Analyzing O 'Brien's' Silence On The BART Train

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Over the Weekend Quiz For this assignment, I have chosen to review the paper called “Silence on the BART Train: The Urban Passenger as a Situational Identity”. This student was looking into why people tend not to talk to each other or doing any form of socializations when taking the BART. The study venue was the BART, and the identities that were studied were normal people taking the BART, who were called “urban passengers” who abstains from any social interaction. The thesis claim for this paper is that the non-socialization behavior at the BART is a result of the maintenance of identity “urban passenger”. The student believed that the BART train could be a social space with its own rules that were passed on from passenger to passenger. He/she believed that this behavior was taught by taking the train. Furthermore, he/she also thought that the silence that appears on the BART is an effect of socio-economic inequalities, due to the diverse background the BART passenger have. …show more content…

In developing the thesis he/she used citations to supports his/her arguments. O’Brien’s essay Learning the Script: Socialization were used early on. The quote “we absorb an entire structure of meaning and routine through socialization” supports the argument about that the rules on the BART are passed on by passengers. Another feature that impressed me was the reflection on why he/she had chosen the BART train as his/her venue. This argument was very well presented and thought through. I was also impressed to read that he/she had done a survey both on the BART and on a shopping mall, which he got support from the reading by Douglas Rushkoff, to have data to compare his data with. This shows that this student was very committed to his/her work and that he/she wanted as good and accurate data as possible. I also liked that he/she used readings through his/her whole

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