COMM552/Santa Anita outline
From Driscollwiki
See also: http://etherpad.com/3oEExfKdQW
Our plan: everyone to wite 2-3 paragraphs in this platform. Goal to finish around
STATUS: (we'll use this to determine whent the doc is ready for uploading)
- Benjamin: still working on this (don't turn in the doc yet!)
- Neta:
- Jove:
- Kevin:
Intro (One paragraph)
- Who is on our team?
- Facts about the location
- When, how we arrived/departed
- Our research question
- Typology of race-track visitors
- Regular /
- Typology of race-track visitors
Fieldnote techne: ENJAMIN to do this section and Fieldnotes
- Tools (1 paragraph)
- Phones -- Kevin and Ben both took notes on their cell phones to be unobtrusive, and for convenience in the moment, and to avoid transcription later.
- Still images, videos
- Pen, paper
- How does the space enable/disable various notetaking approaches, tools?
- e.g. at the racetrack, everyone is writing on paper with pens+pencils
- How we organized our notetaking: some were focused on a particular spatial/interaction context. Others organized observations more concretely around a research question, i.e., taking notes that connected to a theme.
Writing fieldnotes
- Style
- Narrative
- Bullet points
- Organizational approaches
- Place-based
- Time-based
- Event-based
- Recording conversations, quotations
- Naming/claiming -- e.g., Jove's naming of people by role, .e.g., "early bird"
- Taking pictures was something we all struggled to capture.
Demonstration of Contrasting Notes: One Divergent Event (Neta will write this up and analyze)
NETA: "After walking around a bit and trying to understand what’s going on, Jove and I went to the Xpress bet booth in order to ask for some information. The clerk was an Asian man of around 55 with glasses, dressed relatively formally. I told him it was our first time here and we didn’t know how it works, and whether he could explain to us a little bit. He told us that first of all we should go and purchase a program – “that’s your bible”. He said that the program explains most of what we need to know. At that point Ben joined us with a program he just bought. The clerk explained more to us, which I didn’t quite get, he was talking rather fast and while polite was not too patient. I remember he told us that when making bets we should tell the clerks the numbers of the horses and not their names, because they can’t remember their names.
From behind him came another employee, a young white woman of around 22-25, dressed more informally. She explained to us in much more detail how the betting works, she showed us in the program the full list of different kinds of bets possible and explained about each one of them. She asked whether we had vouchers to bet, when we said we don’t she escorted us to get some vouchers. I asked if there is a minimum sum to bet and she explained the minimum is $2 but it depends on the sort of bet, some bets you can do for 10 cents. Ben asked her whether she recommends the newcomer seminar (newcomers are called in the program ‘handicappers’) that starts at 12, she said she does, and it explains a lot of what she explained to us. When she showed us the machine where you do the actual betting, she showed us that we can choose the racetrack – so we’re in Santa Anita. Ben asked if you can also bet on other places, she said yes. She explained that usually people who come here for the first time bet on the races that are here, but “you have people who come here every day, every morning they’re here, they bet on all kinds of things”. She explains something about the odds to us, how to interpret them. When I ask her how much I would win if I bet $2 on an odd that 6 to 1 she says: “you’re asking me to do math?” and takes a while to calculate it in her head. She was very friendly, patient and seemed happy to help and explain. When we left she wished us “have fun, you guys”.
Jove: Neta and I went up to one of the windows. A nice girl, 20ish blond white American (I guess), gave us a pretty detailed introduction on how to bet using a machine. We were told to buy a program first, which has all the information about the race, then to exchange the bills into vouchers, and use vouchers to bet through the machine. The service girl was noticeable since all other staff I saw was old and non-white. I was surprised to hear that people can bet on races at other racetracks. The service girl told us that those who come regularly tend to bet at other tracks. She saw them almost everyday. Newcomers, however, were more likely to bet on races at this track. They wanted to see the horses. Ben joined Neta and I in the middle of the introduction. Neta and Ben traded a two-dollar voucher each. I did not gamble. We went to a table, sat down and started observing people. Kevin went back at this moment with a program and Daily Racing Form, a newspaper with racing information.
Ben: Inside, I see a pretty woman, probably in her 20s, giving Neta and Jove an introduction to the machines. The woman seems a bit out of place, and I resist the desire to ask her what she’s doing working here, where she comes from. Most of the other employees seem older – at least in their 30s, if not 40s and 50s. The woman has clearly given this tour many times (at one point, when the computer screen times-out, she says that ~“I usually get through this before that happens”). We ask about the Beginner’s Seminar that I see listed in the program for 12pm, and the woman encourages it highly, although she says she hasn’t been herself. She is generous with her time, helping us across stations (she navigates behind the counter, and we hop windows from the other side) to put cash into one machine, and then move back to demonstrate placing bets at another. I am surprised to discover that you can bet on races at other (distant) tracks – and the woman explains, upon being asked, that the regulars (“who are here every day”) do more of that, and the newcomers tend to bet on what they can see. Her calm and encouraging attitude turns out to be the norm, and her distinction (between the regulars and those who bet on what they see) gets me curious, and changes how I look at things for the rest of the day.
Shared observation: Varying types of capital (Kevin)
Cultural capital
- Knowledge sharing, pride
- Advice
- Information sharing
- Expertise
- Welcomingness, bringing newcomers into the space
- Community based on Expertise: there seemed a broad orientation toward facts and insider knowledge. People asserted their knowledge by offering facts. And by wanting to be acknowledged for their contributions. Neta describes this partly in terms of social capital, and described how people wanted credit. Kevin describes it as gendered -- how his conversations as a man seemed more about the exchange of facts. Jove think giving advice to new comers is kinda of a fun for regular comers. showing their experience.
Monetary capital
How does the structure of race gaming encouraging sharing? (Kevin)
- If you win, you can win together.
- You need to demonstrate your knowledge to exercise your expertise.
- not a zero sum game - winning does not feel like it's at the expense of others
Typology (Jove will reflect here on typology )
1. early bird 2. female 3. social gambler 4. outside (Kevin: beting on 5 races in a roll) 5. New comers (Ben's description )
- The newcomer phenomenon: we were unified by being new to this scene. This seems very different from repetitive observation where we can develop a relationship with the community. It affects what seems interesting to our eyes -- there was a lot of talk about what "surprised" each of us. As newcomers, I suspect we observe certain things. and may be better and worse at differentiating other newcomers from the regular.
6.families, ethnicity
gender, ethnicity
