Introduction
The aim of this project according to me was to understand a specific culture in detail and inquire about the material and non material things about it.
TOOLS OF INQUIRY
SEMI STRUCTURED INTERVIEW
In a semi structured interview, the questions asked by the interviewer does not follow any sequence. They are spontaneous and according to the direction of where the conversation is going
This could help being slightly informal with the person we are interviewing and gather more information about the topic.
It could also help the interviewer to gather a variety of information that the person might reveal during the conversation.
For eg. While interviewing my friend about fevicol, I asked her if she is a frequent user of fevicol. She replied that she does not use it that often to which I further asked her the reason as to why she does not prefer using fevicol that much.
5W1H
This tool of inquiry is used to ask some basic questions about the research. The 5 W's are What, When, Where, Why and Who and the H stands for How. These questions might be basic yet very important to gather most of the information.
I used this tool very much while gathering information about the festival that I chose for my individual project.
My inquiry process started from these trigger questions and helped me to research even further.
Every material thing had a 'Why' behind it and I got curious to find answers to it.
For eg. While researching for my festival, I wanted to know How the festival is performed and while gathering that information, I found out that temples are decorated with fresh flowers and that again made me curious as to why we use flowers to perform rituals.
STRENGTHS
During this project, collecting information about the given festival was a clear point for me as to inquire about it I didn't search through secondary sources, rather asked my mother and grandmother regarding the rituals performed. It was interesting to know how the ritual is performed in my family. It was also easier to inquire from them as it could be done at any time.
CHALLENGES
The challenge that I faced during the project was for my final commentary task where I had to gather information regarding the Shelter of Ladhaki people. There was not much information available in the beginning but as I dug deeper in the internet, through Youtube videos and uploaded pdfs, I found some relevant information.
KEY LEARNINGS
While doing this project, it was important for us to make the commentary log based purely on facts.
One of the most important learning was that every material thing had a non material reason behind it.
The non material reason behind something could be very sensitive towards the community, therefore it is important to be careful so that we do not end up offending any community.
Another thing I learnt was that many times the non material reason behind the material things of different categories is the same.
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