Can anyone help me with my Participant Observation Project?

Question

For my Introduction to Cultural Anthropology class I have to do a Partcipant Observation Project. Can anyone give me ideas on a topic?

Answer 1

Possible subjects: children in a museum or zoo, a teen subculture, a sports team, a religious group, patrons at a homeless shelter/soup kitchen, workers and patrons at an animal shelter or rescue group, student actors

You need to choose a group and a topic.  What benefit could knowing the results of your research project have?  You have to answer that question, and pick a research question, and choose a subject group.  For an intro class, don't try to do general ethnography.  Go into the field with a research hypothesis or a specific interest.

Answer 2

This is not difficult.  

Go somewhere where there are a lot of people.  Make sure they are doing something, anything.  If they're communicating, that usually helps, too.  

Churches, workplaces, parks, chess clubs, heck, even donut shops have been the subject of major doctoral participant-observation projects.  Just pick somewhere that sounds interesting and GO.