Analysis Of Miner'sBody Ritual Among The Nacirema

Effective communication has many aspects that can be described as either transparent or a hidden unknown, which in many readings it describes how ambiguity is a necessary evil in communications. The “Triangle of Linguistic Structure” can give phonology meaning form, semantics the value of meaning, and pragmatics that feature the intention to uncertain communications. The direct statements of saying someone is dead, can be harmful so they use etiquette to give reason to use a buffer and instead say they have moved away. For a literary example I will use “Who am I this time?” by Vonnegut and “Body Ritual among the Nacirema” by Miner, for both readings use ambiguity to hide an allegory of communication concepts. The “Body Ritual among the Nacirema”

In 1956 a professor from the University of Michigan, Horace Miner, wrote an article in The American Anthropologist that has become a mainstay of learning for anthropology students. Miner published the article to show a fictional exotic society called “Body Ritual among the Nacirema” as an example of how one’s own limited perspective might affect the perception of a foreign culture (Miner, 1956, p. 503). The article uses subtle humor to make the reader more comfortable in examining cultural behaviors, physical appearance, and health as the reader soon discovers that the actual society being examined is the American society. To the reader, the article begins to sound very familiar after each paragraph is

In the essay “Body Ritual Among the Nacirema”, anthropologist Horace Miner depicts a group of people known as the “Nacirema”, but is referring to Americans, whose cultural beliefs are deeply rooted in the perspective that the human body is prune to sickness and disfiguration. Consequently, a substantial part of their lives is spent on unusual rituals and customs to improve conditions of the body that are filled with magical components. Moreover, Miner uses the Nacirema’s unusual culture to establish his view that we simply could not judge another culture that it is different from our own, as opposed to another anthropologist Malinowski’s point that we can judge another culture since we are

Horace Minor applied satire in his article “Body Ritual among the Nacirema.” to the culture of the American people. Several ways in which “Body Ritual among the Nacirema” relate to the core concepts of sociology are through the use of sociological imagination, ethnocentrism and cultural relativism. The American culture is described by Minor in a very unique and humorous way. The author uses satire to examine the rituals that are every day in American culture. The reader thinks at the beginning of the article that they are reading about some uncivilized tribe of people but soon realized that the “rituals” that are being performed are just everyday events that take place in every American household.

In this article, Miner takes the role of an outsider and judges the Nacirema just as we judge other cultures. Miner does an exceptional job of wording things in such a way that we don’t even recognize our own culture. Miner wants us to realize that when someone, such as an anthropologist describes another culture, we can interpret that into being abnormal but in actuality, it is, by all means, very normal.

In our society today, culture is not what it used to be hundreds of years ago. There is no more “pure” culture. Our culture today is enriched with many different traditions and customs that are being shared and adopted. Due to emigration and immigration, a variety of diverse customs, beliefs, and knowledge moved with every exiting and entering human being. Thus, changing and shaping the culture of many. Throughout the world, the beliefs and religious views of culture are dissimilar around the world. By taking the time to read, listen and learn about certain people’s culture, there will be knowledge and understanding that will be gained.

James P. Spradley (1979) described the insider approach to understanding culture as "a quiet revolution" among the social sciences (p. iii). Cultural anthropologists, however, have long emphasized the importance of the ethnographic method, an approach to understanding a different culture through participation, observation, the use of key informants, and interviews. Cultural anthropologists have employed the ethnographic method in an attempt to surmount several formidable cultural questions: How can one understand another's culture? How can culture be qualitatively and quantitatively assessed? What aspects of a culture make it unique and which connect it to other cultures? If

In the Body Rituals Among the Nacirema, both men and women believe that “they lack frequency.” In order for them to believe that they are to their standards and others standards perceived as beautiful, they undergo sadism and masochistic rituals performed by highly trained specialist to enhance one’s look. The people of the tribe change their bodies via enhancement to look like a representation of a doll “outside the range of human variation,” says Miner.

This study examines Horace Miner’s essay “Body Rituals Among the Nacirema. While using the participant observation approach, he gives us a new perspective on the daily behaviors within this group of people. Exploring ethnocentrism and how we view cultures outside of our own.

The human body has been coupled with various beliefs for all of history. It has been the centre and representation for questions of ethics, power and sexuality. Works like “Confession” by Linh Dinh have found ways to express these questions further. By focusing on questioning how the body operates in art, Dihn portrays and inquires a whole belief system as to how the body functions and is viewed in society.

The author’s purpose in writing this article was not to show the “Nacirema” as an example of how extreme human behavior can become, but how an outside perspective can affect your perception of an alien culture. If one were to look at the “Nacirema’s” cultural behaviors regarding physical appearance and health without any insight or knowledge of the specific beliefs or values of that culture, they might seem bizarre and even incomprehensible. By showing behaviors and “rituals” performed by this unknown tribe, Miner allowed others to see that the way studies were representing distinctive cultures was narrowminded and defective. Without the proper comprehension of the basis of any society, huge cultural misunderstandings could occur. Of

Horace Miner’s article “Body Ritual among the Nacirema” is an amazing article that makes people that do not believe their unique grasp the concept that everyone is indeed unique. Miner wrote this article about Americans as Americans generally believe that other countries have rituals while we are just plain with no uniqueness. Miner uses a language that is not typical among american literature. He has a strategy of using words such as: Supplicant, Witch doctor, household shrine, etc in order to make us realize that we do have our own rituals. We as Americans hold a misconception that we are not as special as other countries which makes us percieve them to be weird because of their customs. Miner wants us to know that we are indeed different too which makes him use vocabulary words that we would not use versus the ones that we are used to in order to prove that point. This article is trying to make it clear to the readers that Americans see other cultures as true cultures and that we just have a daily life. A daily life is the same as a culture, it is no different. Americans see themselves as Americans yet see others as foreigners. People never think that those from other countries would see us in that light, we believe that there are only two catergories. The categories are that you are either a Nacirema or a foreigner which is what it sounds like Miner is trying to point out. This is not the truth but this is the way that the Nacirema see it because they do not really want

I think the author is taking a cultural relativism point of view. First of all, in this article much information about rituals, ceremonies, and other background on the Nacirema has obtained by researcher’s actually living with the Nacirema people. I think the method, living with the subjects of research and observing them very closely, was to understand them from a sense they think and behave. Second, the author wrote that developed civilization we are enjoying ultimately stems from the phase of magical rituals and beliefs. That seems to give the credit to the Nacirema culture and value the culture as it is. The author’s style of writing was not that he thinks the technically developed civilization is superior to the Nacirema culture,

Hancock, P., 2000. The Body, Culture and Society – An Introduction. 1st Ed. USA. Open University Press.

Bioarchaeology in general brides the boundaries between osteology and culture, so as to further contextualize finding to understand the bigger picture. The article demonstrates the different biological functions of the human body, such as defense, sweating, and UV protection. Since anthropology is the study of humans in every aspect, the use of the human body as a symbol of art can be viewed as a cultural view of what art is and how the human body is viewed in different cultures. The human body as a social component of culture is not unique to any culture and can be used socially in a number of ways. Members of a culture can tattoo their bodies as a sign of manhood or pride to display their status. Larger body modifications can also display status or rank with individuals carving their teeth to fit societal expectations or through cranial modifications in locations like Tiwanaku, Peru. Cranial modifications can be intentional with the use of head wraps or it can be unintentional through the use of baby