Number Threeeeeeeee

How do the authors Casassa and Dudley enact in their pieces what you learned about ethnography in Chapters 10 & 12?

What are some effective ways they describe the culture they are studying? Cite examples.

What evidence do the authors provide for their interpretations of the culture they are studying? Give specifics.

What specific research can you do to provide similar evidence for your own potential topic? Why? Give specifics.

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In The Coffee Shop and The Dope on Head Shops, both authors use “features of the form” (Ballenger 373) of Ethnographies as described by Ballenger. In the Ethnography The Coffee Shop, writer Andrea Casassa “focus[es] on groups of people who identify themselves as group members.” This particular section from Casassa’s paper focuses on unique customers throughout the day that can identify themselves as coffee shop customers. From the “early morning customers” (Casassa B32) to the “soccer moms” (Casassa B34), all are members of the Coffee house customers group. Also, Casassa makes it is quite obvious that “The bulk of the [her] research takes place in the natural settings where group members gather” (Ballenger 373). Rather than observe coffee shop customers at their house or in a store, Casassa watches all of the people from The Gourmet. She is able to describe first hand how “the early morning customers always seem crazy…” (Casassa B32) from her experience watching them. In The Dope on Head Shops, writer Mathew Dudley is able to show his paper is also a Ethnography by focusing on “Groups of people who identify themselves as group members” (Ballenger 373) just as Casassa did. Dudley focusing on a particular Head Shop in Boston called “The Hempest” (Dudley B29). Within this Head Shop, Dudley discusses the items and the people that all identify with The Hempest. Finally, Dudley’s ethnography also “looks closely at the few to get hints of the big picture” (Ballenger 374). Dudley focuses on individual items in the store such as “Pins, rings…and lollipops” that are made with “THC” (Dudley B42) to get clues about Marijuana usage as a whole.

In The Coffee Shop, Andrea Casassa effectively describes the people from the coffee shop culture she is studying. She describes the “Early morning customers”, the “Soccer Moms” and the “Students” (Casassa B33-34) she sees daily around the shop. She details how each group arrives at different times and how each group acts different. The “early morning customers” appear around “7:00 A.M.” and always seem to be in “chipper moods” (Casassa B32). When the “students” are around, “Cell phones ring” and “Teenage gossip can be heard” (Casassa B34). However, Casassa realizes that these different groups of people are “Familiar” and “Just right” for her (Casassa B35). In The Dope on Head Shops, Mathew Dudley effectively describes Head Shops from the Marijuana culture he is studying. Dudley describes the beginnings of these head shops in “the Haight-Ashbury district in San Francisco in 1966” (Dudley B39) to their battle with U.S. restriction on Hemp with the “Drug Enforcement Agency” (Dudley B43). He also describes all of the unique items that can be found in the Head Shops. From “Small jewelry” to “hemp nutrition bars, pretzels or lollipops [that] is the same as smoking a joint…” when you eat one (Dudley B42-43).

In The Coffee Shop, Casassa evidently interprets the Home-town Coffee Shop Culture as one that is “Familiar”. All of the customers in the store are “familiar [and] just right” in her mind. Even after being away at college, Casassa makes a journey “back to the Hopkinton Gourmet to visit some of its regulars” (Casassa B35). There, the familiar “Rituals” of the past are still alive (Casassa B36). In The Dope on Head Shops, Dudley interprets the Head Shop culture as a culture that will “Survive.” Though the shops “have continually changed to fit new social standards and laws”, Dudley believes the Head Shops “may well survive these…changes” (Dudley B43).

Specific research that I can do to provide similar evidence for my topic is interviewing and observing. By interviewing, I can get first-hand opinions of what active member of the sub-culture I am studying believe and think about their participation in the sub-culture. By observing, I will be able to see what it is like to live within the sub-culture first hand without relying on second-hand documentation for my paper.