LA at Play

In our first year as an NSF-REU program, we began our first stage of research on "LA at Play." Our strategy was to begin to develop theoretical ideas by spreading students over a variety of social places. The general focus was to describe how people use and interact in public settings, with the aim of developing a theory of the social formation of experience in public places.

For the faculty as for the students, this was a new theoretical focus. The substantive focus was developed in order to maximize the pedagogical value of a relatively very brief period of data gathering. Given that ethnographic data collection typically takes at least a year, and more commonly entails an involvement of two or more years, it was essential to shape a project in which students could make and appreciate making a genuine contribution through a commitment of approximately two months.

In addition, the design of the project had to take into account the challenges of coordinating the efforts of diverse students engaged in the highly personal activity of ethnographic observation and interviewing. While forms of social research that employ fixed designs are in a way set up to facilitate plugging researchers in and out of the data collection process, ethnographic research entails idiosyncratic interactions in the field. Especially when the data gathering is done through participant observation, the fieldworker is often shaping the phenomena in subtle ways, and, indeed, being shaped by the research experience. Historically, such work has been pioneered by researchers who devote long stretches of their biography to the effort, and who are willing to have their lives diffusely shaped by the experience. The probabilities of having a highly individualized process of data gathering are maximized in participant observation, ethnographic field research.

Thus we needed an analytic framework and a strategy for developing theory that would work with, rather than fight against, the personalized nature of data collection and the diversity of field involvements that students would experience. Our approach was to use the methodology of analytic induction to guide student data collection. Analytic induction essentially models a social phenomenon, then searches for negative cases to alter the model to fit the data collected. It is anticipated that intial theoretical modeling of some segment of social life will be edited, revised, and subject to a multi-stage process of evolution, such that the final product may bear only a nostalgic resemblance to the initial model. But through this analytic process, student findings are given value, not despite of but because of their uniqueness.

Note that when researchers use a fixed design for gathering data (protocols defined in advanced, questionnaires administered with fixed choice answers stipulated, experimental provocations carefully controlled, etc.), idiosyncratic behavior by researchers undermines the logical strength of the research. But when using analytic induction (a methodology that P.I. Katz has often used and written about in books, journal articles and in the new International Encylopedia of Social and Behavioral Sciences), creative interactions with subjects by researchers and novel findings are not only accepted, they are embraced as making decisive contributions to the effort to evolve the theoretical model. By using this methodology, we were able to give heartfelt, positive reactions to the individually unique aspects of our novice fieldworkers’ activities. This was not simply a matter of being expressly enthusiastic with students in class. The value of idiosyncratic and diverse fieldworker experiences was demonstrated as their unique efforts were embraced as provocations to improve the evolving theoretical model.

We should also note that the operation of our program in its first year was shaped in anticipation of complementary strategies that would be used in subsequent years. We anticipated that the theoretical framework would evolve as the student pool changed in composition from summer to summer. In this first REU year of "LA at Play," each student followed the perspective of a given kind of user at a given type of site. In our second year, we will shift our strategy from sending students to different places and tracing a given type of user’s perspective in each, to sending all students to the same kind of place, public parks, tracing the perspectives of a variety of users at parks.

Our first year was successful beyond our expectations. We were able to launch a new theoretical framework for analyzing social life in public settings, one that will require refinement in subsequent summers but that developed rapidly even with our modest number of novice fieldworkers. The diversity of experiences brought to and found in the field by the students, and the invaluable creative energies of our young collaborators, were powerful stimulants to our collective analytical thinking. What follows is a brief sketch of the framework that emerged, illustrated with references to the data collected by student researchers. As of this writing, we can report that we are already using this framework to organize the research data gathering by our second cohort of students, who are all describing experiences at the same kind of place, public parks, but who, representing a different ethnic diversity than our first cohort of researchers, will be tracing additional, previously untapped perspectives in the field.

Our general concern is to understand how personal experience takes shape in public places. By "public places" we mean places that one enters expecting a substantial part of one’s interaction to be with strangers. Thus social life "in public" differs from behavior at home and in many work sites.

We use two basic orders of concepts in our analysis. One is a conceptualization of the "outing." The outing is the overall trajectory of preparing for, traveling to, going to, being at, and leaving or returning from a public place. The second order of concepts analyzes the nature of the interaction on site at the public place.

We developed an analysis of several variations in the social forms of outings to public places. In one form, a person goes to, is at, and returns from a beach, park, movie or mall on his or her own. In another form, the person goes with someone else, in effect using a prior social relationship to organize the trip and as a framework for experiencing the site. Examples are mothers taking children to parks, friends going to the beach together, a family going to a show, or a couple that jogs through streets together. In still another form of outing, one may go to a public place as an individual, with the expectation of being part of a group there and then leaving as an individual. Examples would be going to parks to participate in pick-up basketball games, going to a farmer’s market to shop and interact with vendors with whom one has developed a familiarity, and going to a senior citizen facility to participate in a group activity.

We also developed analyses of various forms of social interaction that emerge on site at public places. Thus, someone going to a park on his or her own may guard privacy or relax isolation when encountering others. People who go to public places already linked (mother/child; friends going to play ball; homeless persons who go to parks as acquaintances) may link up with other such linked sets of people. And people who go as individuals to be part of a group that exists on site may develop relationships that last beyond the time and space boundaries of on-site activity. Thus seniors who go on their own to play cards at an activity center may meet others and develop cooperative shopping routines together.

Generally we directed students to collect data of two sorts. They were to observe interaction on site. And they were to interview people in order to describe the trajectory in the everyday organization of life through which people came to, moved through, and left from the site.

Our overall theoretical claim is that different types of outings are systematically related to different types of interaction on site. Our initial data indicate that, while there are varied forms of outings and of interacting on site, the variations are not infinite. As our project continues, our goal will be to specify and document that there is a systematic relationship between the social structure of the outing and the nature of social interaction with strangers met at the site.

In order to provide a sense of how individual lines of student work were weaved into a common culture of inquiry, we take examples from our students’ work and frame them into a sketch of the theory that is starting to emerge. The material that follows is intended to provide a vivid sense of how we work with student researchers and how our work with one cohort of students can shape our work with the next. Thus there were often "leads" that grew out of one student’s notes and pointed to assignments that other student researchers took up in the summer of 2001 and that still other student researchers are taking up in the summer cohort of 2002.

1. Many people use public sites as individuals, going to parks to jog alone, traveling to museums to review art by themselves, attending movies on their own, working on a laptop computer in a coffee house, or sitting in a plaza to read a book. They come as individuals. They do not expressly or overtly indicate that they anticipate actively being part of a group. And they typically leave as individuals.

The distinctive kind of interaction on site that takes shape on individual outings is shaped around the management of the paradox of apparently going to a public place in order to be alone. Everyone present typically and tacitly agrees to sustain the paradox by treating the appearance of an isolated presence as a delicate facade.

Thus Michaela Herbon, in her notes on the social life of a coffee house, quotes one regular as follows: "...he starts talking about the students who come here to study. He thinks it's really pointless. They just hold their books in front of them, and most aren't even studying. They're waiting for people to come up and talk to them."

In other words, people who come to public places on their own and do not overtly interact with others are commonly seen as potentially seeking, not isolation at all but energetic contact with others. Thus student researcher Tammy Verricchio, studying interaction in museums, describes the loud phone talking by a visitor as a not-so-subtle device for making an impression on the others present.

After discussing this datum with the class, Tammy can understand that what she has described is hard evidence, not of the intentions of the person observed but of an interpretive lens that she and others use. Using such an interpretive lens, people who see others apparently alone in public places often suspect that they are subtly or indirectly seeking contact with others. And we would expect to find data showing that the behavior of those alone in public is likewise shaped by the anticipation of such readings of one’s demeanor..

2. The common everyday project in which mothers take children to parks, chat with other mothers as their children play, and leave with their child in tow, exemplifies a second form of outing. One goes to a public place linked to another, anticipating interacting with sets of people who also have come related to others, and then leave in the original pairing. This occurs not only for mothers who bring small children to parks, meet other mothers who play with their children, and go home as a mother/child dyad. It also occurs when two surfing buddies go to the beach together, interacting there with multiple other sets of surfing buddies, then leaving as a pair of friends. And the same kind of outing describes the shaping of experience when an employee is convinced by a work colleague to join in a company softball team. At the ball field, several linked sets of employees interact. Each person gets to know other employees he or she has seen at work but had never before quite come to know.

What distinctive on-site interaction is common and distinctive to this kind of outing? We hypothesize a "whipsaw" phenomenon. Consider two pairs, A-B and C-D, separately arriving at the same site. As B interacts with C, A and D are whipsawed into interaction with each other. This is a common phenomenon in all of the outings listed above: childcare in park playgrounds, employee ball teams, buddies going together to the surf beach.

We were fortunate to have in our group an unusually mature student, 50 year old Nina Swan, a woman of multiple ethnic backgrounds who, in a varied occupational career, has toured internationally as a back-up singer in a Spanish-language music group. Nina’s notes were replete with examples of "whipsaw" events at public playgrounds, many of which were only accessible to a Spanish-speaking researcher. An especially useful datum took shape as Nina discussed experiences at the "ducks" playground that borders Venice and Marina del Rey with María, a Guatemalan child care worker. María described what we would call, methodologically, a negative case, an exception that indicates the rule. Usually, when children rush to play with stranger children, their adult caretakers interact with each other. In this case, where a child was not friendly with other children, the adult imputes a barrier to interaction with the stranger-child’s adult caretaker.

3. In a third form, people make outings to settings where they anticipate encountering strangers in the company of someone they are related to, but, in this case, they anticipate possibly meeting someone and leaving with someone new, or developing an enduring relationship with a stranger. This is the essence of many youth outings. One goes to a place where strangers are present, arriving not alone but with one or more friends, and one potentially meets someone with whom a new relationship may start. Colloquially, one goes "out" with one person with the prospect of getting "hooked up" with another.

In such outings, there is an activity at the site which practically structures one’s behavior, at least to some extent, for example the behavior of shopping, eating at a fast-food outlet, sunbathing, dancing or drinking. There is always the prospect that both the friend with whom one has arrived and the activity on site in which one has engaged will be quickly abandoned, with the result that what had been apparently intense friendships and involvements in activities may be discarded with little backward regret. If a new relationship develops and one leaves with a stranger or, more commonly, becomes acquainted to the point that phone numbers are exchanged, both the activity and the others with whom one has arrived may be abandoned and recognized retrospectively as a facade.

Our student researchers found such outings to be quite familiar and, methodologically, very accessible. Such outings become sociologically interesing when one finds, as our students did, that they have a common structure in a variety of settings: malls, bars, beaches and outdoor pedestrian-designated urban spaces. They share interactional challenges of several sorts. In all cases one must overtly be "with" an acquaintance and doing something, such as shopping, eating, drinking, or sunbathing, all the while covertly exploring the possibilities of finding a new relationship. One must negotiate the demands of loyalty to the others with whom one has arrived as one explores the possibilities of starting a relationship with a stranger that will pull one away from prior acquaintances.

The result is an atmosphere at the public site that is at once covertly engaged, highly strategic, and morally charged. Stratification decisions are made in a quick and brutish way. Our student researcher, Suzin, reports on a woman at a "club" who states:

Having come with a friend, the woman anticipates that her choice to accept a dancing partner will be reviewed in her social circle. Thus there is pressure to maintain status in one’s prior social world. On the other hand, as reported by Hawa, another student researcher, a friend may abruptly abandon her prior acquaintance to explore a new relationship:

During such outings, there is always the prospect of leaving the known for the unknown, which in L.A. today in many ways can mean stepping outside one’s ethnic group and social stratum to start relationships with social "others." In the summer cohort of 2001, one of our student researcher was Hawa, a young woman of Afghani origin. She and her friend Shiwa were aware that the men they might meet in clubs would likely be ethnic and religously "others," and would probably not immediately perceive their backgrounds accurately. They experience going to clubs as a chance "to engage in interaction that may cut across gender and racial categories, creating a background for experimentation and variations from the mainstream."

Interestingly, such outings and their associated on-site interaction themes are not only found in youth cultures. In current research, Professor Katz is interviewing women who became widows in their 70s. As they work through mourning and begin a new social life, it is not uncommon for them to experience dilemmas similar to those in the world of youth dating, although in an attenuated form. Many widows, when living with their husbands, had stayed apart from group senior activities. As new widows, they are more inclined to go to senior centers and other group activities for the elderly, especially if an acquaintance, perceiving their need to move beyond mourning, encourages them. The new relationships they find often require that they renegotiate relationships with the acquaintances who brought them, and also with friends who are aware that, when their husbands were alive, they had long maintained distance from collective senior activities, a distance often backed by biting, sharply negative personal attitudes about such places and activities.

4. In a fourth type of outing to public places, people arrive at a site as individuals, actively take part in a group activity, and then leave as individuals. This is a routine for men who go to parks to engage in "pick-up" basketball games; for those who go to martial arts, Yoga and exercise groups that, in LA, often operate in outdoor, public places; and for the elderly, especially among elderly immigrants who participate in activities such as card playing at social service centers.

One of our students, Michael Wong, discovered such a group at Tang’s donut shop, a place where regulars come to play chess. He identified a fascinating theme of ethnic integration through interactional segregation. At Tang’s, the activity of chess playing brings into contact people who usually live segregated lifestyles, in this case Asian and African-Americans. The integration they live as they play chess is not recognized overtly but it is in a way celebrated through the distance that they dramatize in their relations with others on the scene. They draw a line between players and onlookers, and they keep the line vibrant by creating joking forms of tension between insiders and outsiders. In this case, the onlookers are ribbed as "cheerleaders."

Another of our students, Sonny, who is from a Mexican-Philipine family background, studied the surfer culture in which he is an active participant. There he regularly meets surfers of a wide range of ethnic backgrounds, including blond Caucasions, Mexican-origin surfers, African-Americans and Pacific Islanders. Ethnicity is rarely acknowledged directly; as part of a "cool" culture, ethnic difference is richly transcended by subtle means. Almost constantly, surfers celebrate their cultural separation as surfers from outsiders.

Sonny noted that their argot enables surfers instantly to know if someone is an insider or outsider. He wrote the following fieldnote as an illustration of how this cultural segregation works. Describing an outing to the beach, he recalls asking a stranger

Sonny explains that surfers refer to a particular section of the beach area as "Cliffs" while non-surfers call it "dog beach." This is because "cliffs" is what surfers see from the water; "dog beach" is what the non-surfers see on the beach.

Thus in both cases, at the donut shop and at the surfing scene, ethnic segregation is overcome by using a culture that creates and celebrates another forms of segregation. The segregation created on-site is not in terms of ethnicity. It is in terms of insiders and outsiders who relate to a core activity with more or less experience, skill or professional dedication.

5. In a fifth sort of outing documented by our student researchers, people go to and leave from public places in linked sets, not anticipating direct interaction with others. In outings with this anticipated trajectory, friends go to Venice Beach (as described by student Lisa Bergantino); couples go to the Hollywood Bowl for concerts (as described by Zachary Zlobig); residents guide visitors to LA to museums (as described by Tammy Verrecchio); and, as Anthony Orozco described in his fieldnotes, families go to the California Plaza, an outdoor arena setting surrounded by downtown’s largest office buildings, in order to watch free musical and "spoken word" or poetry performances. One goes and leaves the public place in a linked set (usually as family or friends), and indirectly interacts with but does not link up with others on site.

Our students not only wrote and analyzed their own fieldnotes, they reviewed the fieldnotes of other students, which were posted on our class website. Through their review of others’ fieldnotes, students developed analyses that unearthed themes which cross-cut the data that were collected by various students. In his thematic memo, for example, student researcher Anthony Orozco made us aware of a distinctive theme of on-site interaction that, at this stage of our research, appears quite promising. The set in which one travels to, through and from the public site becomes a little enclosed social world for engaging a process of self-definition by regarding, and often commenting upon, how others behave on the scene.

Here are examples from three different student projects. At the Hollywood Bowl, repeat visitors realize that they are "veterans" as they compare the simple food preparations made by others with the elaborate table settings and multiple course meals they carry in and set up. At Venice Beach, people stroll through scenes remarking on "weirdos" and noting the exceptional physiques on display, explicitly and implicitly defining themselves in terms such as normal or misshapen in comparison with others. At the Long Beach art museum, visitors pick up snippets of overheard conversation and compare their own perspectives on art, defining themselves as relatively sophisticated, philistine, profound or superficial.

To go on further with data analysis would misrepresent the tentative status of our theory at present. Perhaps enough has been presented to indicate the nature of our substantive work and how in multiple ways students play a key role in our research. Working with a group of novice fieldworkers in ethnographic research is a matter of art before it is a matter of scientific rigor. Not knowing with any precision what the analytic framework will be, it is impossible to direct students in great detail. Rather, one keeps the group discussing common themes, and at each class or group meeting, students leave with a set of leads to follow. They are given the freedom and responsibility to decide for themselves which lead can most fruitfully fit the realities they actually encounter. The success of the endeavor depends on the vibrancy of the common culture that is developed at group meetings, and the confidence that students develop to take leads on their own. Student comments on the program clearly showed a widespread appreciation for the maturity of the role that was designed for them, and a great enthusiasm for exploring field possibilities creatively.