Grant Park Farmers Market
Executive Summary
On this page, you will find an abundance of information regarding my teammates' and I’s Ethnographic Report on the Grant Park Farmers Market. This report was the result of a semester-long project for our ethnography class at Kennesaw State University. Our team was comprised of just 4 members, and the project was spread out over a 13-week period from September 27th to December 1st. To obtain and analyze all of the information we sought, we used the method of Applied Ethnography. To put it simply, Applied Ethnography is a research framework that puts understanding people’s behaviors in a given setting at the forefront.
Tools:
Discord
iMessages
Google Docs
InDesign
Microsoft Word
Members:
Isaiah Williams (Leader)
Nigel Jordan
Mateo Perez
Miyya Cody
Challenges:
conflicting schedules
only 1 day per week for observations
Role:
Researcher
Interview facilitator
Interview moderator
Research Question:
What does the Grant Park Farmers Market mean to you personally, as well as to the community?
Cohering Metaphor:
"Going to the farmers market as an adult is like going to the mall as a middle schooler."
Results:
The Grant Park Farmers Market provides a sense of community to each person that attends.
Introduction
The project we took on during our fall semester at KSU takes a closer look at the culture and significance of the Grant Park Famers Market through applied ethnography. The market is located in Atlanta, Georgia, and to start, you will need to know what a Farmer's Market is.
The Farmer’s Market Coalition defines a farmers market as “a public and recurring assembly of farmers or their representatives selling the food that they produced directly to consumers.” For our study, the Grant Park Farmers markets offer food AND products.
When we were put together as a group to start the semester, it was clear that we all had some type of connection to Farmer’s Markets in our past. Given that we all chose Isaiah’s ideal field of study as something we would like to work on. It wasn’t soon after the first meeting that we discovered we all had some understanding and experience with Farmer’s Market’s culture or farming practices in general. Therefore, we wanted to get a full grasp of what these markets offer to the people that attend, and what was most important to those people about their local market.
For our research, we used the method of Applied Ethnography to better understand our field. Applied Ethnography is the study of a culture from the perspective of somebody that already belongs to the field. When I mention a field, I am referring to a space where an ethnographer collects his/her data. In our case, the specific field we studied was the Grant Park Farmers Market.
To further relate our findings and results to something that may be more relatable for others, we created a cohering metaphor. A cohering metaphor is an effective way to summarize complex ideas from qualitative research. Our cohering metaphor was “Going to the Farmers Market as an adult is like going to the mall as a middle schooler.”
For the remainder of this page, I will go over our methodology, recruitment, fieldwork, observations, interviews, and analysis.
Methodology
More often than not, Ethnographical research projects are done over a long period of time. For our project, we had the duration of our ethnography class during our fall semester at Kennesaw State University. The structure we based our research methods off of comes directly from Applied Ethnography. It’s important to know that applied ethnography is a more direct approach to obtaining information in your field. Take away the “Applied” and Ethnography can, “be global, multi-sited and mobile in the sense that researchers follow people around physical and virtual places”, as mentioned by Erkisson & Kovalainen.
Recruitment
After choosing Isaiah’s idea to study a farmer’s market, we chose a specific market to study. We chose the Grant Park location because of our common knowledge and interest in the Atlanta Community. Because all our team lives inside the city lines, it made for a good meeting location and easy to-access field. To start our research, we based our assumptions on these markets being most focused on the products being sold. It was not hard to get permission to be at the Market, as everyone was extremely friendly and willing to interact. We spent 10+ hours each observing the market’s participants and followed those observations up with 4 interviews with Market Attendees. 3 of the 4 interviews were done in person at the market.
Fieldwork
When discussing fieldwork, it’s important to know most, if not all, fieldwork is done in the field. Sam Ladner describes fieldwork as two things: The ethnographer acting as a research instrument and walking in the shoes of your participants. At the Grant Park Market, we spent hours observing the smallest of interactions and thinking more about what those interactions mean in their given setting. Each member was responsible for logging 10+ hours of observations. At times, we would observe together, and at other times our schedules would conflict and we would have to take care of our own work. Being that the market was only open every Sunday from 9 am to 1pm, it made it a little easier to make time for us to be in the field. While observing we were responsible for keeping pages of jottings and notes about our findings, people we talked to outside of interviews, and even foods or products we may have indulged ourselves with.
For my observations, I took jottings and notes in Microsoft word. For jottings, the page was often filled with half sentences and hard-to-read sentences, but this is because my jottings were just my quickly written thoughts. After each Observation session, the time would be taken to transform these jottings into a field note. A field note is a more specifically articulated take on what you experienced in the field and how that has an effect on your personal outlook.
Observations:
Our team was required to do a minimum of 10 hours of observing in their field. For my research, I took 4 sessions to complete the 10-hour observation frame, and for most of those sessions, there was a lot going on at the Market. Like most Farmer’s Markets, they only come once a week, so there are a number of regular attendees
After my first observation session, my outlook on our assumptions changed entirely. I started to notice how much more friendly interactions were happening than business interactions. I started to take into account why people felt so comfortable bringing children and dogs to this market, and much more. Sometime in the middle of our research process, we decided as a group to not only focus on not only what the market can provide to people personally, but what it provides to the community as well.
Interviews:
For each of the 4 interviews, we had one moderator and 3 facilitators. A moderator in an interview is the one driving the direction of the interview by asking questions. While the facilitators are other involved in taking notes of things they find important. Although, facilitators, in our case, were more than welcome to briefly interrupt with a question they found important. I was responsible for moderating one of our four participants in a virtual setting.
Just like observation jottings, we took interview jottings that were quick written-down versions of our thoughts during the interview and turned those into more articulated field notes
Interviewees:
Jamie:
Occupation: Garnish and Gather tent operator at the market.
Discovery: Being a vendor, Jamie is obligated to come for work but finds joys in some of the specific products, and even comes on her off days.
Other Findings: For a brief moment, we saw customers confronting Jamie about our satisfied she is with her products. Jamie also gave us a few tips on the hottest products at the market.
Charnae:
Occupation: Lab Technician
Discovery: Charnae is not a every weekend participant, but does come occasionally. She likes the market, but wouldn’t put and emphasis on community because she always sees new faces.
Other Findings: Charnae comes to the market when she has the time and money to spend on the more preferred products.
Yvette:
Occupation: Payroll Specialist
Discovery: She comes to the market for specific products, but makes sure to spend a decent amount of time here. Also likes to bring friends and family.
Other Findings: Yvette says this market has “unmatched vibes” compared to others in Atlanta.
Jadon:
Occupation: Circular Economies Specialist
Discovery: Jadon visits the market to get out of the house because he works a stay at home job.
Other Findings: Even outside of this market, Jadon is always looking for a sense of community at any market he attends. He says he attends these markets to see cool products, meet cool people, and refill his social battery.
Analysis
After weeks of fieldwork, our team had enough research data to come together and analyze. We met multiple times in class setting as well as virtually to discuss our findings, and what those founding’s meant in relation to our research question. We used a FIGJAM collaboration board to organize all of our data from personal observations and interviews into conceptual categories in our ordered matrices. An Ordered Matrices is a chart designed to help research teams discover common themes in their works. The commonalities between themes found in research are called conceptual categories. These are broad categories of things that you and some of your team members observed alike. By creating ordered matrices, you provide each member a place to put their notes on that category so that all of these separate ideas and findings can be read in an organized manner. All of our categories were the same across the Interview and Observation matrices: Vendors, Sense of Community, Specific Products, and Accessibility. Through these matrices we were able to come together to answer our research question and create a cohering metaphor.
Answer to Research Question:
“The Grant Park farmers market is where people come to feel connected/closer to their community by purchasing local goods from businesses in the area. Since they see (most of) the same vendors every week, this reoccurrence adds to their sense of community by allowing them to have some connection to a local business.”
Cohering Metaphor:
Going to the farmers market as an adult is like going to the mall as a middle schooler.
Interview-only matrices
