Japanese anthropologists. Every cultural anthropology student is introduced to papers on the "Nacirema," a very foreign culture with many daily rituals and a fanaticism for cleanliness, especially as they prepare themselves for work in the morning. In truth, the "nacirema" is American (spelled backwards), and the lessons learned from seeing one's own culture through the eyes of a 'stranger' illuminate the notion of ethnocentrism in a powerful way. While a major task of anthropology is to make the strange familiar and the exotic or enigmatic understandable, another task is to make the familiar strange so that one can see one's own culture in a new light. This case study accomplishes this and more.

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