Examples Of Mini Ethnography

Mini-Ethnography
For my mini-ethnography project, I chose to research the life at the restaurant located down the street from my dormitory building. The primary focus of this ethnography is to compare the norms of the employees when the supervisor is present at the restaurant and when she is absent. As defined by Richard T. Schaefer, the author of, “Sociology: A Brief Introduction,” a norm is “an established standard of behavior maintained by a society.” How does the standard of ethical behavior change when the supervisor is there keeping an eye on all of the employees compared to when she is absent? This restaurant provides to meet the everyday food necessities of the students at Georgia State University. As you enter the restaurant, there is a burrito bar in which the workers stand behind and serve to your needs. The burrito bar has all the items needed to make a burrito. The restaurant is also equipped with machines where the customers can get fountain beverages. The restaurant also houses a dining room in which the student can eat. The dining room contains tall glass windows which look out onto the busy street of downtown Atlanta. In the dining room, there is also a table near the register where the workers sit while on break. There is also a television near this table, one of the two that are in …show more content…
Since Cathie was not around to make sure the workers followed a certain standard of behavior, the standard of behavior depleted. Actions like these are prominent almost anywhere, an example being students talking in a class room once the teacher has left. Each person has a certain social norm to live up to when Cathie is around, but that norm leaves when she is absent. This ethnography helped me better understand the roles of social norms, and how much a bureaucratic system helps make many different institutions, businesses, and life in general run so much