ANTH 2 - Final Paper - Grade: A PDF

Preview

Summary

I took this class with Professor Hoelle....

Description

JESUS BURGERS IN ISLA VISTA

An image of a staff member serving a student a burger, and the Jesus Burgers logo on the bottom right corner. Introduction: On a Friday night, you enter the city of Isla Vista, go down to Del Playa Drive and hear music from houses down the block and see students left and right. You keep walking until you get to 6686 Del Playa Drive, where a group of people are flipping patties and giving out burgers; this is the Jesus Burgers house. The focus of my research is to discover how Jesus Burgers contributes to the community in Isla Vista and why they choose to live on Del Playa, where the culture is different. Methods: I gathered my data mainly through one-on-one interviews that were each about thirty minutes long. I went to the Jesus Burgers house on a Friday night and interviewed one staff member, two students preparing burgers, and a few students passing by the house. For each interview, I went through the ethnographic elements which were: explicit purpose, ethnographic explanations, and ethnographic questions (Werner, 1998). I also conducted a participant observation by going to the house on another Friday night and involving myself in their activities like helping serve burgers. Description: On February 10th, I went to the Jesus Burgers house around 8 pm as a participant observer. I went into the backyard and heard live music playing, where people were singing and lifting up their hands in the air. Around 10 pm, everyone moved out to the front yard and started grilling burgers or conversing with people. Slowly, a line formed from the grill and curved around the front yard. Throughout the night, people gathered around the fire to talk or eat their burgers. Across the street, I saw a sign that said "Free Blessings” where people prayed or talked to anybody who approached them. Some people walked passed trying to avoid eye contact, while some looked around curiously trying to figure out what was going on.

The week after, I went back to interview several people at and around the Jesus Burgers house. I tried to provide a comfortable environment by make the interview feel more like a conversation, keeping the questions casual and explaining the purpose and focus of my research. To gain an outside perspective, I interviewed a few students walking down the street and asked what they knew about Jesus Burgers. Many said they visited the house to get a burger a couple times, and stated that the people serving were “super nice and chill.” When I asked if they knew why they do this every Friday, many said that it was to take care of the people who were coming back from parties. The few that knew the true purpose of Jesus Burgers were the students that shared the same beliefs as the members of Jesus Burgers. Through an interview with one of the staff member, Jasmine (pseudonym), I learned that Jesus Burgers was formed 15 years ago by a group of college students that started off just making dinner for their neighbors, but eventually found a house on Del Playa where they made mass amounts of burgers every week and “shared the love of Jesus with everyone they encountered.” I learned that Jasmine suffered with depression throughout her college career at UCSB and moved out to Europe after graduating, where she was “radically saved from hopelessness.” She planned to go to East Asia to serve as a missionary, but ended up going back to Isla Vista to “love on the city that once had been such a huge place of hurt.” Now it has been two years and she enjoys “throwing a party every Friday night.” When I asked what changed, she said she built a “desire to never live too comfortably, to live in a culture different from my own, and to see the truth of Jesus' love transform a city.” Analysis: When you take an etic perspective, it seems like Jesus Burgers does not fit in with the culture where partying, drinking, and socializing with loud music is a social norm. It seems like Jesus Burgers just gives out free burgers to be nice and throw a gathering like any other house. However from an emic perspective, you realize the Jesus Burgers community values the differences and strives to reach out to people who are not familiar with their culture. In my interview with Jasmine, I understood that their main focus was to spread their culture within the city. What makes the Jesus Burgers community unique is that they spread their culture in a way that is relatable to the rest of the community because they understand that their culture is not part of the social norm. Jesus Burgers work towards integrating their culture within the Isla Vista culture by finding the common ground between the different cultures. For example, Jesus Burgers gives out free burgers to provide a comfortable environment for people to easily approach and experience what they call “Jesus’s love.” Being a participant observer, I realized they did not try to force their culture upon you, but encouraged you if you had the interest. Walking around in the house, people asked me casual questions like how I was doing, or if I received a burger. However, if I was curious about their culture I was easily given information by anybody I asked. At the same time, Jesus Burgers grills their burgers in the front yard, exposing their culture to the community, and the “Free Blessings” sign acts to catch people’s attention. In addition, the Jesus Burgers community uses language that is common within Isla Vista in order to minimize the differences between the communities. For example, as I was interviewing Jasmine, she described how she enjoys “throwing a party” every Friday. Even though her idea of a “party” is different from the norms, she uses that term to acknowledge how talking about Jesus and praying is just as fun as going out and drinking with friends.

Conclusion: It is easy to assume that communities like to surround themselves with the people that share the same culture. However, Jesus Burgers chose Del Playa because i t was such a different community. By reaching out to people who were completely different, they were able to see radical changes that allowed them to fully practice their culture. The fact that they practice agency in a way that does not disrupt Isla Vista shows how integrated they are within the community. Despite the differences, Jesus Burgers is not an isolated or segregated group but just another piece that makes up the Isla Vista community. Word Count: 1077 Reference: Bogdan, Robert. "Participant Observation." Peabody Journal of Education  50, no. 4 (July 1973): 302-08. Welsch, Robert Louis, and Luis Antonio Vivanco. Asking Questions About Cultural Anthropology: A Concise Introduction . New York: Oxford University Press, 2016. Werner, and Schoeplfe. "Formulating and Negotiating Questions: Igbo Example." Systematic Fieldwork, June 19, 1998. "Jesus Burgers." Isla Vista Church. October 1, 2015. Accessed February 20, 2017. http://islavistachurch.org/jesus-burgers/....