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You need to decide what you wish to observe. You can literally observe anything that involves people. However, there are some guidelines that will make your participant observation experience easier:

· Choose something that is fairly easy for an outsider to join. For example, it is easy for an outsider to attend most religious services as a guest or to attend a large funeral service, even if you don’t know the deceased. However, it is probably inappropriate and awkward to crash a wedding. And it is very difficult, and will take more time than you have for this class, to gain the rapport and trust needed to observe drug dealers plying their trade (plus I don’t want you getting arrested or hurt).

· Choose something that involves more than one person. While anthropologists certainly end up observing individuals, it is best, for your first observation, to observe two or more people interacting. Observations of people interacting or performing a ritual are usually more fun, interesting, and easier to observe. Observing and making sense of individual behavior requires a deeper understanding of the culture or activity and is best left for later in a fieldwork project.

· Choose something that is guaranteed to occur or have the flexibility to keep trying until it does occur. For example, you may wish to observe children playing at a park but find that there aren’t any children there when you scheduled time to observe. Make sure you have time to try again or choose something, like a scheduled sporting event, that will definitely occur at the specified time.

· Choose something that interests you. It is hard to write in great detail about something that bores you.

Once you have decided what you want to observe, you need to submit Participant Observation Plan so that I can approve your plan. If I decide there need to be modifications to your plan, I will let you know in my comments and allow you to adjust your plan in order to earn full points for this portion of the project.

This is the project that you will write later, and this time you only need to answer the following questions:

1. What do you plan to observe?

2. Why have you chosen this particular observation?

3. When and where will the observation will occur?

4. How do you plan to take notes? (e.g., pen and paper, cell phone, computer) Will you be able to take notes during the observation or will you need to write them down immediately after the observation?

5. What do you need to do to prepare and gain permission, if necessary, to conduct the observation—do you need to ask someone if you can observe them? Do you need permission to attend a ritual?

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Second one

Drawing upon Takeyuki Tsuda's article, what concerns have native anthropologists expressed about non-native, Western anthropologists researching and writing about natives? In what ways are ethnographies written by native anthropologists seen as preferable? Does Tsuda agree that they are? What do you think?

250words

(Ohnuki-Tierney 1984;Tsuda 2015).

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Third one

You will be doing your own participant observation project. Jump ahead and read the module on the project and then come back here and share your ideas of what you are planning to observe. Why are you thinking about doing this or these observations? Discuss how who you are may impact your observations and how you might interpret what you are observing. Remember to comment on at least one of your fellow student's ideas for an observation. (And don't worry, this is just a discussion; you can change your mind).