Choice of Ethnography

     If I was given the chance to write an ethnography I would love to travel over to England and study the poverty stricken and homeless people of London and the suburbs right around London. I would go here because the area is of general interest to me, and I would be curious to learn more about the less wealthy people of the city. Everyone see's the glamour attached to the city, the old buildings, the royalty, tourist attractions; but not everyone is so ready to admit that this is a city that does have a lot of homeless and a lot of poverty.

     I would focus on this group of people because urban poverty has been of interest to me since my first trip into New York City when I was in elementary school and I saw all of the people living on the streets; and London while known for being a wealthy city also has the extreme other end of the spectrum and there are many people who are homeless, and many people who live well below the poverty level.

      It would most likely take (at least) several months to get a good idea of the “thick description” involved with these people. Not only would I be placed in a culture where I have no experience, but I would also have to pick up on traits and commonalities found in the people that I was studying. Getting close to people and gaining their trust would take possibly longer than normal just under the circumstances of the homelessness and poverty.

     I feel like doing an ethnography on this group of people would either go easily or involve a great struggle and many challenges. By this I mean I feel like the people I would be learning from would either be open to sharing their stories, how they live their lives, and open up to the idea of an outsider learning from them; or that the people I would be attempting to learn from would not ever trust an outsider nor would they open up to me because they have other factors in their lives that might be more important (making sure they had a meal and a place to sleep that night for example).

      I hope that the outcome of this study would be a better understanding (from an insiders prospective) of the daily life of the people of the city of London who are homeless/live in poverty. The reader would be able to understand that these people are people just like them except forced to live under different circumstances, and they live by totally different means in ways to survive. Hopefully the reader would be able to form a more educated opinion on this group of people. The way I would write this ethnography would be more of an “easy read” vs. a research paper type format. I would want the ethnography to play out smoothly, almost like the first account of a story.