Assignment 2: Ethnographers Analytical Essay and field journal (Your own travel story) This assignment is one of the cornerstones of this unit and MUST be undertaken. However, to make this journey appropriate for Singaporean students the requirement to travel at least 40km away from home has been adjusted. Now, you are still expected to take an overnight trip away from home but flexibility has been brought in regarding the distance travelled. However, you MUST discuss your choice of destination with your lecturer and gain his approval for the destination you have chosen. Now you've read about travel so it is time to do some of our own. This are three parts to these assignments: 1. They require you be a tourist and do some travelling of your own. There must be an overnight component and you must travel ideally at least 40 km from your present residence. 2. You are to keep and submit a field journal as an appendix to your analytical essay. 3. You will have to write an analytical essay on the travel using relevant research and theoretical material. To complete this assignment you will collect 'primary' research data before, during and after a personal travel experience. You will need to systematically study this primary data that will be in the form of a record of a personal travel experience - not necessarily a long trip, but a travel experience nonetheless. Remember: • You must do this travel specifically for the assignment in order to keep the travel journal which then contains the primary data. • The trip should be started by the first non-teaching break if possible because of its use in tutorials (for internals). You all know that most tourism definitions accept an overnight component and about 40 kms from home as qualifying for the label 'tourist'. Keeping in mind this definition, select a trip or tour of some sort, or design and take yourself off on one of your own making. Or, you might travel 'home' to visit your family or old friends (VFR travel). You can travel alone or with friends, other students or family members. Doing it with other students in this unit can be very interesting. The 'passport' definitions of tourism (overnight, across borders, 40 km, etc.) are unsatisfactory for thinking about what people do and why they do it. This is one place where the separation of leisure from tourism is problematic because most of the travel we are studying is leisure travel. While it is debatable whether your trip for this assignment is 'work', i.e. for an assignment, it will have leisure components. Maybe the first thing you should do is go to a travel office and look at the brochures. Or find something relevant on the Internet. Talk to family and friends for ideas. Think about where you'd like to go and about the constraints you face in deciding where to go. Start recording in your Travel Journal as you do this. Note: An early tutorial requires that you have some brochures or Internet printouts relevant to your field trip and that you can use them in class. This is also an intellectual exercise because you have to conceptualise, research and analyse the tourism issues extant at your destination and the route you take travelling there and back. Like all tourist sites, there are social, cultural, environmental and economic issues to be dealt with. You should note here that the word 'site' is much more than the place to which you think you went; your 'site' for this exercise is the location or locations that are subject to your research. What does this imply? It is that your 'site' begins when you leave your place of residence and includes the route you travel, where you stop and where you stay, as well as what you do. You are required to include at least the following in the journal: • a map of the journey. This should be an extract (original or photocopy) from a published map of the area through which you traveled. Be sure to include the publisher in the list of references. • an extract printed from a website relevant to the area through which you travelled (or some part of the trip). This could be an accommodation outlet, a tourist attraction such as a cave, tour or museum, or from the region in general. Be sure to include the URL on the extract and a full reference in the list of references. • at least 3 brochures that 'inform' about actual events in which you took part or places that you actually went. The field journal is important as a record of your primary data, that is, to keep track of specific issues while on the field trip itself. But, in addition, you should begin writing in it well before departure so that you can also record the process of anticipation. While writing in the journal, you should begin to develop a feel for your research questions, what it is that you are asking of your research, what it is you are trying to answer in doing this research. Feel free to discuss this field trip with your tutor, especially to help solve any problems that arise from your special circumstances (for example, timing and undertaking an overnight trip might be impossible for some students). This journal should be submitted as an appendix to the field report and must be on the sheet(s) provided. Besides being a record of your field trip preparation and of the actual trip, this learning journal will be reflective and 'critical'; it includes your motivation. Before you undertake your field trip study carefully and read thoroughly the notes provided later in Appendix 1 How to go about your field trip. Submit photos, drawings, maps and your rough written journal as appendices to the essay. Remove any private entries if you wish, but retyping of the journal is not required. This field trip is a form of social research called ethnography so the journal is a record of both the primary data of your own experience and of the secondary material you collect during your research before, during and after the trip. This component may be written in the first person and can express 'opinions' and personal reflections. Objectives The specific objectives of this assignment are to • study and practice field note taking • learn about and improve your observational research skills • encourage critical and reflective praxis • provide a record of the primary and secondary field data • use the internet to find travel information, and • use maps. Note: You will need to use your Journal in tutorials after the first study break. The discussion will help you to analyse the data in your journal. Key Readings Babbie (Reader); Bruner (ECMS), Feifer (ECMS); Kellehear( ECMS); Markwell and Basche; Spradley(ECMS); Appendix 1 in this Study Guide Ethnographer's analytical essay The written Essay should do a number of things. • It must address the tourism (and other relevant) issues facing the site and the immediate surroundings. Your site is the 'case study' you will use in your essay. • It should be reflexive. That is, as you will have also been a tourist, you as an individual have had to reflect on the experience in your Ethnographer's Field Journal. You will need to analyse it and write about it. Included here are your own experiences; what you learned from the field trip experience. The academic literature will provide you the models and theories to undertake this analysis. The field work was your primary data collection method. • The essay will be read as a stand-alone piece of work so key information about the field work should be included as an Appendix (1-2 pages maximum) and as suggested below as part of the analysis. • It should review literature relevant to the field trip, including models useful for analysis of the site, the journey and your experience/motivation as a tourist. Think of yourself as a tourist who has made a specific selection of a trip. Why did you choose this specific trip? • It should not be written in the first person. • It must be fully referenced using the style specified later. Objectives The specific objectives of this assignment are to: • find and use relevant research and theoretical literature • use field data (primary and secondary) • use theory and other research to analyse the field data you have recorded and • write an extended analytical account using an essay style format; you may use headings. One of the crucial elements in your approach to this assignment is having a research question. However, given the ethnographic nature of this assignment, you may arrive at your research question post hoc, that is, after you've been in the field. Working up a research question even after the trip is finished will help you toward the development of an argument in the essay that you then write to analyse your field trip and field journal. Here is a suggested outline structure for your essay. The suggested word lengths of each component are just that, rough suggestions. You don't have to use this structure in this order but do need to cover the main content areas specified below. Be sure to develop your main points in the introduction and to use transitional markers or connective words/phrases to link ideas and sections as you progress towards the conclusion. Introduction Here you would outline the main points and introduce what the essay covers. Introduce the reader to what it all means, what you are going to tell us, your theme or argument. (about 75-200 words) The trip itself (content) This is where you report on your case field trip: you should describe the essential aspects of the trip, the experience of the trip, the destination, mode of transport, etc. Use tables or appendices to provide details such as site maps, timetable of travel, relevant brochures (only ones you use in the analysis), etc. (these are not counted in the word limit), or refer to specific aspects/places of the Journal. (about 150-250 words) Literature review (content) You can't effectively analysis your case study (site, travel, etc.) without using the research and theorising of others. The unit Reader, along with other books and articles you obtain, will contain ideas and models that you can use to help understand your trip. In this section you introduce those aspects of the literature most useful for your particular trip. (about 350-600 words) What it means (content) This is where you apply the theories, models, etc. you extract from the literature to analyse the trip, destination, experience, motivation and so forth. (about 550-800 words) Conclusion This is where you draw together the main points and the site and give the reader the final word on meaning. You can also mention questions still to be answered, research still to be done – your hunches, suspicions, uncertainties, etc. You can also say something about how you'll approach travel in the future. (about 100-200 words). The essay allows you to make meaningful your field trip as well as demonstrate your ability to apply and use the research and theorising of others to understand a situation that includes your own experience.