An Analysis of the ‘Seen but Unnoticed Background Expectancies' of the Usual Jeepney Ride (Essay Sample)

John Louis R. Aguila March 28, 2016
Social Anthropology 191
An analysis of the ‘seen but unnoticed background expectancies’ of the usual Jeepney ride
One of the most common things that I do in my everyday life is taking a Jeepney ride. This method of transportation allows me to get from my apartment in Kitma village, Bakakeng central, Baguio city to my school – University of the Philippines Baguio – or to anywhere else. The main reason why I choose this mode of transportation over others is its efficiency and practicality as compared to them. We all know that there are plenty of social interactions that we could study during the ride. However, because of the repetitiveness of the task, I usually take things for granted and doesn’t give much of my conscious attention to the norms and expectancies that are happening out of this act. Thus, I would like to look at these everyday interactions that are happening in a ‘mundane’ Jeepney ride and the underlying rules and regulations that operate during the ride. According to Schultz (as quoted by Garfinkel), in order to analyze the things that we already regarded as "common-sensical”, we need to have a ‘special motive’ to be able to ‘doubt’ and make an inquiry. In this paper, my special motive is to provide an insight of what is it like to observe a Jeepney ride in an outsider’s point of view.
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This will be my first time to take a Jeepney ride, and I’ve noticed that for the most cases, a person who wants to hitch a Jeepney ride – aka Jeep – has to raise his hand in any manner as along as he could get the driver’s attention. The driver, through his experience, seems to know that the individual did this in order to hitch a ride (and not for any other reasons). He proves this by reciprocating through the act of stopping and letting him inside. After getting inside, the individual is expected to pay for the service that he got. The rate that he has to pay for depends on the distance of his destination. However, there is a ‘minimum rate’ that has to be paid if he only rode for the minimum distance (aka short trip). The rates also depend on your social status, and a mandatory discount is supposed to be given to People with disabilities (PWDs), students, and senior citizens.
The Jeep’s interior is furnished with two long seats that run parallel to each other, and both of them lies perpendicularly to the front seats which include the driver’s. Thus, this makes the act of paying your fare harder as compared to other modes of transportation. But by observing these passengers, there seems to be an informal and unwritten understanding that when you hand them your fare, they should hand it in turn to the one in front of them, and so on until the driver is able to get it.
When you’ve reached your destination, you are expected to inform the driver by getting his attention. There are plenty of terms that the passengers use in order to do this, such as: para po, sa tabi lang po, etc, but one can also get the driver’s attention by producing a loud noise through tapping a coin in the metal handles, striking the Jeep’s ceiling with your fingers, or rapping it with your knuckles.
There are also other etiquettes and rule...