Assessment 1 - Fridge Ethnography
Observe one real refrigerator as a micro-sociological site and read it as governed space — Module 2's method, applied to a kitchen you have access to
Due
2 Apr
17:00 Fri, wk 6
Weight
20%
of the course
Submit
2500–3000
words, PDF + appendix
The brief#
Observe one refrigerator, in use, by the people who use it, for long enough that they forget you are looking. Then tell me what governs it.
Draws on Module 2 — Micropolitics (weeks 4–6). The frameworks are Douglas on classification, Goffman on performance, and the power-mapping method from the Fridge Archaeology tutorial.
The site can be your family’s fridge, a share house’s, a workplace’s, or a communal one in a building. Contested space leaves more evidence, so a share or workplace fridge often produces sharper material — but a household of one is a legitimate site, and some of the strongest submissions have been exactly that. The occupants are past versions of you, and they had different plans.
What separates a strong submission from an adequate one is not how much you observed. It is whether you found something you were not looking for and followed it, rather than collecting evidence for a conclusion you already held in week 4. The most common failure is a competent description with no argument — which is precisely what the week 6 workshop exists to catch.
What you submit#
A PDF, 2500–3000 words:
- The argument, stated early. What governs this fridge, and how do you know?
- The evidence, from your own fieldwork.
- The frameworks, used rather than name-dropped. A paragraph saying “Douglas argues dirt is matter out of place” and then doing nothing with it is worth less than one that reclassifies something in your own crisper drawer.
- An appendix of field materials — power maps, photographs, notes, the archaeology drawing. Not counted in the word limit and not marked directly, but it is what makes the observation credible.
Fieldwork and ethics#
Your fieldwork window is weeks 4–6, and the assessment is due at the end of week 6 — before the break, not during it. Three weeks is enough for a pattern to show; the break itself is not fieldwork time you can lean on.
Two absolute requirements:
- Consent. Anyone identifiable has agreed in advance, knowing it is coursework. If somebody declines, that fridge is not your site.
- Anonymity. No real names, and no photographs in which a person is identifiable. Anonymise the household, not only the individuals.
The awkward part of this assessment is that the interesting findings are usually about people you live with. That is manageable, and it is better talked through than around — email Simone Ravel promptly, whose answer to “is this too small a thing to write about” is almost always no.
Do not tidy the fridge before you observe it. Every year somebody does, and it costs them the best material they had.
The spec
The brief poses the problem and leaves room for a response. The spec is the fixed part: what a marker checks. Some lines can be checked mechanically; the rest call for judgement.
- submitted by 17:00 Friday 2 April, as a PDF
- 2500–3000 words, plus field materials in an appendix that does not count towards the word limit
- everyone identifiable has agreed to be written about, and is anonymised
- it makes an argument, not only a description
How it is marked
| Criterion | Weight | High Distinction | Distinction | Credit | Pass |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Quality of observation | 35% | Fieldwork uncovers something genuinely unexpected and follows it up rather than noting it in passing, with enough specificity that a marker could reconstruct the household from the appendix alone. | Detailed, specific observation that surfaces something not visible at a glance — a habit, a negotiation, a discrepancy between what people say and what the fridge shows. | Sustained observation showing a clear pattern, but the description leans on the obvious cues (labels, position) rather than the harder-to-notice behavioural traces. | Fieldwork is present but thin: a handful of observations, mostly what was already expected going in, with little that could not have been guessed from outside the fridge. |
| Analytical argument | 40% | An argument a reader could not have predicted from the brief alone, sharpened against real counter-evidence, and stated early enough to organise the whole submission around it. | A specific, defensible claim that accounts for the evidence and addresses at least one obvious counter-reading of it. | A clear claim about what governs the fridge, stated early, that mostly holds up against the evidence presented. | An argument is stated, but it stays close to description — restating what was observed rather than explaining what governs it. |
| Use of course frameworks | 25% | Frameworks are put to work against each other, or extended to a case they do not obviously fit, doing real analytical labour rather than supplying vocabulary. | Frameworks are used as tools to reclassify or reinterpret specific evidence, not just cited alongside it. | At least one framework is applied to a specific observation, though the connection is asserted more than demonstrated. | Douglas, Goffman or the power-mapping method are named and briefly defined, but not applied to this fridge specifically. |
Markers read the PDF in one sitting: the argument first, then the appendix behind it, then a check of whether Douglas, Goffman and the power-mapping method are doing real work or only being named. A submission that reads well aloud but leaves the marker unable to say back what governs the fridge has failed on 'analytical argument' regardless of how much fieldwork sits behind it.
'Quality of observation' and 'analytical argument' are not the same axis: thin fieldwork with a sharp claim still loses marks for evidence, and rich fieldwork with no claim caps out in the same range no matter how detailed the appendix. The two move together only when the argument is stated early and the fieldwork is what proves it, not what replaces it.