Nursing Assignment
Anthropology 101
Due at the final exam
Write an Essay About Understanding Cultural Differences
After reading Aman, Shadowed Lives, and The Spirit Catches
You..., write an essay (5 double-spaced pages) in which you use concepts and
ideas from the course this semester to help you think about one of the case studies.
In your essay, answer the eight questions posed by Anne Fadiman in The
Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, pp. 260-261:
- "What do you call the problem? ...
- What do you think has caused the problem? ...
- Why do you think it started when it did? ...
- What do you think the sickness does? How does it work? ...
- How severe is the sickness? Will it have a long or a short course?
...
- What kind of treatment do you think the patient should receive?
- What are the chief problems the sickness has caused? ...
- What do you fear most about the sickness?"
We will have a role-playing exercise in class using these questions.
Choose one of the case studies as the basis for your paper. Make your
essay in the form of an interview with a patient from one of these groups, in
which you ask the questions above. Consider one or more of the following:
- what kinds of families, livelihoods, forms and practices of socialization and
enculturation, gender roles, religious beliefs, worldviews, rituals, … do the people
have? What do the people agree about? What do they disagree about? What
difference do disagreements make?
- what are the settings of the people’s lives – their environments, their
communities, their routines, their histories, … ?
- what cultural practices and beliefs used by nurses themselves when they interact with
patients may contribute to misunderstanding,?
- what other kind of ethnographic knowledge might it help you to know? Important
question -- How would you find out?
Essays must not be reports on a case study. Use your imagination
to choose a patient, a setting, and possible answers to your questions.
Nurses Note:
The following are websites that may be helpful to
you in your transcultural nursing assignments:
(rev. 10/02/03)