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[Reflect] Make connections: Switching perspectives.

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Thompson joins a community of lettuce cutters to write about their work from the inside. Have you ever experienced an unfamiliar activity or culture? Perhaps you visited relatives in another country, joined a friend’s family for an event, or tried out an unfamiliar sport or hobby with a group of experts. Consider what you learned about the culture, the participants, and yourself. Your instructor may ask you to post your thoughts about the experience on a class discussion board or to discuss them with other students in class. Use these questions to get started:

How fully were you able to immerse yourself in the community? What, if anything, held you back? How did the group members treat you—for example, welcome you warmly, keep you at arm’s length, or make you earn their respect?
How valuable are such immersion experiences to the individual observing, to the group being observed, and to readers in general? What ethical challenges do you see with this kind of participant observation, especially if the writer is undercover, hiding his true purpose, as Thompson was?
Suppose Thompson wanted to join a community of which you are a member in order to write about it—such as a religious group, sports team, fraternity, or sorority. What elements of Thompson’s profile, if any, would cause you to trust or distrust his reporting?

[Reflect] Make connections: Switching perspectives.

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