Subway Observation

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When people think of New York City, they think of a city that is crowded. The most crowded place in New York besides the streets would have to be the subway station. Thousands of people a day cross paths and many do so as a result of public transportation. In this assignment, I observed and realized many different things about my route on the city subway. On an MTA subway anything and everything can happen. Many of the things that I witnessed I had never before because I am always preoccupied with my phone that I am too busy to look up and actually observe the people around me. Some of the instances I witnessed, I was taken back and was in shock because I never realized some of these things were going on around me. This observation period really …show more content…

A homeless man walked onto the train, with his Styrofoam cup in hand, and began walking up and down the subway car asking if anybody had any spare change. As he continued to walk through a small crowd. He must have slightly brushed against a woman standing up because I could tell by her body language that she was uncomfortable. As the man made his way to leave the car, the woman grew disgusted and took some napkins she had in her purse and immediately scrubbed off what she thought must have been “infectious germs” that were left on her jacket by the man. Through the actions of the woman it occurred to me that she was giving him many informal sanctions. Informal sanctions take the form of gestures, frowns, and smiles; locution, companionship; avoidance; and, occasionally, violence. They are frequent, spontaneous reactions to behaviors that anyone can administer. (Farley and Flota 2012, 296) The poor man received many disgusted looks as well as avoidance from the woman because she must have saw him as unclean and that bothered me. While I was observing this it made me a little bit angry that she reacted in such a way because the poor man cannot control his living situation. I think that if he would have seen what kind of looks she was giving him that it would have made him upset. I just kept looking at her thinking to myself why would she outwardly do that? I guess I got lost in my staring and our eyes met and we both quickly looked away and we both turned our attention to someplace else. This awkward stare meet is considered a civil inattention. In Erving Goffman’s article Behavior in Public Places: Notes on the Social Organization of Gatherings he states, “Perhaps the clearest illustration both of civil inattention and of the infraction of this ruling occurs when a person takes advantage of another’s not looking to look at him, and then finds that, the object of his gaze has suddenly turned

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