Cultural Observation Essay

Cultural Observation Culture is the nerve center total of learned beliefs, values, and customs in which a stack of a particular fellowship live. Culture is dynamic and always changing just now retains patterns that habitus its basic infrastructure. many an(prenominal) aspects of a populates society execute up ones culture including religion, economy, voice communication, politics, etc. Cultures ar not finite and in many instances have thither knowledge number of sub cultures within them.This variation among cultures brings about man consequences surrounded by populations, which can be po baby-sitive or negative. I have been t block offing(p) the task to use participant observation in order to form a complete report on the daily br new(prenominal)ly interactions of gentleman in the Saint Louis battlefield. The location I chose is in the middle of a spunkyer learning environment known as a college campus. The area lies in the middle of the campus and has a large struct ure with a trick that measures and tracks time. It is a frequently used path by the students of the campus, which allows for many cordial observations to be made.As stated earlier the quadrangle is a pass highway for students with the near occupation-taking place in the morning at the end of individually hour for a period of about ten minutes. The parcel of land is a large round a bout that circles around the clock tower structure with 4 perpendicular paths continuing off from the circle. I sat on a large concrete tonecase that overlooks the circle, for my observations. I sat for one and a half hours observing the following. For the duration of my observation, which began at 1100am I had many pot sitting on the stair case fixture in front of me.At one come out there were a total of 23 population sitting on the concrete stairs. These 23 people were paired off in groups of no much than than 6. When the time came closer to the end of the hour, there was a salient increa se in traffic flow around the clock structure. Many of the people walked at a steady pace and seemed to have been paseo solo. Some people walked in groups yet if it was a group of more than one the absolute majority walked in pairs. As the new hour began the traffic flow dramatically dropped. The make up of the study population alter in many categories.The ages of the people were predominantly that of 18-21 year olds, with occasional middle-aged people and young professionals. During the rush of traffic it seemed to have a larger population of females than males go through the area. This was as well as found for the people who chose to sit on the concrete stairs. Of the people who sat down, 15 of them were female and the suspension male. During the rush I noticed many different ethnicities that ranged from Caucasian white, to Asian, to diaphragm Eastern, and African American. Disregarding race, a pattern among the people arose during observation.The females leaned towards w earing more high cost garments than the males did. This related to the observation that many women seemed to be of high economic status in comparison to males. In regards to discern equal space I found that females were much more prone to putting tokenish space between themselves when interacting. Males seemed to keep a good distance from each other while interacting. For the majority, during the rush of manner of walking traffic, people followed the rule of walking to there right while entering the circle even though this rule was not stated on any sign that I could see.Some people were more aggressive in there walking patterns and people on bicycle contraptions were permitted the right of way in most occasions. Physical interactions were most abundant among females and males who interacted. Males who were walking with a female had slight space between them than males who were walking with another male. People sitting on the stairs would occasional engage in physical contact wit h the highest parting of outcomes being a laugh following the physical touch. overall I noticed a pattern that people of the same race for the majority stuck to squeezeher, giving the impression of subcultures with in the population. Given the location, I concluded that the primer for all the people in the walking rush had the shared lading of attending classes for learning purposes. For the people who sat down on the stairs it was much harder to vex a reason for there public social interaction. The weather was optimal that day which would most likely attract such a leisurely activity response.The population was visually extremely several(a) but some common trends were found that differentiated people. The most ostensible difference was that of the nature of the people of Asian descent. They more than anyone kept to there own group and clearly spoke a different language than the rest of the population. This could be a barrier between them and the rest of the people who seem t o speech the dominant language of the area. From my observations I have been able to determine many things about the population of Saint Louis.More seek must be done especially with people of different ages in order to get a more accurate picture of how people in Saint Louis behave but from my observations many patterns stuck out among people from ages 18-21. One of the most puzzling aspects was the wearing of a garment on the top of a persons head. I could not find a distinct pattern as to what type of people or what situations these head garments were supposed to be for. The only practical usage I came up with was the use of it to keep the sun of their eyes, but many did not use it for this purpose.If it pertains to simply a fashion accessory it would appear to be more common among younger male populations. Another observation was the common of wearing t-shirts or other garments that either said Saint Louis University or Saint Louis in some form. From this I have determined that people are proud of the organizations and areas they have some sort of investment in. This also led me to believe that people use their garments to communicate subtly to other people certain information about themselves.A majority of garments purposeless had some form of there language written on them. Overall more research must be done on the clement race to cross-reference these ideas. It is obvious that culture is dynamic and works on several different levels in this complex society of people. Simply observing can tells us many things about there culture but will only get us so far. We must make plans to immerse ourselves in there actual culture to truly get an accurate picture of what it mover to be part of Saint Louis, and ultimately, what it means to be human.