ANTH 1000: Ethnographic Exercise #5 (for extra credit)
We began this course by describing anthropology as asking us to “make the strange familiar and the familiar strange.” Hopefully by looking at how people in other cultures live their lives, you have also been able to reflect on why we do things the way we do them either in the United States or in your country of origin (for the purposes of this exercise, choose the culture you are the most familiar with).
Choose an aspect or two of your culture of origin or the culture you are the most familiar with in order to make it strange. Try to choose something that is generally accepted in that culture or something that, when brought up, people might react with “well, that’s just the way it is.” This is similar to your second ethnographic exercise in that you are attempting to put an anthropological spin on something that is part of your everyday life but the key difference is that you do not have to explicitly “do” ethnography this exercise. You are familiar enough now with the way anthropologists try to see the world to analyze a part of our culture through the lens of sociocultural anthropology. Your ethnographic data for this assignment comes from your life and lived experience thus far.
Examples of things you could choose to analyze include (this is coming from my American perspective, it probably will be different based on the culture of origin you identify most with): rituals and expectations around sex, marriage, and gender; schooling (how do we educate children and why do we do it that way?); holidays (Christmas, Halloween, 4th of July); sports (baseball, basketball, football); life course and rites (you’re born, you go to school, you get a driver’s license, you graduate, you go to college, you get a job, you get a car, you get a partner, you get a house, you get married, you have kids, you retire, you die), etc. Choose something that is thought of as “quintessentially” part of your culture of origin and make it strange.
This is an extra credit assignment and is worth up to 50 points that will be added towards your total grade. It is due at 11:59 PM on Saturday, August 13th. Please write 800-1,000 words. Please note that the quality of the assignment will be directly correlated the amount of points I give. The more you pull on key concepts from anthropology and demonstrate a mastery of basic sociocultural anthropological thought the more likely you are to receive the full extra 50 points.