Ethnography Ideas

Ethnography Idea:
While searching through the ‘A’ section of the 800 student organizations at Texas A&M University for ethnography ideas, I stumbled upon an interesting find. There exists a club dedicated to overcomplicating simple ideas. The Aggie Rube Goldberg Club is dedicated to Rube Goldberg competitions. After a quick Google search, I learned that Rube Goldberg was an American Cartoonist from the late 1800s and early 1900s, who drew super complicated contraptions that perform a simple task. In a Rube Goldberg competition, teams compete to engineer super complicated machines to do one very simple task. This possible ethnography idea interests me because I had no idea that there were a group of people dedicated to doing something as strange as this. My main concern is how often they meet, because observing a group four hours per week is a tough task for groups that do not meet a lot.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rube_Goldberg_machine


Ethnography Idea for Someone Else:
Texas A&M Rowing Team is an organization that I think would be interesting for an ethnography topic. We meet for two hours at a time every weekday from 6-8am and 6-8pm, and on Saturday mornings, so there is enough time for observers to gather sufficient amounts of data. Some of the meetings are on the water at Lake Bryan, while others take place at the Rec. The drive to Lake Bryan is a long drive (~15-20 minutes), but the group tends to be interesting. There are definitely different team dynamics going on at all different levels. First, the team is split into Novices and Varsity rowers, and then even further by gender. Everybody competes for spots in the best boat, but they must work together in the boats in order to balance the boat and race well. One very interesting aspect of the team is when two rowers start dating. According to the coach, ROW-mances (corny, right?) are not allowed, but every semester a few rowers break this rule. If it goes bad, people naturally choose sides and sometimes one of the two quit. Again, the drive is far, so this may not be a great idea, but you might be able to carpool with rowers.