Ethnography Paper On Ethnography

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Recommended: Hip Hop and the Influence on African American

Steven Howell March 30, 2014 Ethnography paper Foundation: B-boys, B-girls, and Hip-hop Culture in New York The ethnography that I chose to read was Foundation: B-boys, B-girls, and Hip-hop Culture in New York, by Joseph G. Schloss. I wanted to read this book because I enjoy listening to hip hop and wanted to learn more about where hip hop came from and what it really consists of. At the beginning of this book it discusses the poor view that the public and people have on hip-hop music and also talks about how the author didn’t relate hip hop like how the public viewed it. In the introduction he also explains that the term hip hop is used to refer three completely different concepts and in the next few paragraphs I’ll be explaining those concepts. The first concept of the term hip-hop is the form of hip hop that is represented in different media styles. This is the concept that is the most well-known and is the reason that the older generation rejects the hip hop. The main things that this book says that are rejected are visual, sound and movement and that graffiti is the most rejected. I find this to be a very interesting thing to be rejecting because in some people’s eyes graffiti is an art form and I’ve seen some restaurants and places actually pay people to graffiti their places but then on the other hand you have the people that hate how it looks and disagree with it completely. The next concept is the term of hip hop that refers to the form of music that turned into rap music. This surprised me because I’m a big fan of hip hop but have a bad point of view on rap because of the immoral ideas and lyrics that comes with rap. I’ve seen and heard a lot of bad things that happen in rap concerts that make me not want to assoc... ... middle of paper ... ...ieve that he has a biased stance on the subject since his research was mainly in the Afro-Caribbean, African American, and Latino communities of New York City. I believe that there are a lot more areas that he could have taken in account including the Caucasian stand point on hip hop and how they use the culture. But as I’ve stated before reading this book has shown me a lot more about this culture. I learned why so many people have such a bad view on hip hop, which I also learned is a lot worse for the B-boys and B-girls because a lot of them really aren’t doing anything wrong they just have a different type of culture than the people who are judging them. This happens to a lot of different cultures and I believe that books like this one can bring to light to people outside of the culture on how it really is and how they should really act around these cultures.

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