Using the ethnographic text Wrigley Regulars: Finding Community in the Bleachers (Swyers 2010), you will develop an argument, which you will expand in this critique paper.
Formatting should include:
- 3-4 pages
- double-spaced
- 1 inch margins
- 12 point font
- page numbers
It should include the following components:
- Compare, critique, and analyze the ethnographic book as it relates to the study of identity, culture, community, or qualitative research methods like ethnography (participant-observation or interviewing).
- Identify the community or communities examined.
- Describe the ethnographic context or range of settings explored.
- Discuss the strengths and limitations of the ethnographer’s approach.
Below is a suggested format – writing style and organization of paper is flexible:
1) Title: One or more words that describes the critique theme
2) Introduction: Thematizing (1 paragraph)
- Here you set the stage for your critique.
- Present the question(s) that this ethnographic study was designed to investigate.
- State the general argument or thesis that you will be presenting in this paper about this study and how it was presented in book form.
3) Literature Review: Relating your critique to what others have done (1-2 paragraphs)
- In this section, state what previous critics, scholars, or audiences have had to say about the book, community, or social context examined.
- Highlight works or arguments of other social commentary that have contributed to your thinking about the book.
- Compare how your critique is similar to or different from the ways other people have looked at the ethnographic study.
- Please cite these outside sources using parenthetical citations like the example here.
4) Text Summary: What is the ethnographic context? What communities are documented? Who is documenting? How is the ethnographic research carried out and how it is presented? (½-1 page)
Discuss briefly how the ethnographer carried out their fieldwork:
- Where they did conduct their observations, interviews, or archival work and for how long?
- What was the social setting and their role in the research cultural environment?
- Identify any focal research participants whom they worked with more closely.
5) Discussion: Findings and analysis (1-2 pages)
- This section should be structured in a way that showcases your analysis in a clear and compelling way.
- You can separate your major critique into a few subsections and organize each subsection with several main ideas (such as several excerpt-commentary units, that explain and illustrate examples from each book).
6) Conclusion: What can audiences take away from these ethnographies? (1-2 paragraphs)
In this final section:
- Summarize your paper’s key points.
- Relate these back to your original critique or argument regarding the book.
- Discuss the overall implications of the research findings of the book.
- Acknowledge the limitations of this study.
- Suggest what further research needs to be carried out to develop a better understanding of the specific ethnographic context, social behavior, or communities represented.
- Connections to your own everyday lives is encouraged.
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