In sociology and anthropology, the term "Nacirema" is sometimes used in place of "the United States" to help researchers suppress bias related to data about Americans and things that happen in American society.
This neologism was coined in 1956 in a paper entitled Body Ritual Among the Nacirema, which is presented like a typical anthropological look at a "little-known tribe" living in North America, but which uses language more typically (then and now) applied to tribal groups in South America, Africa, and parts of Asia.
This language and approach has perhaps most famously and publicly been used in publications like National Geographic, in which some groups of human beings are treated like interesting novelties that are almost animalistic in their strangeness by researchers who tend come from far-off, often predominantly White, Christian, European nations, and who thus view these perceptually dissimilar groups of people through the lens of their own assumed normalcy.
The people being described in this paper, then, are Americans who live in the United States. But presented in this way, using a sort of "voice of God" contextualization through which the habits and values and behaviors of those described are picked apart and presented for the edification and entertainment of those reading it, they seem anything but normal or rational or modern.
The use of the term "Nacirema," then—which is "America" spelled backwards—is also meant to satirically demonstrate the hypocrisy and even silliness of the approach taken by many researchers when they observe and assess people they consider to be The Other: folks with different backgrounds and priorities and values and norms than themselves.
This term, then, is meant to productively evoke a variation of what's sometimes called "defamiliarization," which is most commonly applied in the art world as a method by which artists present their audiences with something familiar viewed through a different lens than usual.
Poetry is partly valuable because it allows poets to describe familiar feelings and experiences using language that pulls us out of our typical language-processing rhythms.
Visual arts, like paintings, can likewise take a normal situation or scene—a landscape or portrait of a family member—and portray them in such a way that we perceive different facets of that person or environment; maybe because of how the brush strokes are applied, maybe because their features are intentionally distorted, maybe because all the trees in the landscape are melting and the sky is on fire, which is not normal.
Defamiliarization within the world of research is meant to achieve similar outcomes. It's hoped that by separating researchers from their (otherwise familiar) subjects, more objective measures will be made and fewer biases will influence the resulting data they generate.
There's little direct research related to this concept, unfortunately, as it's a difficult thing to study by its very nature.
That said, it's a useful concept to be aware of, as if you look around you can see similar biases play out in everything from journalism (when big city reporters parachute into small towns to get a sense of how the locals feel about a rural-relevant story) to economics (when larger, richer countries paint the "developing world" with a broad brush shaped by their perception of their own country).
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