The Mole People was an interesting book to say the least. I thought it would be about the people who use the subways and how they act. My ethnography was about people riding the bus on the A&M campus. I thought this would be about those riding subways, not those living in old abandoned tunnels.
The stories were interesting yet exciting at some points. They were depressing at points, but not always. It was interesting to think that these people who are very smart and could be engineers are living down in the tunnels. It also makes me feel a little safer that we don't have subways as there are in New York City. I would feel frightened to go down there due to fear of muggings, being on a train that sees someone get run over, etc. It was also interesting to compare and contrast those who live in subways to homeless who live in San Antonio for instance. They just duck into entryways of stores for the most part.
I really liked the book, although it was a completely different ethnography than I was expecting, and different from what I did. This was more quality while mine was quantitative.
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I think she left out a lot of her emotion when writing the book. Even I would be more more scared than her going into the tunnels. It was an ethnography, though, and she had to seem like she wasn't getting involved, but she really was. If she didn't really get involved, and went at it alone, she would have gotten hurt.
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