A Pentecostal church, the dance floor, and a high-end restaurant kitchen are a few of the settings for ethnographic research by anthropology students at UTSC. Field work isn’t just for grad students—after a successful pilot project conducted by the Centre for Ethnographies, it will be a requirement next year for the specialist program in anthropology.
The project had students conducting independent research in various Toronto locations. Last Thursday, five of them presented the highlights of their work at an ethnographic research seminar.
Students turned up a different side of familiar places. Fifth-year student Andree Vashit centred his research on challenging the assumption of Canadian multiculturalism on campus. Vashit found that many UTSC students felt more comfortable hanging out with those of a similar ethnic background, but they also have what he calls “cosmopolitan confidence,” being “better equipped to travel, work, and live in other countries based on their multicultural environment and cross-cultural experiences.”
The field work took students about a month to complete.
“I got a taste for research, and now I want more. Being able to have the opportunity to research and discover a topic I am passionate about at the undergraduate level is a dream come true,” said Vashit.
Henry Au, also in fifth year, titled his study “Nightclub Culture: Asian Events, Class, and Sexuality.” According to Au’s research, aside from giving students a chance to explore their independence and cope with stress, clubbing is a place to “reproduce their classist identity.” Clubs, he found, allows students to present themselves as the middle-class individuals they aspire to become. Au also introduced the concept of “Dance Floor Capital,” the ability to sustain the attention of the opposite sex. “Men have less Dance Floor Capital,” Au said during his presentation.
“I’m very proud of [the students], they’ve all done really good work,” said anthropology professor Girish Daswani. Along with professor Maggie Cummings, Daswani obtained funding for the project from the Student Experience Fund, set up by U of T in 2006 to enhance undergraduate experience. “The presentations show how talented and promising the new [undergraduate] scholars are,” agreed Cummings.
