Description of the class research:

Ethnic markets are rich sites for information on the interactions between people and plants. The goal of the course “Ethnic Markets Research” was to gain an understanding of the biocultural diversity of the ethnic markets in the surrounding community through ethnobotanical field research. After an introduction to the city of Poughkeepsie, NY (the location of Vassar College) and surrounding area (town of Poughkeepsie), students used census data, GIS, and Google Earth to propose markets sites. The final market sites were selected during the ground truthing at which time informed consent from each market was obtained and the markets locations recorded with GPS. Collections of all fresh food plants were made and vouchers deposited in the Vassar College Herbarium. As a form of return to the markets and the community: 1) this wikipage was created to describe the project and results which includes background and geolocated information (with links to Google Earth) about the markets, their food plants, and the communities they serve; and 2) Wikipedia was edited to provide information on the influence of ethnic groups to food plant availability in the area and where these plants can be found (this part is an ongoing experiment).

What is an ethnic market?

We define an ethnic market as:

1) A market that primarily serves a specific ethnic group or groups.

2) That provides culturally specific foods that are rare or not found in supermarkets.

3) A dynamic space where immigrant groups can maintain and adust cultural practices and community through traditional foods and availability of cultural artifacts (cookware, crafts, media -movies, music, newspapers).

Why are ethnic markets important to document?

1) To show the diversity of ethnic foods available in the United States.

2) To highlight the social demographics of a community (beyond population statistics).

3) To document the biocultural diversity of the community.

This empircal study includes five markets representing the Hispanic/Latino and Asian (East, South Asian, and Southeast Asian) communities. To learn about the markets surveyed, see the Navigation panel in the side bar above. This is only a sampling of the biocultural diversity represented in the Poughkeepsie area due to the constraints of the course time period and class size.

We encourage others to expand on the research presented here!

Please site this webpage as: Nguyen, My Lien T., Joana Chan, Evan Chender, Lily S. Faber, and Emily S. Strasser. 2008. ENST383-Ethnic markets research. http://enst383-ethnicmarkets.pbwiki.com (Accessed date).

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.