A working adult (aged 30-60) – Each of the two ethnographic notes should be between 950-1,050 words, Singapore

A working adult (aged 30-60)

Each of the two ethnographic notes should be between 950-1,050 words. You should write these notes in the form of a short story.

Treat this group project as a social experiment. Imagine you are offering a glimpse of the everyday life of Singaporeans today for people fifty years down the road. You are preserving a very precious segment of the history of common people, their concerns and how they live their everyday life – so we are not left only with statistical figures and the big words of politicians and important figures.

Everyday life, key things to note:

The following aspects are what you should be looking out for when observing everyday life. (Please note that these are the aspects you should take note when gathering information, not the actual questions you should be asking.

1. what’s their daily routine – distinguish especially between weekdays and weekends, or workdays and rest-days
2. what are their burdens, anxieties, and insecurities; what keeps them going, what do they look forward to
3. especially for working adult and elderly person, please also take note their wider social life (outside the immediate circles of family and colleagues/clients); who they socialize with and where; for example whether they are involved in religious activity, volunteering work, etc.; do they interact with their neighbours and people in the neighbourhood; and so on.
details of assignments:
1. choosing the case subjects:
i. must be a Singaporean citizen
ii. need not be an ethnic Chinese
iii. should be a common person, i.e. not a celebrity or public figure
2. the group should identify suitable persons who would be willing to be interviewed. Preferably these are people whose everyday life you could observe in some ways. The case subjects may be related to one of the group members. (In that case, that group member may be in charge of observing the case subject’s everyday life for the other group members, though it would be good if everyone gets a chance to do the actual observation.)
3. ideally the interviews should be conducted like a conversation, except that the case subjects are the ones who should be doing the bulk of the talking and you are listening and prompting when they paused or stopped. All the group members should be present when these interviews/ conversations are being conducted.
4. you MUST do the interviews in the form of a face-to-face conversation, asking your case subjects to fill in a questionnaire or talking over skype chat is not an option.
5. write the ethnographic notes like a short story, non-fictional of course, and in the third person reference