What?

This blog is part of a larger project of our anthropology class. While others pay particular attention to public communication, sex and sexuality, and body language, our focus here is the performance of race. We look at the many ways in which people or things become of an ethnic background. This can include how a person references, whether through physical attributes, speech patterns, or surroundings, another ethnicity. It can include the ways in which a person makes their own ethnicity apparent (or render them invisible). Even within one ethnic diaspora, we meticulously capture the events in which they separate themselves through even narrower ethnic classifications. Every entry displays a reenactment of a racialized characteristic in the context of American life -- and a profound sense of the meaning of culture.

Why?

We participate in the mass observation movement because we believe that it has much to contribute to the field of anthropology. We capture the "thick description" described by Geertz without the consequences of our participation. In each moment, we are able to catch power structures, cultural flows, functions, structures, an individual's or community's relationship to its environment, human agency, symbols and symbolic meaning, the difference differences make, and/or how history is played out in one simple incident.

Tuesday, December 5, 2006

For Halloween, I was a Japanese School Girl

I found my Chinese-American friend in the library and not having seen her for a while, I went over to have a little chat. She said, "Hey! What's up. What did you do for Halloween?"
I told her, "I did nothing but watch two movies in my dorm."
She said, "Aww, you should have told me and I would've taken you with me to a party."
"Naw, I didn't mind, actually. I'm a huge movie-buff."
"Did you dress up for Halloween?"
"Nope."
"I was a Japanese school girl. It was so cute. I wore a plaid skirt up to my knees and long sleeve blouse with a big bow on the collar. My hair was also straightened in pigtails. Here, let me show you pics." Already at a computer, she logged into facebook and showed me the pictures she took with her friends at the party she mentioned. She was everything she mentioned plus the knee-high socks, black dress shoes, and pale makeup with obviously red lipstick. In every picture I saw, next to her right cheek was the peace sign. In one picture, next to her was a Japanese friend of ours. She wore a kimono.

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