Ethnographic Project: Little Italy

My dad, Alessandro Spada, is a first generation Italian in his family who has come to America. All of his family, my nonna, nonno, zio’s and zia’s, still live in Italy. He came to America, got married to an American, got a good job, and had a family of his own. My dad taught me what it was like to be an Italian. When I was a kid, one of my favorite things to do was learn how to speak the Italian language.

He has been living in this country for a while now, but has never picked up English fluently. This led me to become his translator for as long as I can remember. Even today I accompany him to his workplace to help close deals and talk to contractors. This was but one of many examples of how my Hispanic background

In areas, such as the Chinatowns, many Chinese customs still live by their inhabitants. This was difficult because the Americans at the time

The short essay “Fish Cheeks” by Amy Tan is an autobiographical short essay describing the experience of Amy, a fourteen-year-old American-Chinese girl, at an embarrassing dinner party her family hosted. One of the people invited was her crush, an American pastor’s son, and, because of the cultural difference, he did not understand the table manners or the food choices of the Chinese diners. Through this embarrassing experience- showing how different her culture and, by extension, she was to her crush- she learned to accept her native Chinese culture, even if she did want to assimilate into the new, American culture.

ANTH150 Mini Essay 2: Fieldwork Observation Word Count: 734 I conducted my ethnographic observations over the course of a few days. During my fieldwork observation, I recorded observations of customer behaviour, the general layout of the restaurant, culture significance, and décor. Siam Corner is located in Rouse Hill on Resolution Place. While entering, you can immediately feel the intimate environment of the restaurant and sense the sudden shift from the streets of Sydney to a Thai restaurant. It is viewed as an upscale restaurant with excellent service.

“Where are you from?” is a common question people ask if you look ethnically mysterious. Being a different race with unique facial features shows you are, not what they call in the United States “American”. Evelyn Alsultany was born and raised in New York City. Her ethnicity is Arab from her father's side and Cuban from her mother's side. She describes the social issue, she confronts the way people approach her creating assumptions, consequently making her feel excluded from her cultural background.

This wasn’t surprising based on the culture of the city. I also feel that it is not only important to become familiar with the surrounding, but also engage in them. I wish I would have visited more of the Asian shops and connected more with the people. Being able to connect to my student’s community will create a better relationship with

Starting at a young age my family had stressed the importance of embracing my Italian heritage. My father, mother and grandfather each contributed in showing me that in order to honor our Italian heritage you must demonstrate three qualities as a young man. My father is responsible for teaching me respect and how to give every individual you meet total and complete respect. Similarly my mother is responsible for teaching me love, how to love and how to spread love throughout the world. As for my grandfather, he taught me what courage is and how to always be courageous. Honoring my Italian heritage by demonstrating these qualities not only will make me a valued member of society, but will also help drive my future successes in the world of business.

Anthropologist Edward T. Hall’s theory of high- and low-context culture helps us better understand the powerful effect culture has on communication. A key factor in his theory is context. This relates to the framework, background, and surrounding circumstances in which communication or an event takes place. The following highlights the problems facing low-context Americans when they interact with people from high-context cultures such as Japan in the movie ‘The Last Samurai’.

Growing up as the son of a career United States service member has provided me with numerous unique and irreplaceable experiences. One such experience is the two years that I spent residing in Naples, Italy. During those two years I traveled throughout Europe and through my travels I became aware that there are many cultures that are

Methods To explore levels of media use and beliefs about representation, ethnographic interviews were conducted with Native American students enrolled at Eastern Oregon University in La Grande. Qualative methods were used to analyze the data collected. This was utilized through direct observation, communication with participants, analysis of texts, and following an ethnographic study. Ethnographic studies or ethnographic designs are “qualitative research procedures for describing, analyzing, and interpreting a cultural group 's shared patterns of behavior, beliefs, and language that develop over time” (Hart, 2006). To achieve this, interviews were done with ten native students at Eastern Oregon University.

“Italian immigration hit a peak in the 1800’s totaling an astounding four million.” A great majority of these immigrants came from southern Italy. Political and economic oppressions dwindled resources for the southern Italian. Running out of opportunities many immigrated to America. Within America many faced similar struggles to that of home. Through these struggles Italians would thrive through the strength they found within their families.

As you can tell from the videos, without knowing anything at the beginning, it is impossible to understand what other cultures are, but I also felt that it is also impractical to overcome all of these 6 stumbling blocks of intercultural communication. For example, if you don’t assume something, you become anxious and that navigates us to another issue that she mentioned, which was stress. The misinterpretations of nonverbal communication are something that is linked with assumption. All of these issues are big issues that prevent us from communicating fully. However I believe there is something more important to us, for example like how fully interested we are in cultures, how optimistic we are to this subject, how much we realize that there are ubiquitous cultural conflicts to cultures in the world.

One hundred fifty years ago, the Irish came during the potato famine, and in the early 1900's, Europeans came to escape their Home countries during World War II. All this immigration has led to this extreme diversity in the city, something my own city lacks. Upon Visiting NYC and NYU in June, I immediately

Long before I came to Florence, Italy, I used to dream about visiting Milan. My reasons for wanting to come to Italy were not simply about Milan being one of the major fashion cities of the world; I wanted to study in Italy because it is the birthplace of so many high-end fashion brands. At the time, however, I knew very little about Florence. But after I arrived in Florence, I realized that I still had much to learn, and felt inspired at being confronted with so many things that I had not imagined or seen before.