Distant Mirrors America as a Foreign Culture

by DeVita, Philip R.; Armstrong, James D.

• ISBN13: 9780534556488
• ISBN10: 0534556485
• Edition: 3rd
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2001-06-12
• Publisher: Wadsworth Publishing

Summary

Anthropology has a long history of the "other," yet we can look right here at home for the strangeness we seek. We often neglect to ask the questions that reveal our own culture's underlying value and beliefs. In this volume, we bring the American culture into focus. For readers to understand the full impact of ethnography, to experience cultural relativity and to gain a foundation to build informed comparisons, readers need a firm grasp of their own culture--and need to use this volume. The Third Edition consists of 19 essays written by anthropologists and other scholars using an ethnographic perspective. The essays enable readers to understand themselves better by focusing on their own culture and seeing it from a new perspective. This collection gives anthropology a comparative perspective that provides a reflective lens, a mirror, for understanding ourselves and the world in which we live.

Table of Contents

Understanding Ourselves: About the Third Edition	ix
James D. Armstrong
Philip R. DeVita
Acknowledgments	xv
One Hundred Percent American	1	(3)
Ralph Linton
The American Cultural Configuration	4	(23)
Lowell D. Holmes
Ellen Rhoads Holmes
Body Ritual Among the Nacirema	27	(5)
Horace Miner
Professor Widjojo Goes to a Koktel Parti	32	(5)
Weston LaBarre
An Outsider's View of American Culture	37	(7)
Janusz L. Mucha
Growing Up American: Doing the Right Thing	44	(6)
Amparo B. Ojeda
My American Glasses	50	(9)
Francisco Martins Ramos
American Graffiti: Curious Derivatives of Individualism	59	(9)
Jin K. Kim
The Young, the Rich, and the Famous: Individualism as an American Cultural Value	68	(7)
Porance Natadecha-Sponsel
America and I	75	(9)
Herve Varenne
Encounters with the Elderly in America	84	(11)
Yohko Tsuji
Neighborly Strangers	95	(7)
Honggang Yang
Pais de mis Suenos: Reflections on Ethnic Labels, Dichotomies, and Ritual Interactions	102	(8)
Gisela Ernst
Giving, Withholding, and Meeting Midway: A Poet's Ethnography	110	(12)
Saleem Peeradina
A Russian Teacher in America	122	(17)
Andrei Toom
First Impressions: Diary of a French Anthropologist in New York City	139	(9)
Francoise Dussart
Life and Cultures: The Test of Real Participant Observation	148	(14)
E.L. Cerroni-Long
Learning to Hug: An English Anthropologist's Experiences in North America	162	(15)
Geoffrey Hunt
A European Anthropologist's Personal and Ethnographic Impressions of the United States	177
Emanuel J. Drechsel