According to the oxford dictionary, ethnography is “the systematic study of people and cultures. It is designed to explore cultural phenomena where the researcher observes society from the point of view of the subject of the study.” This was the main focus of our second Macaulay Seminar class and especially for our final project.
For our final project we chose to conduct an ethnographic study on the Brighton Beach community or also known as Little Odessa. This study mainly focused on the beach itself along with the market and residential area surrounding it and the whole boardwalk that stretched all the way to the amusement park on Coney Island. We chose this location as our subject just because it was convenient for us all and also because one of our group members, Mark, was familiar with the area and he also identified with the Russian community living in the are because he himself shared the same ethnographic background.
I originally thought that this project would be boring and wondered what was the purpose of such a study; however, as we continued on I realized that we could make it entertaining as well as informative by taking a unique approach. To achieve this, we went organized a plan and decided to embark on this expedition as a group rather than going separately so that we could have a good time as we conducted our survey.
We decided to go on March 4th for our first field day. However, it turned out that it was snowing quite heavily that day but we decided to go through with the plan anyways because Mitch had take a day off from work and he wouldn’t be able to make it on another day thus we persevered through this obstacle with flying colors. We successfully analyzed and assessed the neighborhood on our first visit because we explored as much of the area as we could through the harsh weather. We reached the destination around 10:45 am and walked though the market and residential area to the beach while taking down observational field notes as well as pictures of the interesting places of the immediate vicinities until we reached the beach. There we started our amble stride along the boardwalk and continued on to the beach. We took down notes and finally conducted our first interview. It was very awkward for us to conduct this interview because we were unfamiliar with the nature of the people in the neighborhood and partially because of the bad weather, yet, when we finally finished the interview we realized that it wasn’t as hard as we initially perceived it to be. However, we later decided not to include this specific interview as one of our sources for the project because we found out that she was not a local resident.
We then tasted some of the local delicacies upon Mark’s suggestion and took down some notes regarding the taste and texture of the food items so that we could incorporate the information into our refined and processed field notes this concluded our first visit to our ethnographic location. Upon our return to class we decided on the major focus of our study and divided the workload. This was a difficult task and also the deciding factor that would make or break our grade so we thought about this quite a lot and finally concluded what our roles would be. We all chose two specific senses to write our field notes and we also chose two resources each for our annotated bibliography. I had a hard time in finding the research papers for references because there weren’t many scholarly and peer reviewed papers published on this subject. However, despite this difficulty I was finally able to locate two academic papers which mostly contained the history of the immigration of the Russian community to the Brighton beach area of Brooklyn New York.
The first article that I analyzed was written by Roni Berger who published it in “the Child and Adolescent Social Work Journal” in 1997. It talks about the problems the Russian people faced during their immigration to Brighton Beach in Brooklyn New York and how they had to struggle with themselves in the search of identity. The major focus of this article, however, was on the struggles of adult immigrants because they had to find a job to support their families, learn a new language and also find their place in society. So for a hypothetical situation the author presents four different methods to cope with the struggle for identity. To establish this new identity, they had to go through five steps “conformity”, “dissonance”, “Resistance and immersion”, “introspection” and finally “synergistic articulation and awareness”. According to the article these steps are the “model of identity and development” for ethnic minorities who immigrate to a new community. The four methods the author suggested to cope with this identity crisis are identity achievement, foreclosure, moratorium and diffusion. The article also explained patterns for coping with identity which includes individual, social and cultural factors. This provide me with a new perspective on how to view the people of the Brighton beach community and understand their struggles which I can also Identify with because I myself am an Immigrant and my parents faced similar problems when they came to America.
The second article that I analyzed was written by Sebastiao Salgado and Ivan Chermayeff and it mostly consisted of black and white photographs of immigrants who were coming to the Brighton beach community in Brooklyn NY. Because this article was mostly visually oriented it only consisted of brief annotations describing each picture. It showed that the immigrants who came to this area had to sacrifice quite a lot just to get to America. They had to leave their families and even sever their ties with their relatives, leave all their possessions including their fortune just to get true freedom. Obtaining a visa was also very difficult as well. There were also images of grocery stores, parks, yeshiva schools, airports and old men playing chess to pass time all of which represented the early Brighton beach community. They also depict the formation of the rich Russian culture in this community. The school represented the importance of religion and education in the growing community. The pictures of Russian cafés reiterated the fact that the Brighton Beach community still longed for a connection with their culture and heritage so they opened up stores and schools and markets based on their original homeland just to fill the hole created by burden of their sacrifices.
These research paper provide me with a deeper understanding of the cultural and ethical background of the Russian community settled in “Little Odessa” and it further enhanced my analytical skills by offering me with a greater insight to the rich history of early immigration towards this neighborhood. I had all this in my mind when I went to the ethnographic survey for the second time. This time we know our direction of thought and we took a deeper interest in this project. We conducted some interview with the local people and saw that some immigrants were still struggling with the problems mentioned in the articles such as the language barrier. This was proved when we were buying a Russian bread and the vendor only understood Russian so Mark acted as our translator and also our interviewer and we realized that these problems still existed.
To sum it all up, I initially felt no connection to the Brighton Beach community and at one occasion I was even slightly offended by the vendor working at a cake shop in the community because she acted in a manner that was a bit racist towards me. This incident occurred when I was standing in line to buy a pastry and the vendor ignored me completely even though I repeated my order several times and this was finally proven when the Russian couple behind me jumped the line and placed their order the vendor immediately complied. I was affronted by this behavior so I immediately left the shop. Nevertheless, when I did some research regarding the neighborhood I somewhat identified with the people living there in a sense that I am also an immigrant so I understood some of their hardships as well so I dismissed this incident as an offence and thought of it as a defense mechanisms assuming that she was a recent immigrant and might not be used to confronting people that looked or sounded different. Overall this project was an enjoyable, unique and educational experience which provided me with a better insight on how to view a society and also how to conduct an ethnographic survey.
“Work Cited”
“The Definition of Ethnography.” Dictionary.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 17 May 2016.
Berger, Roni. “Adolescent Immigrants in Search of Identity: Clingers, Eradicators,
Vacillators and Integrators.” Child & Adolescent Social Work Journal 14.4
(1997): 263-275. Academic Search Complete. Web. 19 Apr. 2016.
Salgado, Sebastiao, and Ivan Chermayeff. “From Moscow to Brighton Beach.” World
Policy Journal 14.1 (1997): 44. Academic Search Complete. Web. 19 Apr. 2016.
