status through expensive clothes and jewelry, or with their use of a smart-phone, or by the way they talk to the employees of the restaurant.

c) What ethnic groups were present?

How did people’s ethnic identity shape how they acted and interacted with others at the restaurant?  An example would be if the people spoke a certain language or dialect or dressed a certain way.  When race and ethnic differences were present, how did the people deal with each other?  Were inter-racial families and relationships present?  See in the Culture Counts textbook, pp. 198-209.

d) Maybe the forces of globalization and transnationalism factor into the particular restaurant where you are doing your observations.  Does the restaurant represent cuisine from another country? Are the customers from other countries?  How about the employees?  An example would be if you chose an Asian Indian restaurant, and it is clear that the people working there are from India.  How are they adapting themselves and their food for the consumption of mainstream Americans?  How is a tourist from another country adapting themselves to an American eatery?

Grading Rubric and Outline for the project paper: Total points possible is 100 points.

I.  The Introduction:

Describe the eatery and the kind of people you observed there.  What kind of place is it?  Where is the eatery located?  What are the typical kind of people you observe there – such as working class males, students, elderly, families, multi-ethnic or a certain ethnicity, etc?  Briefly note the highlights from your observations – that is, summarize what you observed in general about gender, class and race/ethnicity.

20 points possible, based upon:

– How well did you describe the eatery, its location, and the people there? – How well did you present the highlights from your observations on gender, class, race/ethnicity and also other relevant social characteristics?

II. The body of your paper:

This should deal with two distinct sets of observations that describe the people and analyze the interplay of social identity (gender, class and race/ethnicity) and behavior.  That is, you should have observations from two different sets of people and their interactions.  You should write the descriptive part as vignettes (short stories) describing your observations with the details.  After each vignette, provide an analysis of how gender, class and also ethnicity came into play and were expressed.

50 points possible, based upon:

– Did you cover two sets of observations? – How well you described the social situations with details important for your analysis. – Quality of the analysis – determined by how well you used the concepts of gender, class, race/ethnicity, and other relevant concepts such as sexuality or globalization in analyzing the social situations.

III. The conclusion: 

Further, what did you learn about gender, class and ethnicity from this observational project?  Additionally, how did it make you more aware of the different components of your own social identity?

20 points possible, based upon:

– Did your conclusion provide insights on gender, class, and also race/ethnicity, and what you learned about the everyday social construction of identity in America (and in Connecticut)? – Further, did you write yourself into the project by self-reflection upon how you construct your social identity?

Formatting – You should proof the paper and edit it for writing errors and quality of writing.

Wherever you quote from the textbook or other sources, you should provide an in-text citation.  An example of an in-text citation for quoted material from the textbook is – (Nanda and Warms, 2015, p. 198).  If you do quote or paraphrase from sources that are not the textbook, then add a bibliography at the end of your paper.

10 points possible, based upon: – Was the paper carefully proofed for writing errors and grammatical mistakes? Additionally, was the paper edited for conciseness and the development of sentences and paragraphs, and organized well for logical flow?  – Lastly, were citations provided for quoted material?  ”