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Sorry to hear that. For a different perspective, my grade nine world civilizations teacher delivered this perfectly to us as an in class reading exercise where
by jaqalopes 5y ago
Sorry to hear that. For a different perspective, my grade nine world civilizations teacher delivered this perfectly to us as an in class reading exercise where we first critiqued the society of the Nacirema before the big reveal. I'll never forget how surprised I was to realize that my own country was something that could be criticized.
- djur 5y agoThat's pretty much what my teacher was going for, but it came across more as "imagine how strange people from other countries might think we are" as opposed to "imagine how often you've uncritically received this kind of description of another culture".
- duskwuff 5y agoAnother point my teacher made when she presented this article was the power of words like "ritual" and "ceremony" to dismiss a foreign society's customs as "religious rites", detaching them from any functional purpose or cultural context. (In modern terminology, one might refer to this as a form of "othering".)