nhu nguyen

My ethnographic experience takes place in Assi supermarket, the supermarket that mostly sell Asian foods. I arrived to take my field note on Saturday morning and stayed for several hours. The place has similar size and architecture with Walmart, the outside walls are painted in nude color. There is no window and only one door to get inside. However, it was very crowed and noisy by people shopping for foods, therefore, it look much smaller. I used my phone to take note while walking around the place to cause less attention from people. The weather was calm and not too sunny. It makes the shoppers seem relaxed on a weekend morning.

The first thing that I caught my attention in the place is the distribution of race and gender of the workers. Except for the cashier positions, I only saw the male work as the grocery clerks, the stock man and the baggers. Based on their skin color and their language, I can assume most of them are Hispanic male. I did not see a single white or black person work there. To explain this, I think the distribution of workers involves closely with the race relation and the capitalism in the four power systems of society.

Based on the race relations system, our society has been white centered and therefore, Hispanic race is considered the minority. Because they are the minority, their economic classes are also be affected. I usually see the white and black male work as the stock man in the more popular supermarkets like Walmart or Kroger but not in Assi. The reason for this maybe because those popular supermarkets are also offer more benefits for their workers, which will attract more people from every backgrounds. However, the more popular races, such as white and black in our society, have higher chances of...

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...he amount of fresh foods they were selling there must be five times larger than what I usually see in Walmart. They had all types of fresh foods from fresh fruits, noodles to live fishes. People shop there mostly to buy fresh foods and stuffs that those ordinary American markets do not sell.

Even though this ethnographic observation is limited within Asian culture, it still gives me an overall idea of how society structures work and connect to each other. This is a very helpful and interesting experience because it helps me to connect what I have studied in class to real life observations in a new way. It also shows me more clearly how sociologists study the world by collecting information and analyzing it sociologically. After this practice, I would be able to understand more clearly how our society functions and why people interact with each other the way they do.