Wacquant Ethnography Summary

Wacquant also followed the anthropological method of participant observation and the creation of an ethnography, despite some notable differences in the scope of his research. While Malinowski traveled across the world and immersed himself fully in the foreign culture of the Trobriand Islanders, living in their homes and learning their language, Wacquant stayed within Western society, living in his own city and residing in his own home. Despite this, however, Loïc Wacquant still managed to immerse himself fully into a culture foreign from his own, one that he would never be able to fully understand without he himself participating in it, that of the black amateur boxers living in the Chicago ghetto. For 13 months, Wacquant practiced boxing with the men of the Boys Club boxing club in Woodlands, Chicago where, through personal participation, he was able to observe this subculture, their social hierarchies, interactions, implicit rules and thus understand the impact of boxing on their plights as individuals and as a marginalized group.
He practiced boxing with the men day in and day out which allowed him to separate himself from his white, upper-middle-class cultural bias and observe the occurrences in the boxing arena from an insider’s objective standpoint. The ethnography he compiled from his diary-style, regular interval observations, along with relevant maps and socioeconomic data documentation was revolutionary in its own respect, providing a rare snapshot of a marginalized culture that is often mischaracterized in western society as dangerous, impoverished and