PARTICIPANT OBSERVATION & CRITICAL THINKING OF NCIP CULTURAL WORKERS

PARTICIPANT OBSERVATION & CRITICAL THINKING OF NCIP CULTURAL WORKERS
Making the “Strange” Familiar and the “Familiar” Strange – By Kevin Fonseca.
A. In order to sharpen the observational skills of the NCIP cultural workers, they are encouraged to have fresh eyes at ordinary things or ‘making the strange familiar and the familiar strange’.
B. For instance, an NCIP staff may find the daily activities (such as farming or fishing or cooking) mundane as ordinary. However, the NCIP staff can take an unfamiliar gaze at all-things-common in order to highlight the cultural elements that need to be documented.
C. Ethnographic means taking account into what seemingly are small details and trivial, but are in fact important in understanding of the ICC/IP culture being performed at a particular time (including cooking).
D. The goal is to describe a group of people to others in a way that makes strange or unusual features of the culture seem familiar and familiar traits seem extraordinary. The point is to help other people think in new ways about aspects of indigenous culture by comparing them with other cultures.
E. This is a standard practice among anthropologist specially when we do participant observation. Participant observation is one of the four fundamental ethnographic research methods we employ—genealogy, learning local language, and extended residence are the three others.