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Teaching ethnocentricity is like teaching a fish to feel the water that surrounds them. Many students unabashedly think that their culture is the “right way to live”. Luckily, there are a couple of widely used activities that will help open your students eyes to the consequences of ethnocentrism. Both articles, “Body Rituals of The Nacirema.” and the “The Sacred Rac” use ethnocentric language to describe culture in the United States.
The first is a classic anthropological article titled, “Body Rituals of The Nacirema.” This article is a anthropological study of the United States (circa 1956) however it uses loaded language to frame very “normal” aspects of american life in a very abnormal way. I typically have my students read this in the first week of my Intro to Sociology courses. I ask my students to raise their hand if they would like to live with the Nacirema. Any student who raises their hand has either figured out the ruse or has done this activity before. I tell these students that they may not talk until I say they can. This prevents them from ruining it for everyone else.
The majority of my class almost always says they do not want to live with the Nacirema. I ask them to give me their reasons. Typically students say that the Nacirema are weird because they hate their bodies and they let “holy mouth men” drill holes in their mouths. I let the students go on for a little while and then write Nacirema on the board at the front of the room. Then as the students are talking I slowly write Nacirema backwards. A-m-e-r-i-c-a-n. Then I ask, “Does anyone find it strange that Nacirema is American spelled backwards?”
I let all the students then discuss how ethnocentrism can affect the way we see a culture, even our own. My students usually love this activity, but I always apologize for decieving them or at the very least leading them astray. I think it is important to reestablish trust with your students by acknowledging that this was only for academic purposes.
The second article, “The Sacred Rac” takes a similar ethnocentric look at our obsession with cars in the United States. The article starts off by talking about a Indian anthropologist who travels to visit the Asu, a people who worship the “sacred Rac” much like the people of his country honor their sacred cows. This article is a great jumping off point for a discussion of stereotypes about Indians and about ethnocentrism. After reading this students almost always ask something like, “Why would a people put up with these animals if the cost so much and hurt so many people?” When I tell them that this article is about cars not racs in the United States the students are floored. I then provide them with stats from the Center for Disease Control that find nearly 5 million people are injured or killed in car accidents each year and that the total economic impact of car accidents was $230 billion in 2000.
These articles put both US culture and ethnocentrism in easy to understand terms. Students typically enjoy these activities and many have told me they show them to their friends. I have found that both these articles provide the most benefit if you do them early in your classes. After these experiences students are often more tolerant and open to other cultures.
Comments 1
Mediha Din — August 19, 2011
Love this! I will be sure to share Sacred Rac with my students. Here is the article I use:
Of Headhunters and Soldiers: Separating Cultural and Ethical Relativism
By Renato Rosaldo
…To illustrate, in the late 1960s, I lived with a Filipino hill tribe called the Ilongots, who were headhunters. Do I think headhunting is a good idea because I worked for years trying to understand it? No, I don’t. Am I horrified by it? I used to be; it gave me lots of bad dreams, but then something happened.
One day, I went to Manila to get my mail, and I found I'd been called for the draft. I opposed the war in Vietnam, so of course I was not thrilled by this news. When I went back to the Ilongots' household where I was living, I told my hosts what had happened, partly because I needed somebody to talk to about it.
But I also had an ignoble motive. I imagined that maybe this situation would make the Ilongots think better of me; maybe they would think, this guy has an opportunity to kill people, and that's great. I could not have been further from the truth.
I mentioned the draft notice, and they said, "This is terrible. Don't worry. We'll take care of you. They'll never find you here."
"Wait a minute," I said, "I thought you guys were in the business of killing."
"No, no," they answered, "we've seen soldiers." In June of 1945, they really saw soldiers when the Americans drove Japanese troops into the hills where the Ilongots lived. The tribe lost a third of its population during that time.
At first, I jumped to the conclusion that, having seen the carnage, they didn't approve of war. But when I talked more with them, I came to realize that they were as horrified of modern warfare as most of us would be of cannibalism or headhunting. It was a kind of moral horror.
Because I picked up this reaction, I kept pursuing the issue. Finally they said, "Well, what we saw was that one soldier had the authority to order his brothers to sell their bodies." What they meant was that a commanding officer could order his subordinates to move into the line of fire. That was absolutely inconceivable to them. They said, "How can one person tell others to give up their lives, to put themselves so at risk that it's highly likely they'll lose their lives?" That was their moral threshold.
That experience really knocked me off my moral-horror pedestal. So now, although I do not think headhunting is a good idea, I no longer have the same horrified reaction to it I once did. I realize that some things we do and take for granted can inspire other people's abhorrence*.
http://www.scu.edu/ethics/publications/iie/v11n1/relativism.html
Note: Headhunting is no longer allowed to take place for the Ilongot’s or any other tribal society who used to practice headhunting. The purpose of headhunting for the Ilongot’s was to remove some burden carried by the headhunter. The act of taking a head is for the person who is burdened to take the head and throw it away. It is of no consequence if the man did not kill or even cut the victims’ head off. The act of throwing the head relieves that person of his burden. Each man is to only take one head and in the proper predetermined order as to be affective in headhunting’s purpose. Such burdens include the grudge a man holds against an insult, the morning of a death, or simply the burden of not yet taking a head. Throwing the head away symbolically throws the burden away. (Rosaldo 1980, p 140).