My partner and I are interested in understanding university as a particular kind of culture that students from different backgrounds and cultures create. Each student has their own cultural background but in university they interact and mingle with each other and form another culture within the university. However it is true that the students, especially those who are from eastern countries and those from western countries, do not make a completely combined culture; they rather make different groups of people within those who have some aspects of their culture that they can all understand. This characteristic was well shown in our research which was done by making field notes and social mapping at one of the residential colleges of ANU.
Field notes is one of the methods anthropologists use in order to record and study their observation of a specific phenomenon or group of people they are interested in. It is used among those people who are trying to understand the true perspective of the subject being studied. Another method of ethnography used in this research is social mapping, which can be used to present information about a social network. Social mapping has been utilised by anthropologists historically for mapping out the connections in populations they are researching about or interested in. For these reasons, we chose to use these methods with our research, since we both agreed that field notes and social map would be the best way to present what we research and try to narrate
We did our research specifically at the dining hall of Ursula hall which is one of the residential colleges, and we have a reason for choosing the dining hall; among the places where students mingle, the dining hall is believed to be the most common and popular place that people come and go. In addition the dining hall is set out with a number of separate tables which means it is easier to analyse human behaviour, for example who sits with whom and where. Throughout the day, dinner time is when the dining hall gets most crowded and this is why we went to visit at around six in the evening. Dinner starts at five-thirty, so six was believed to be the time when the dining hall would be properly filled with residents having dinner. As soon as we arrived at the hall, we started off by drawing a social map which leads to something like this;
As presented, there are some rules that my partner and I applied in drawing this social map. To explain them, first of all, features such as the entrance, the salad bar and the kitchen are simply drawn because they do not have significant characteristics that tell human behaviours, since those are spots that everyone goes and not necessarily form groups. Other than those, tables were coloured into different colours in accordance with people sitting on the table. To start with those that are coloured in blue, they were occupied by the local students throughout the dinner time. On the other hand those that are coloured in red were where Asian students sat throughout the time. There were couple of tables that were occupied both local and Asian students as shown on the map. However, there were some tables that were almost empty during the meal time but occupied by a few outcasts and those are coloured in orange. Furthermore not all the tables at the hall were used on the meal time; couple of tables that are coloured in black were never used. However those that are coloured in green are the tables that were sometimes occupied the local students and sometimes by Asian students. The reason why we did not colour them in either blue or red is because those tables were never used by the two groups at the same time; a certain group of people kept on coming and leaving.
In addition to social mapping, we also made some field notes observing residents coming into the hall for dinner, including how they choose what table to sit at, and whom they sit with. Starting at the point when my partner and I arrived at the dining hall, which was around six, half of the hall was filled. Then around quarter passed six, two thirds of the tables were filled. By this time some tables in the corner were not being used but as the hall got more crowded those tables that are coloured in red in the corner started to get filled up. As it can be presumed according to the map, local students tend to sit at the tables near the kitchen and the salad bar, whereas Asian students sit in the corner further from those. However on those tables that both local and Asian students groups sat together, it was mostly Indians who sat with the locals. Also on the other hand the locals who sat with Asian students came into the hall together, unlike the way other groups are formed; they usually came in separately but then formed a group at the site.
From these observations it can be concluded that university can be said to be another new ‘culture’ where people from variety of cultures and backgrounds form. However this does not necessarily mean that they all mingle with each other, as told in the previous field notes. If considering only within the university itself, it can be seen as a locale where widely diverse cultures are present. It is not only those who are westerners or easterners; these two can again be divided into numerous cultures. Hence in conclusion, university can be seen as a culture where people within the site have opportunities to come across with other cultures that they have not yet experienced.
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