The complexity of cultural norms and interaction between norms and methods may make entry into a culture forbidding for many outside researchers and practitioners. Paradoxically, it is often outsiders who are accorded the “expert” role (Jackson & Sullivan, 1999). Consequently, outsiders entering a culture tend to be dependent on local elites and on previous work by local academics or by other “foreigner experts” as their cultural introduction. While this tends to be a necessity, even where fieldwork is possible and language is not an obvious barrier, dependence on these sources can be a limitation and can inhibit the understanding of local norms. It becomes important to recognize how information about cultural norms may be mediated by the worldviews and cultural location of persons who provide it. The observations of even local sources may be effected by factors such as social distance, politics, or simple social experience. Examples of these kinds of difficulties are evident in the critiques of government health education materials in Thailand, which are often seen as divergent from common, vernacular understandings of health, risk, and illness (Limanonda & van Griensven, 1996; Lyttleton, 2000; McCamish & Sittrai, 1997).