Last week I went to the University of Redlands Commons alone 3 times to eat dinner. I went three times and all three times were very awkward. I felt very out of place eating alone because everyone else was eating with someone else. The only people who weren’t eating with someone else were doing homework. I noticed that if people were doing homework they went to the section on the commons that served sandwiches and to-go food rather than in the more formal dining area. The more formal dining area had larger groups of people in it. The longer I sat there by myself the more out of place I felt. I knew I was doing homework, but didn’t feel like it or look like it to others.
This experience was already strange for me because I live off campus. I don’t tend to eat on campus, and if I do it is between classes when not many people are there. One of the things was I was expecting to observe before going into the common was a gender divide; I thought that genders would sit together more often than not. I made this assumption based on what I observed in my classes and living arrangements. I thought that many people would go to lunch with their roommates. My assumption was false. I saw many groups of people with both many female and male members. The only time I really saw the gender divide was if it was a group of two. Those groups were mainly same sex, I concluded that this was because the action of eating dinner with someone of the opposite sex may be considered a date. There wasn’t a gender divide in food choice either. I thought that mainly women would go to the salad bar but from what observed both genders went to the salad bar pretty equally.
I also notice a temperal change when it comes to the choice and formality of food. Om my third time of going to the commons I went at around 7:30 because one of my classes was dismissed early. While I was sitting at the commons I noticed that more people were going to the café area than to the other. More students were getting food to go and some came to eat in their pajamas. This was different from the earlier times because they seemed to be much more informal when coming to eat. It was also more common to see the genders come in same sex groups later at night. But, the act of eating was still a very social action.
The social aspect of food is what became most apparent to me while doing this ethnographic exercise. Even when I heard about the exercise I thought it was going to be very strange eating by myself. I always tend to eat with someone else, and if someone else is eating I tend to get something to. I felt very lonely eating by myself, and people thought it was strange that I was doing so. I even put off doing this assignment because I knew I was going to feel uncomfortable. Our society uses food to celebrate, to be used a lot of time on dates, and a common get together with friends. Eating alone outside of my home felt very strange.
Monday, December 7, 2009
House vs. Home
What is the difference between where you live and your home? I started reading this book called Kindred by Octavia Butler. The story is about an African American woman who goes back in time to a slave plantation. She begins to have a connection with the plantation and as she travels through time she begins to question where she calls home, the plantation or her home in 1979. This story made me think about how our society defines home and how I define home. Society defines home by where you live. Your current address, or when someone is a minor the place in which their parents or legal guardian lives. I find home to be very different than this.
I define home as somewhere where I feel safe, where there are people that care about me, and where I have spent a lot of time. I have many different homes, I have the home where I lie with my parents and I have my close friends homes through over the years have turned into a feeling of home for me as well. Although whenever someone asks me where I live I always reply the house that I reside in because there is a cultural understanding that is what they are asking. Some of my peers feel that you can only have one true home because home is where your family is. While this is a matter of opinion, I feel that my kinship chart in an earlier blog shows that I consider friends as family as well. From an etic point of view someone may say that in our society home is where someone sleeps and goes back to everyday when they have completed their tasks for the day. An emic point of view would be much different. I believe that language plays into the meaning of home as well.
When talking about home you have to separate the meaning of home from the physical space of house. “House” can represent many other cultural meaning such as class and social status while home can represent family and meaningful places. Many people can live in a house but not feel as though they live in a home. There is some cultural variability in this concept of one home versus many homes. I feel that this relates to the process of assimilation for immigrants as well. Some of them may feel that they live in America but their home is where they were born. This can be conflicting in situations like this. The choice of words and context of questions has a to do with where we may consider home to be.
I define home as somewhere where I feel safe, where there are people that care about me, and where I have spent a lot of time. I have many different homes, I have the home where I lie with my parents and I have my close friends homes through over the years have turned into a feeling of home for me as well. Although whenever someone asks me where I live I always reply the house that I reside in because there is a cultural understanding that is what they are asking. Some of my peers feel that you can only have one true home because home is where your family is. While this is a matter of opinion, I feel that my kinship chart in an earlier blog shows that I consider friends as family as well. From an etic point of view someone may say that in our society home is where someone sleeps and goes back to everyday when they have completed their tasks for the day. An emic point of view would be much different. I believe that language plays into the meaning of home as well.
When talking about home you have to separate the meaning of home from the physical space of house. “House” can represent many other cultural meaning such as class and social status while home can represent family and meaningful places. Many people can live in a house but not feel as though they live in a home. There is some cultural variability in this concept of one home versus many homes. I feel that this relates to the process of assimilation for immigrants as well. Some of them may feel that they live in America but their home is where they were born. This can be conflicting in situations like this. The choice of words and context of questions has a to do with where we may consider home to be.
The Impact of Clothing
After reading Chapter 8 in the textbook by Delaney I began to think about my own experiences with clothing. I have gone through many changes in my life and they can all be seen through my clothing. I could tell you who my friends were by an outfit I might have worn in a picture, I could tell you who I was dating, and what occasion it was. Clothing represents a lot in my life, it at one point represented how I was feeling emotionally; my clothing changed through different transitions in my life, and it was also influenced by my peers.
My clothing didn’t reflect my own personal style till I was in Middle School. Up to that point my parents dressed me, or I put together my own outfits based on what my parents bought me. In Middle School I began to look at what my peers were wearing, and started to care about what other thought of me. Clothing was my way of fitting in, I always noticed that if someone is wearing the right outfit they will generally fit in during a social situation, and in Middle School it is a very huge “social situation.” I was happy in Middle School, I wore a lot of bright colors, a pass time for my friends and I was to go shopping for popular clothes, or critique what are favorite stars are wearing, and I listened to whatever music was popular at the time. Then I hit High School. I started listening to different music and having harder times in my life. I began to wear darker clothes, and didn’t care what pop culture said I should wear. I made friends based on my clothing choices because the punk kids that used to make fun of me for being preppy now saw me as one of them. I acted differently when I started to wear different clothing, I spoke differently (I stopped using the word “whatever”).
As I got older I got a boyfriend that had a different style than me. I changed my choice of clothing, yet again, and again made different friends and listened to different music. This point in my life was not as emotional as my “teen angst” years, and you could see this from the clothing I chose, the colors were dark, but not gothic. I always seemed to feel a little out of place wearing that clothing because I didn’t choose this style I chose it for someone else. Now I have a style that is purely mine. It changed after high school; I started to wear more “sophisticated” clothing in the sense that my shirts don’t have stupid sayings on them or strange designs. I realized that I am going to be in an adult world, so I need to start dressing respectively.
Through analyzing my own experience with clothing I am able to see how my clothing choices affected my peer group, it changed my music tastes, it changed my language, and it made me play a role that the clothing represented in society consciously and subconsciously. Ever since I was a little girl I have always known clothing had a significant meaning, I could distinguish between adults and children and I could always tell what I was going to do for the day depending on the clothing I was going to wear. If I wore something fancy I knew it was a holiday, if I wore something old I knew it was a play day, and if I wore my everyday clothing I was generally going to school. I got older I was able to categorize people by the clothing that they wore. I could tell if someone was rich by the name brand they were wearing, I could tell what music they listened to due to their specific style, and I was able to see employment based on the clothing the person was wearing. I used clothing to decide where I was going to be accepted, I wasn’t going to go up to a gothic person bright pink shirt, and I used clothing to express my emotions. Clothing is an important part of my life because when examined holistically it represents many aspects of my life and how clothing affects the social situations we face every day.
My clothing didn’t reflect my own personal style till I was in Middle School. Up to that point my parents dressed me, or I put together my own outfits based on what my parents bought me. In Middle School I began to look at what my peers were wearing, and started to care about what other thought of me. Clothing was my way of fitting in, I always noticed that if someone is wearing the right outfit they will generally fit in during a social situation, and in Middle School it is a very huge “social situation.” I was happy in Middle School, I wore a lot of bright colors, a pass time for my friends and I was to go shopping for popular clothes, or critique what are favorite stars are wearing, and I listened to whatever music was popular at the time. Then I hit High School. I started listening to different music and having harder times in my life. I began to wear darker clothes, and didn’t care what pop culture said I should wear. I made friends based on my clothing choices because the punk kids that used to make fun of me for being preppy now saw me as one of them. I acted differently when I started to wear different clothing, I spoke differently (I stopped using the word “whatever”).
As I got older I got a boyfriend that had a different style than me. I changed my choice of clothing, yet again, and again made different friends and listened to different music. This point in my life was not as emotional as my “teen angst” years, and you could see this from the clothing I chose, the colors were dark, but not gothic. I always seemed to feel a little out of place wearing that clothing because I didn’t choose this style I chose it for someone else. Now I have a style that is purely mine. It changed after high school; I started to wear more “sophisticated” clothing in the sense that my shirts don’t have stupid sayings on them or strange designs. I realized that I am going to be in an adult world, so I need to start dressing respectively.
Through analyzing my own experience with clothing I am able to see how my clothing choices affected my peer group, it changed my music tastes, it changed my language, and it made me play a role that the clothing represented in society consciously and subconsciously. Ever since I was a little girl I have always known clothing had a significant meaning, I could distinguish between adults and children and I could always tell what I was going to do for the day depending on the clothing I was going to wear. If I wore something fancy I knew it was a holiday, if I wore something old I knew it was a play day, and if I wore my everyday clothing I was generally going to school. I got older I was able to categorize people by the clothing that they wore. I could tell if someone was rich by the name brand they were wearing, I could tell what music they listened to due to their specific style, and I was able to see employment based on the clothing the person was wearing. I used clothing to decide where I was going to be accepted, I wasn’t going to go up to a gothic person bright pink shirt, and I used clothing to express my emotions. Clothing is an important part of my life because when examined holistically it represents many aspects of my life and how clothing affects the social situations we face every day.
Thursday, November 5, 2009
The Meanings of Cars
Our society values cars on so many levels. First of all, we see them as a necessity for transportation. Most of us don’t live in walking distance of everywhere that we need to go and public transportation is not always considered. When we think of transportation the first thought we have is a car, it is the easiest and fastest way to get anywhere. This is not what I thought of when writing this blog. The first thing I thought of was how the car represents a right of passage. In our culture a car represents freedom. We look at it as a separation from our parents, that we are able to go wherever we want whenever we want. Of course this is regulated by laws and parental rules, but we don’t think of that when we get our first car. A car is important in our lives, we always remember our first car. We see this right of passage as a symbol of independence. Since you can begin to drive at the age of 16 but cannot be completely independent from your parents till you are 18, having a car and driving is a way of establishing some sort of independence and responsibility without having the full experience.
Not only are cars a right of passage, but they are a status symbol in our culture. Everyone knows which cars are expensive and which are not, and judge the person driving the car by that price tag. Everyone is always trying to buy a more expensive car, and I understand the quality of the car is better, but when you get up to the $100,000, that’s ridiculous. This shows that people are willing to spend that much money on a car, because they know it will gain them respect, whether it be from themselves or others. Some people spend hours on their cars making sure they look perfect, because they feel it is a reflection of themselves.
Cars also relate to space in our culture. Many people extend their personal space to their car, as I described in my earlier blog “Personal Space”. We decide who we let in our car, what we put in it, and design it to look exactly how we want it. I wouldn’t let a stranger get inside of my car, I try to keep my car clean, and I generally only have certain things inside of my car. I get embarrassed when my car is dirty, I feel like it reflects on myself. My car, this thing on wheels for TRANSPORTATION, has so many other meanings in my life.
Not only are cars a right of passage, but they are a status symbol in our culture. Everyone knows which cars are expensive and which are not, and judge the person driving the car by that price tag. Everyone is always trying to buy a more expensive car, and I understand the quality of the car is better, but when you get up to the $100,000, that’s ridiculous. This shows that people are willing to spend that much money on a car, because they know it will gain them respect, whether it be from themselves or others. Some people spend hours on their cars making sure they look perfect, because they feel it is a reflection of themselves.
Cars also relate to space in our culture. Many people extend their personal space to their car, as I described in my earlier blog “Personal Space”. We decide who we let in our car, what we put in it, and design it to look exactly how we want it. I wouldn’t let a stranger get inside of my car, I try to keep my car clean, and I generally only have certain things inside of my car. I get embarrassed when my car is dirty, I feel like it reflects on myself. My car, this thing on wheels for TRANSPORTATION, has so many other meanings in my life.
My Real Kinship Chart
After making my kinship charts in class I thought about who I actually consider my family. My charts are very small, and I don’t even know my mom’s brothers. If I were to draw another kinship chart of who I really considered family it would look like:
I believe most people in the class would have had a different kinship chart if we didn’t have to do it by blood. I have not met anyone who has a friend that they consider family. I believe our culture values blood ties to identify who we are and where we came from, but in everyday life our culture needs other ties than just blood to survive. This reminded me of a book I read in my Intro to Sociology class called “All Our Kin” by Carol Stack. Their family would have starved to death without help from friends around them. The support structure that this family living in poverty had did not just come from the blood tie of the family unit itself. I think family is a support structure, and I know many “families” that don’t support each other, they just live under the same roof. It was really depressing looking at my kinship chart because it was so small. The new version is full of people that support me and do love me. I don’t think blood kinship charts are a good representation of the family at all.
I believe most people in the class would have had a different kinship chart if we didn’t have to do it by blood. I have not met anyone who has a friend that they consider family. I believe our culture values blood ties to identify who we are and where we came from, but in everyday life our culture needs other ties than just blood to survive. This reminded me of a book I read in my Intro to Sociology class called “All Our Kin” by Carol Stack. Their family would have starved to death without help from friends around them. The support structure that this family living in poverty had did not just come from the blood tie of the family unit itself. I think family is a support structure, and I know many “families” that don’t support each other, they just live under the same roof. It was really depressing looking at my kinship chart because it was so small. The new version is full of people that support me and do love me. I don’t think blood kinship charts are a good representation of the family at all.
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Delaney Ch.6 Excersise #2
I can think of several times that I tried to make my body conform to the cultural norm or standard. It all started in middle school when bodies started to matter, when the word “fat” was a word worse than any other. It was ridiculous, I went to a very small middle school so as my body changed everyone noticed it whether they wanted to or not. This put pressure on all of the girls in my class to try and control our changing bodies, some of us gained weight while others lost it. I noticed this created a clique between the two groups, those of us that gained it were so jealous of the ones that lost it that we were willing to speak badly about them even though we probably didn’t mean everything we said.
So what did I do? I joined a gym. LA Fitness had just opened by my house and my friend and I joined, we thought we were so cool going to the gym. We went everyday for the whole summer, and we did lose some weight, but we quit going once we lost it. We thought our weight loss was complete, we weren’t going to the gym to become healthy or change our life style, and we were doing it for the momentary satisfaction. I am glad I went to the gym instead of developing an eating disorder. When I got into high school I began to see the many ways that people would conform their bodies to society standards. Girls would wear makeup everyday religiously and it seemed like everyone had something to complain about their body. I watched girls starve themselves, binge eat and purge, I actually had a girl on my basket ball team who only joined to lose weight and then passed out on the court from de hydration and she hadn’t eaten in a couple days.
Most of these girls did lose weight, and even though most of them looked sick, people would tell them “oh you look so good”. This disgusted me, and after thinking about the culture of our beauty, I realized that our culture doesn’t care if we are healthy, our culture cares if we are a certain size, where certain clothes, and look a certain way. Everybody is going for that momentary satisfaction and not thinking about making healthy life choices. Society has an impossible image of the perfect women, not a lot of women are a size 2. Our society should stop putting so much pressure on women. I love the comparison that this chapter makes of the expectations society has for us and the product they give us. There are fast food restaurants on every corner but we have to be a size two. Our culture has a horrible and unfair view of the body.
So what did I do? I joined a gym. LA Fitness had just opened by my house and my friend and I joined, we thought we were so cool going to the gym. We went everyday for the whole summer, and we did lose some weight, but we quit going once we lost it. We thought our weight loss was complete, we weren’t going to the gym to become healthy or change our life style, and we were doing it for the momentary satisfaction. I am glad I went to the gym instead of developing an eating disorder. When I got into high school I began to see the many ways that people would conform their bodies to society standards. Girls would wear makeup everyday religiously and it seemed like everyone had something to complain about their body. I watched girls starve themselves, binge eat and purge, I actually had a girl on my basket ball team who only joined to lose weight and then passed out on the court from de hydration and she hadn’t eaten in a couple days.
Most of these girls did lose weight, and even though most of them looked sick, people would tell them “oh you look so good”. This disgusted me, and after thinking about the culture of our beauty, I realized that our culture doesn’t care if we are healthy, our culture cares if we are a certain size, where certain clothes, and look a certain way. Everybody is going for that momentary satisfaction and not thinking about making healthy life choices. Society has an impossible image of the perfect women, not a lot of women are a size 2. Our society should stop putting so much pressure on women. I love the comparison that this chapter makes of the expectations society has for us and the product they give us. There are fast food restaurants on every corner but we have to be a size two. Our culture has a horrible and unfair view of the body.
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