clothing and exchange at Bryn Mawr!!!!!!!

For our six week project, we will analyze how exchange through free boxes and the “For Sale or Free!” Facebook page at Bryn Mawr College as well as the clothing and appearances of Bryn Mawr students play into direct and indirect contacts within Bryn Mawr and beyond. This project will be largely separated between us but we will relate the two parts through the flow of clothing in and out of Bryn Mawr and the contacts that result. We will relate this project to “Take Back the Market” by Cameron, Healy, and Gibson-Graham since exchanges at Bryn Mawr include a lot more direct contacts, but indirect contacts are still made in the process.

 

Questions for free boxes (Angela)

• What items are put into free boxes, what items are taken out, and how often?

• What motivates people to place items into free boxes or take items out of free boxes?

• Whether there is a discrepancy between placing items into and taking items out of free boxes for individual students

• How often people go to free boxes outside their hall or dorm

• Whether people know or care where an item they take comes from and how that impacts their taking or not taking of items

• How the honor code and other unwritten rules affect the usage of free boxes and dorm life as a whole

 

Answers for free boxes (Angela)

• Take inventory of items in free boxes every week for 3-4 different dorm halls to figure out what items are put in and taken out

• Send out a survey through email and post onto Facebook that includes:

• Class year

• How often one takes and gives to free boxes

• How many items are taken in one visit

• What items one puts into free boxes and why

• What items one takes from free boxes and why

• How often one goes to a free box outside of their dorm or hall and why (adventure? boredom? need something specific?)

• Whether one thinks about who the item belonged to and it that affects one’s taking of an item

• If the previous owner is known, does it affect your relationship with that person? Even if it is very subtle

• How does the localized exchange of items affect the dorm community? (Does it create connections between students or does the item’s previous history not matter to students?)

• Interview students of different class years about their own experience with free boxes

 

Questions for “For Sale or Free!” Facebook page (Angela)

• How many people post in the page in relation to the members

• How posts per person are spread out

• Which items receive the most responses and why (price, type, possibility of bargaining, quality)

• How often are items posted

• How sellers determine prices

• What motivates people to buy and sell from the page?

• How does social media affect the exchange of items (and services?) within Bryn Mawr

• How does buying items from others affect the relationships between students and the Bryn Mawr community (or noncommunity)

 

Answers for “For Sale or Free!” Facebook page (Angela)

• Collect data from the facebook page itself about every week or every few weeks-how often people post, who is posting, what items are most popular/go ignored and why

• Send out and post a survey including class year and:

• Why one would sell on the facebook page (to make money, to clear space, etc)

• Why and when one would buy from the facebook page (out of need or want, goal driven or not goal driven, etc)

• Whether buying or selling affects the relationship after the exchange (Do you acknowledge the person after the meetup or pretend they don’t exist?)

• Whether exchanges are made face to face or indirectly

• Interview students of different class years about their thoughts and experiences of the facebook page and how it affects the Bryn Mawr community or noncommunity

I, Beatrice, am fascinated by the sociology of fashion. I think that there’s a lot of meaning and emotion in what we choose to wear, evoked in both the wearer and the perceiver. I want to look into how clothing intersects with and influences other factors for social groups and encounters.

I would also like to look into what research on the “sociology of fashion” exists already, because all I have as my background or presumptions in this is what I’ve gained from my own interrogations and rantings about style and the fashion industry.

 

Questions I’m looking to answer about how appearance, style, and presentation influence social interactions at Bryn Mawr:

• Do people even think or care about how their clothing style and appearance influences who they interact with people or how people interact with them?

• How do identity factors like gender, sexuality, and socioeconomic class (possible extending to race?) impact how BMC students dress, either in masking or marking these identities?

• How does this space being a historically women’s college influence the way people think about their style and how they feel/act in it? (i.e. does largely removing the Male Gaze and thus hypothetically the idea of patriarchal standards of beauty change the way students here feel about their appearance?)

  • Not even necessarily stemming from a heteronormative goal of “being attractive to men,” but in Bryn Mawr empowering in other areas and subsequently allowing for more confidence in individuality and self-expression?

• Is there a sense of a collectivist culture at Bryn Mawr, in style or consumption patterns?

• Are there differences in these answers/approaches as a student spends more time at Bryn Mawr:

  • For this I will make sure that I’m including a variety of year ranges

    • Include this as a question in the surveys; ask as a question in interviews with upperclassmen; include slot for year in survey

 

Essentially, I feel like my research is split into two groups:

• How does one’s clothing and appearance shift or influence their interaction at Bryn Mawr

• How does Bryn Mawr shift or influence the way people choose or think about their clothing and appearance?

 

I believe my research would be best suited to:

• Online anonymous survey sent through email to undergrad students

• Series of more in-depth, in-person interviews to attempt to gain more emotional data about how people feel about style and its effects on interactions at Bryn Mawr

• I also plan on taking photographs of people in their clothing!

 

Some possible interview/survey questions (working list):

• Do you pay attention to trends, both in style and consumption patterns?

• How many pieces of Bryn Mawr apparel do you own?

The two parts of this project will relate to each other by researching how clothing obtained from free boxes and the “For Sale or Free!” Facebook page play into the clothing Bryn Mawr students wear and how that affects the direct and indirect encounters between students and beyond Bryn Mawr. We will examine how local exchanges and the outfits students wear affect encounters and whether or not they bring the community closer or if students feel that they maintain more individuality in their appearance and style. We will also look to see how the students are interacting with the global community through their consumption patterns, along with the extent to which they think and care about these interactions and how their feelings affect their future actions.