Assignment #8 - Gang Leader for a Day

Chapter 1
Chapter one is all about how he started his ethnography in the gang culture of Chicago. I am very excited to read this book and see his observations. For so many people, the only experience they have with this sect of the population is what they hear in the news. To most people, these people are just statistics. They are nothing more than numbers, which is what Sudhir noted during the first chapter. I'm not going to act like I am much better than anyone else at this. I grew up sort of in the country, so we didn't have gangs or projects. Just like everywhere else though, we had a poorer group of students. In fact, I have this one friend from high school that grew up in a very unstable environment. His parents rarely worked, so most of the time they lived off of social welfare. They had to move around a lot and live with others often, just like many of the families in this book. From him, I know just how hard it is to leave this life. So many of this older siblings are now starting their own families and living the same way. He is working consistently, but even though he is working, he cannot leave his family because now they rely on him to eat and pay rent. He can't just leave his family behind, so it will be nearly impossible for him to ever fully get out of this environment. This story is way too common everywhere these days, and I hope studies, similar to the one we are starting to read, will actually be used to understand this part of society and help them.

Chapter 2
I collect quotes. I record things I read or hear that really resonated with me, so I can always look over it again and get that same feeling. Because of this, I have a tendency to dog-ear pages of book that I am reading to remind myself to add lines I read to my collection. Most of the time, I don't find much in class readings, but this chapter had three different things I felt deserved recording for later. The first was what J.T. said about the jobs they had open to them, "So you want me to take pride in the job, and you're only paying me minimum wage? It don't sound like you think much about the job yourself." This is such a true statement. I have family members and friends who work these kind of job, and let me tell you, there is very little motivation to go to these jobs. Minimum wage isn't even enough money for a person to support themselves on their own, and that is not even considering many of these people have children to support. How can anyone expect a person to be motivated to go to a job where they can't even make enough to provide for themselves? Ms. Mae said two things this chapter that also really stuck out to me: "Let me tell you something about us. We may be poor, but when you come over here, don't pity us, don't pardon us, and don't hold us to a lower standard than you hold yourself up to." and "We live in a community. We need a helping hand now and then, but who doesn't? Everyone in this building helps as much as they can. [...] And when I come over to your house, you'll share with me. You'll cook for me if I'm hungry. But when you're here, you're in my home and my community. And we'll take care of you." (Second quote shortened for space). Feeling bad for people does them no good. Pity is not what people need, nor is it what they want. Do you ever want people to pity you? Probably not. Just because someone is "black and poor" doesn't mean they are unhappy.

Chapter 3
I don't know why Sudhir is so surprised by the violence. He is either extremely naive or trying to make himself sound innocent. I am leaning towards the second one. I completely understand why J.T. beat up C-Note. He did challenge J.T.'s authority as J.T. said, and it was in front of other gang leaders. C-Note knows better! I did think it was funny that they told them to vote and to register people, but never how to do those things. Also in this chapter, J.T. is appearing more possessive. 

Chapter 4
I thought this chapter was a little lame. Sudhir was definitely not a gang leader for a day. He didn't really make a single decision on his own! It was probably good for his research though, since he was able to follow J.T. around and see his daily life a bit better.

Chapter 5
We finally get to know Ms. Bailey a little better in this chapter. I don't really like her too much.She does help these people, but only when she gets something for herself. I was wondering throughout this whole chapter if she cared about these people at all or only liked the power they gave her. People like her always seem to end up in politically powerful positions, which in my opinion isn't a good thing. They act like they are working for others, but they are so power hungry that becomes their main focus. I don't completely understand why Catrina idolizes her so much. Then again, I cannot judge her just off of what I have read. Catrina probably sees something I don't

Chapter 6
Sudhir is so stupid. Either that or way more self serving than he lets on. Of course, Ms. Bailey and J.T. weren't just hanging out together, laughing, and just casually interested in what he learned. He is either so naive and an idiot for thinking that, or he knew exactly what was going on, knew they would be angry and wouldn't let him continue if he didn't tell them, and so he blabbed his mouth off to save his own skin. This chapter made me so mad because of this reason.

Chapter 7
If he actually teachings at the university he works for, I hope he does better than he did with the gang members. I did think the police added a good twist. I am surprised he hadn't realized the police would be suspicious of him because of who he hangs out with. That's how the world works. It was good seeing how the police were corrupt too. It seemed very suitable considering the area they work in.

Chapter 8
This was kind of a tie off loss ends chapter. Everything to do with T-Bone was sad. He knew something was going to happen to him, so he wanted to give the one thing he could to Sudhir. At least from the perspective Sudhir gave us, he definitely deserved better in his life. I don't agree with Sudhir that J.T. and him weren't friends. They were definitely friends, strange friends, but friends none the less.You can't have that serious of a relationship with someone and not develop a friendship with them. I mean J.T. even gave him those contacts, and still used the words 'he's with m'. He wouldn't do that for just anyone.

Gang Leader for a Day as a whole
I really enjoyed the book as a whole. I don't think it is a good ethnography though. He was way to emotionally charged through the whole thing. His bias really showed throughout the book. I also feel that his view was a little skewed because he was being shown it by J.T. Throughout this book it because less and less controled by J.T., but as J.T. said throughout the book, Sudhir was with him.   Everyone knew that J.T. and him were friends and he was under J.T.'s protection. That allowed Sudhir access to things normal people wouldn't get to see, but it also skewed his view of what he was seeing.

I also feel that Sudhir twisted it a bit to make it a more interesting read. He also was writing about himself. That is a lot of biased information. No one is going to write in a way that makes themselves sound bad. He doesn't want people to look at what he did and think of him as immoral, so he writes in a way that makes him sound naive to what is happening. There is no way he is actually as surprised as he seems, especially after he had been there for several years. I don't think he was a bad person though either. None of us know what we would choose if we were in the same situation.

I think J.T. was a very interesting person in this book. We will never fully know the whole extent of their relationship or what J.T. actually thought about Sudhir. Many people said that J.T. liked having Sudhir around because he liked showing him off like a puppet, and I have no doubt that is true. When reading the last chapter though, I got another vibe from him too. I think J.T. was worried about being remembered when he was gone. When you live a gang life, you probably won't live too long and even if you do, your fame will probably die off after a bit anyways. Gang leaders of the far past were remembered with nostalgia, and I think J.T. wanted that for himself. It was his life, and he wanted it to mean something, to not be forgotten. I think he saw in Sudhir a way for that to happen, hence his obsession with his biography and how sad he was once Sudhir started pulling away.

To focus on what the actual topic of the book is, I think studies over these types of neighborhoods need to be done more often. So many of us get caught up in our own world that we cannot truly understand what it is like living the way they do. True, we can give to charities or volunteer with them, that doesn’t allow us to connect with those people or really help them in the ways they need it. The community didn’t like when people who didn’t understand them just came to feel better about themselves and do their good deed for the day. These people need more that than, and I hope people see that and start acting.

Ethnography Ideas

I think doing an ethnography on a different religion would be very interesting. Religion is sadly one of the biggest dividers in the world, and I think this is partly due to the lack of understanding between the different groups. I will be honest and say that I don't know much about religions outside of the Christian faith. I myself am Catholic, and I have many other Christian friends, so I think it would be very interesting to explore another religion, such as Judaism or Islam. This would involve going to worship services and joining in on campus organizations. It would be really interesting if the ethnography was performed during period when there was a religious holiday.

I think someone should do an ethnography on one of the Aggie bands. I was a member of my high school band and will attest to how unique the culture there was. Since the bands here are full of Aggies, I have no doubt that they will be even more interesting to observe. If the Aggie band wasn't feasible, I think any of the other musical organizations on campus would be good too. Musicians are always interesting people!

Assignment #7 - Nonobvious Observations

There are many different nonobvious things you are able to obverse about a person. For example, even without seeing the person, you will be able to tell a lot about the person from their posture. For example, are they looking up, down, or straight ahead? Are they walking fast or kind of shuffling around? There are also physical things you should be able to tell about the person. You should be able to tell how tall the person is compared to other people. You will be able to see hands in our videos, so looking at the size and appearance of the hands should also help you narrow down gender.

Outside of the actual person, you will see many nonobvious things based on the people around them and how these people treat the person. Since it was a requirement that we interact with others in the assignment, you will be able to gauge things about the person based on how they are treated. My team went to a bar, ordered a drink, and played a round of 42. In the bar environment, men and women are often treated differently by the bartenders and the other people in the bar. Based on how the bartender acted when the person went to order a drink could be a good indicator of gender. The type of drink ordered may also be a good indicator. If you know enough about the people on the team to know what they like, it would be really easy to deduce who is who. 

Since the game 42 is a partner based game of two teams, there are many different observations you could make. How does the person work interact with the people around them? Are they very outgoing and talkative or are they shy and introverted? Are they interacting with one person more than the others? Maybe if they are only focused on their partner or interacting negatively, then they are highly competitive. If they are just throwing random tiles out, then they might not care if they win or maybe they just do not know how to play. 

Obviously, these are just a few of the things that could be observed. Once you start looking at the whole situation from a variety of ways and letting your mind observe things you don’t initially think are important, you will be surprised at how much you can tell about a person. The readings, which focused on how words normally considered insignificant can be used to tell us things about people, were a good way to get our minds going.

As a side note on the readings, I really didn’t like either. The paper was extremely long and dense. It was mostly horrible to read. The book on the other hand was really easy to read, but it was too conversational for me. His writing style made me feel like I wasn’t going to learn anything significant from him. They did do a good job making me thing though, so I guess they did their job.

Assignment #5 - Ethnography Readings

I actually took a cultural anthropology class for my cultural diversity credit, so I knew a lot of the information contained in these pages. The first half of the class covered everything in the Ethnography Wikipedia page, and then the second half of the class was all about different cultures.  

 

While the Wikipedia page was not very interesting, I know for a fact that this research can be very interesting. There are so many cultures out there that we never know about. For example, the Nacirema who have daily rituals involving putting bundles of hog hairs in their mouths and moving it around. They also actually make holes in their teeth bigger through instruments used by holy-mouth-men (See http://www.ohio.edu/people/thompsoc/body.html for more information). This sounds so crazy and disgusting to us, but is it really? It is all a matter of perception, which is formed by culture.

Ethnographies are meant to observe the culture and learn how it developed based on many factors. This is very difficult because to fully understand the culture, they have to immerse themselves in it. I found this part of the task very difficult. Cultures just don’t accept you overnight. Ethnographers sometimes have to spend years in cultures just to be accepted. I cannot imagine personally devoting such a huge chuck of my life to this pursuit. It just doesn’t seem worth it to me.

A lot of people do see the point though, and actually, they oftentimes become very attached to these people that they are studying. Sometimes they even want to continue living and learning in this culture beyond the timespan of the report. I can see why this is such a common thing. If you spend all your days and nights with a people, you cannot help but to see them as family. You can easily grow to love them and not want to go back to your old way of living. 

This is where a lot of biased information comes in though. You either haven’t be in a culture long enough to be accepted, so you don’t see the true meaning of an action. You would start making assumptions, and these assumptions are often wrong. The opposite side has problems too. If you are accepted into a culture enough that you see the true impact of an action or ritual, you are probably too attached to them in my opinion to give an honest unbiased description of the action.

That is why many researchers, including Gary Alan Fine, correctly claim there is no way to truly be fair and honest when completing and ethnography. People are human and can only be so unbiased. 

Thinking on all these things, I cannot help but wonder how we are expected to complete one of these in such a short amount of time. There is no way we would reach the level of acceptance that we would see all aspects of a culture in the allotted time. It should be interesting to see how far we can actually delve into a culture of our choosing, and I am excited to be actively doing what I spent a whole Christmas break learning about.