The methods of Trautner are a guide for how to approach this research.
Assignment Guidelines:
1.) State the date and time for each observation. Please state how much time you observed during each observation. Notes should reflect a total of 6 hours of observation.
2.) Clearly identify your research site. Are you observing at a bank, high school, restaurant, law office, etc.
3.) Provide background information on your research site. Is the site located in a working, middle, or upper class neighborhood? What type of clientele? Are they low income or high income? Do specific racial/ethnic/religious groups frequent this location?
4.) Identify the various relationship dynamics. If you are focusing on gender interactions between women and men of different racial groups at a law office, please be sure to specify what type of job title or status each group has at the job. For example, you might be overseeing interaction between male and female lawmakers or between women lawyers and male custodial workers. Be specific and detailed. All of these factors will frame your overall analysis.
5.) If you are observing in your own personal space, please be sure to avoid using the real names of the people you are observing. Create pseudonyms for these individuals in your field notes and in the final research project.
6.) State your personal reflections on what you learned during each observation.
7.) Please use the following handout to guide your field notes.
Please Note the Following:
1. The notes should be as detailed as possible.
Please be sure to describe the racial/ethnic gender, class, religious backgrounds of each live subject discussed in the notes (to the best of your knowledge).
Please describe the observation site in detail.
Please describe the live subjects gender presentation. Does the gender presentation represent normative societal constructions of gender? Are they gender non-conforming?
2. Please be sure to thoroughly explain how the live subjects do gender.
Remember West and Zimmerman describe “doing gender” as an active accomplishment or achievement. As being more than just roles or traits, but as an ongoing social act (or activity) that is embedded in everyday interactions with and in response to others. West and Zimmerman do not see gender as an innate or natural trait or property of individuals but as an activity within social interactions that is rooted in normative ideas of behaviors suitable for people on the basis of ones sex category.
In hegemonic (based on normative constructions of gender) or in non-hegemonic ways (resistant to normative constructions of gender)?
What is their gender performance when they are alone, with men, with women, etc.?
How does their gender performance change depending on the situation Or who they are around?
How do other people judge their gender performance?
3. Please be sure to discuss the intersection of gender, race, and class (as well as any other identities).
How does the intersection of race, gender, and class shape experiences and interactions?
How does race and class shape gender performances and how others are judged in your observations?
4. Notes should be a minimum of 3 single spaced pages
