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6.3: Challenge Six- Get Uncomfortable

  • Page ID
    22252
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    Challenge Six: Get Uncomfortable

    Your challenge is to do at least one hour of fieldwork, immersing yourself in a cross-cultural or sub-cultural experience – a place, event, activity that makes you uncomfortable. Do fieldwork and write up a “thick description” of your experience.


    Objective: Experience more, experience difference, and experience differently – to practice using communication, empathy, and thoughtfulness to really experience the world from a different cultural position.


    1. Stretch yourself to experience a different cultural or subcultural reality. For example, if you are atheist, go to church. If you are Christian, go to a Buddhist retreat. In short, do something you would probably never otherwise do and open yourself up to the experience.


    2. Make sure that it is “cultural” in that it involves engaging and interacting with people.


    3. After the event, write up a “thick description” of your experience. A thick description is an exquisitely detailed description of the setting, participants, activities, interactions, and social dramas playing out that allow the reader to feel ad if they are really there.


    Go to ANTH101.com/challenge6 for additional tips and information.


    This page titled 6.3: Challenge Six- Get Uncomfortable is shared under a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by Michael Wesch via source content that was edited to the style and standards of the LibreTexts platform; a detailed edit history is available upon request.