Mutual Transformation and Ethnography in Myerhoff’s Study

Review some key concepts and ideas related to mutual transformation and ethnography.

Read Barbara Myerhoff’s ethnography “Number Our Days: Culture and Community among Elderly Jews in an American Ghetto” (1978). Describe Myerhoff’s “third birth” experience of culture shock and one important thing that Myerhoff learned about aging. Include one example from the excerpt. When studying the “self,” distress may stem from confronting complex problems in one’s home culture.

Identify which social problem Myerhoff confronted in her fieldwork. If you were an anthropologist studying the “other,” which group of people would you study, and why? If you focused on the “self,” which group of people would you study, and why? The final section, Apply What You Know, focuses on ways you may be changed by your encounters with ethnography: reading ethnography, writing it, and conducting fieldwork.