This activity provides links and an overview of activities that can be used in conjunction with the satirical anthropology paper, “Body Ritual Among the Nacirema.” The paper was written by Horce Miner in 1956, and it is meant to call attention to how anthropologists often “other” different cultures through their ethnographic research. Nacirema is American backwards, and the piece is written about Americans in the 1950s. However, Miner writes the piece in a way that is meant to distance readers (who are most likely American) from their own culture in order to view it as an observer.

This activity challenges participants to recognize the importance of understanding cultural behaviors from an insider’s perspective. They will read the essay “Deep Play: Notes on a Balinese Cockfight” and then discuss it in terms of the methods Geertz used to write the essay, how it portrays the Balinese society, and the differences between insider and outsider interpretations in anthropological writing. 

"Understanding the unique challenges facing vulnerable communities necessitates a scholarly approach that is profoundly embedded in the ethnographic tradition. Undertaking ethnographies of communities and populations facing huge degrees of inequality and abject poverty asks of the researcher to be able to think hard about issues of positionality (what are our multiple subjectivities as insider/outsider, knowledge holder/learner, and so on when interacting with vulnerable subjects, and how does this influence the research?), issues of engagement versus exploitation (how can we meaningfully incentivize participation in our studies without being coercive/extractive, and can we expect vulnerable subjects to become deeply in research design/data collection, and so on when they are so overburdened already?), and representation (what are the ethics of representing violence, racism, and sexism as expressed by vulnerable respondents? What about the pictures we take and the stories we tell?). Through the discussion of our research on the behavioral patterns, socialization strategies, and garbage processing methods of informal waste pickers in Argentina and Mexico, we ask ourselves, and through this exercise, seek to shed light on the broader questions of how can we engage in ethnographies of vulnerable communities while maintaining a sense of objectivity and protecting our informants? Rather than attempting to provide a definite answer, we provide a starting point for scholars of resource governance interested in using ethnographic methods for their research...and engage in a self-reflective discussion of what can be learned from our struggle to provide meaningful, engaged scholarship while retaining and ensuring respect and care for the communities we study" (Pacheco-Vega & Parizeau, p. 1, 2018). 

Pacheco-Vega, R., & Parizeau, K. (2018). Doubly engaged ethnography: Opportunities and challenges when working with vulnerable communities. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 17(1), 1609406918790653.

"The Indigenous Peoplesí Health Research Centre, a joint initiative of the University of Saskatchewan, the University of Regina and the First Nations University of Canada, has the pleasure to share its report, The Ethics of Research Involving Aboriginal Peoples. The report overviews key issues in the literature since the mid-90s. It has emerged from a collaborative partnership between the IPHRC and the Interagency Advisory Panel on Research Ethics (PRE), with support from a grant from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (the Agencies)" (Ermine et al., p. 2, 2004). 

Ermine, W., Sinclair, R., & Jeffery, B. (2004). The ethics of research involving Indigenous peoples. Saskatoon, SK: Indigenous Peoples' Health Research Centre.

This activity challenges participants to learn and practice ethnographic interviewing skills. In small groups, they will practice interviewing each other using ethnographic techniques and then set up an interview with someone from their host country.

This activity challenges participants to practice ethnographic research skills in order to discover relationships between cultural behaviors and values and the physical spaces that people occupy in their daily routines. In this activity, participants visit a grocery store and note things like the products available, how the store is arranged, how people are behaving, etc. Then, they attempt to interpret their findings using a cultural lens. Note: Janet Bennett recommends this for students in the Denial stage on the intercultural development continuum (IDC).

In this activity, participants practice observation in a new situation and discuss cultural values based on behavioral observation, gaining a variety of perspectives on what is considered "normal" cross-culturally.

This creativity-training activity was designed for a Spring Break study abroad program at Purdue University titled Amsterdam: Creative Thinking & Innovation in Collaborative Leadership. Specifically, it was designed to help travelling students use their airport "down time" productively. It is adapted from the well-known activity Martian Anthropology, which was created by Donald Batchelder. For this activity, participants are placed on teams and asked to observe what is happening in an airport through the lens of a “Martian”—meaning that they will not understand the purpose of the airport, just that it is an important location where many humans gather. They will use ethnographic field research techniques to investigate a hypothesis and answer questions provided to them. Then, during the next meeting time, they will prepare a three-minute report that synthesizes their research and either supports or negates that hypothesis. Note: This activity could be adapted to take place in a variety of settings, such as a student union, an office building, a restaurant, etc.

This activity challenges participants to explore culture through ethnographic fieldwork and video storytelling. Following extensive preparation and research, they will create a video that presents one aspect of a particular culture.

This article reveals important findings based on interviews with Canadian university-based geographers and social scientists who utilize Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR) to understand the link between researchers' beliefs about CBPR and how they carry out research. 

This article presents evidence for the importance of community engaged research toward protecting and respecting host communities as well as fostering transparency and increasing likelihood of the community supporting the research being done.

This activity challenges participants to be open to unfamiliar experiences and reflect on how they might react to cultural difference. They will participate in a scene acted out by a simulated culture, the Albatrossians, and then discuss their feelings and reactions after the performance. The activity was originally published in Beyond Experience by Theodore Gochenour, but it can also be found online. 

"This [Thiagi] jolt deals with the concept of exclusion (and inclusion) in groups. A few participants are sent outside the room while teams of other participants are taught a secret ritual. These teams hold discussions while the outsiders (labeled as anthropologists) attempt to join the conversations" (Thiagarajan & van den Berg, p. 101, 2017). 

Thiagarajan, S., & van den Berg, S. (2017). Ritual. In Jolts! Brief activities to explore diversity and inclusion (pp. 100-102). Bloomington, IN: Workshops by Thiagi. 

This activity presents the concepts of etic (outsider/objective) and emic (insider/subjective) understandings of culture, offers motivation for developing emic perspectives by discussing the value of this viewpoint, introduces strategies for learning to see a culture from the insider viewpoint, and uses concrete (published) case study examples as fodder for practice and discussion.

For this activity, participants will read a summary Philipsen’s 2010 article "Some Thoughts on How to Approach Finding One's Feet in Unfamiliar Cultural Terrain" and discuss their own experiences in “finding their feet” in unfamiliar cultural contexts. Finally, participants will explore ways in which they can apply the principles of “finding their feet” and offer their own suggestions about how to gain a better understanding of communication in specific contexts.

This assignment focuses on techniques for discovering and acquiring pragmatics, which goes above and beyond learning the vocabulary and grammar of a language to how people use language and nonverbal signals to communicate. Participants will both observe and collect data through "token elicitation."