*Important
You must locate a public or accessible place in which people are getting and eating food, and where you can observe them doing so. Ideally, you should choose a place to do the observation for this assignment that is of a different cultural context than your own (e.g. an ethnic restaurant different from your own ethnicity) and where you have not been before. It will be easier to take notes on things that are new to you than something you see every day. Possible places to conduct your observations include: food truck event, an ethnic food market, a public religious meal, a farmers’ market, an ethnic restaurant, coffee shop, military base cafeteria, or the food section of a street fair or carnival. You need to pick a place that will allow you to make observations and record notes of people eating, drinking, cooking, shopping for, or preparing food.
3. Go to the place you selected and conduct participant observation for 1.5 hours. You may also “participate” if you think it is appropriate and you are comfortable. For example, at an ethnic food market, buy one or two small ready-to-eat products. As appropriate, eat what you purchased. Find a place to hang out and conduct your observations. If you are at an ethnic restaurant, order and eat a meal — but make sure you keep watching everything that is happening around you!
5B. Once you have the notes from your observations, perform a preliminary analysis by reading through and identifying FOUR emergent ideas/themes/observations that you can explain as being related to any of the themes or cultural concepts of food and culture that have been covered in class thus far. Look for things that are emerging from your notes as consistent observations. Some examples of emergent themes might be: gender and food preparation; eating together as our social glue/social support/socialization/sense of belonging and connection; displacement of socially-expected roles around food preparation; how food forms and reflects identities; food as comfort; food as medicine; discomfort at eating unacceptable or undesirable foods, food and shame/stigma, etc — basically anything we have covered in the course so far that relates food to culture in any manner.
