Evolution Of The Nacimera Tribe

Two women, named Matini and Pange from the Kalanga Tribe killed Matini’s two-year-old cousin on the account that it was the only way to save their tribe from starvation of the drought that their village was experiencing. Though many people will argue that there is no validation for the death of a child, I will argue that from an ethical relativist point of view, what Matini and Pange was, in a sense, morally right because in these two women’s culture, it is custom to receive help from witch doctors and follow their instructions. In addition, from the view of Plato, what these two women did was morally right because these women did what was right for their society as a whole.

In Nathaniel Hawthorne 's “The Birthmark”, we find the tragic story of a woman named Georgiana who sacrificed her life for the sake of appeasing her husband, Aylmer. What did Georgiana do that it was more favorable for her to die than to continuing to displease her husband? Georgiana, who was otherwise hailed as incomparably beautiful, had a birthmark on her face. Aylmer desired this to remove this birthmark, which he considered the one thing keeping her from being “perfect”, from her face. In an attempt to remedy his wife’s “imperfection”, Aylmer makes an elixir for her to drink. While this elixir successfully removes the birthmark, the same elixir also causes Georgiana to die soon after. This story brings to light several examples of how society belittles women and puts their desires below the desires of men.

The Wampanoag' is a Native American individuals in North America. They were a free alliance comprised of a few tribes. Numerous Wampanoag individuals today are selected in two governmentally perceived tribes, the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe and the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head, or four state-perceived tribes in Massachusetts. In the start of the seventeenth century, at the season of first contact with the English, the Wampanoag lived in southeastern Massachusetts and Rhode Island, a domain that incorporated present-day Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket islands. Their populace numbered in the thousands because of the extravagance of nature and their development of corn, beans and squash. Three thousand Wampanoag lived on Martha's Vineyard alone.

After medicine men there are “holy-mouth-men” who do barbaric and painful rituals on the tribes-people’s mouths. These rituals are continued in the home involving hog hair on sticks and certain powders in a ritual done by the tribe every day.

Schneider’s discoveries describe at great length, the peculiar nature of Nacirema mating rituals, a world of bizarre customs and luxurious excesses. It is well known that the Nacirema engage in an elaborate rite which they call a gniddew; each tribesperson is expected to undergo this ritual at least once, though some endure it many times and others never do.

The Nacirema tribe is often glorified for coexisting with Natives that hold a multitude of varying views. Whether these views are right or wrong we won’t discuss. From studying the Nacirema tribe it is clear that they run a society of secrets. They are so private, that many of their established leaders seem to know little to nothing of their own history. For reasons, unbeknown the Leaders are desperate to keep incoming tribe members in the dark about the past and promote a complete erasing of their history thus pitting the communities against each other.

Upon receiving the essay “Body Ritual Among the Nacirema”, I could see that my fellow peers became more and more genuinely confused as they began to read. However, having read this 2 years ago, knew exactly who the “Nacirema” really were. I knew that this writing was actual a distorted image of our everyday lives. Showcasing our culture in this unusual way, Horace Miner forces us to acknowledge the twisted realities of ur norms. With this new outlook, readers see how literature can alter our culture. The language that is used in this essay differs, dramatically, from that of which we use now. For example, women putting their heads in “ovens”, which really refers to the use of salon hair-dryers. Also, putting hog-hairs into their mouths, meaning

The Nazca civilization was formed in southwest Peru around 100 BC. They would continue on for hundreds of years until their final demise sometime around 600 AD. They emerged from and were influenced by their predecessors, the Paracas. The Nazca culture consisted of extraordinary pottery, fine textiles, and incredible geoglyphs etched into the ground and visible from the sky. These geoglyphs are known as the Nazca Lines.

10,000 years ago, Paleolithic Indians inhabited the valley in the area designated by present-day Lewiston and Havana, southwest of Peoria, Illinois. (Guillory, 1990). According to Dan Guillory, these first inhabitants of Illinois thrived on the fish and game, including species such as bison. These Indians continuously returned to various sites throughout the Illinois Valley. These explorations and hunts littered the modern day Illinois valley with artifacts, including fishhooks, spear points and scraping knives. In this modern day valley known as Fulton county, there are over 3,000 Indian mounds and village sites (Guillory, 1990). While most of the anthropological discoveries of artifacts are spear points or pottery fragments, Fulton County

Thousands of years ago there was a young warrior who was destined to save her tribe. Her birth sparked something and everyone felt a flicker of hope flow through them. For years the tribe had constantly under attack by their enemy, who in their reckless acts left small amounts of survivors. But the girl’s tribe sought revenge and were determined to end the humiliation and there was only one way to do it.

The speaker Steven Addis talks about his experience taking pictures of his daughter every year at the same spot. After his wife took the first picture of him holding his daughter, they started taking a picture every year. what they did inspired them to continue the ritual for fifteen years. Steven explains how this small ritual means so much to him and his family.

Every culture in the world has rites of passage. Whether it be death and dying, birth or a transition from puberty to adulthood, every culture has certain rituals they use to christen these changes in social status within a society. A rite of passage is symbolic in how important a change is in the lives of the people who experience them. Status changes such as these are very important in the eyes of their culture and the ceremonies they produce help them retain stability while their society adjust to the changes that are occurring to the individuals. An interesting rite of passage that can be found in many cultures around the world is a young girls transition into womanhood. Two of the cultures that one examined this rite in were the Oglala Sioux of South Dakota, and the Tukuna of the Amazon.

While this fictional story is not based in fact, we can learn more about what it has to say about a society that has lost its “true essence” through its adoption of the Catholic Church. Through Osha’s narrative, we see how dependent the people were on the church and its practices. The church functioned as both the village’s center of beliefs and its proprietor for services and transactions. Catholicism was highly intertwined with the matriarchal structure of the village, with Mammanji being exceedingly religious. We see how this adoption of the Catholic faith and perhaps the loss of the village’s original identity affect the men and women of the story quite differently. While Mammanji and later Mamma embrace the religious practices and assimilate to the Catholic Church, Pappa and even Osha to an extent struggle in this integration. From the very beginning, Pappa overtly disrespected the church and his duties as the sacristan. While Osha was not openly against the church like his father, he did struggle with a loss of identity and meaning as demonstrated in his obsession with the chaavi. Once Osha lost his chaavi, he had lost his sense of meaning and identity—which parallels the village’s loss of identity when assimilating to the Catholic Church. Another parallel lied in the perfectly preserved body of Mammanji, which resembled the body of Sir Francis Xavier. Both became a spectacle for the faith and drew crowds of

Although the cross-cultural comparison of religion is important for understanding the function of religion, Eliade did not strongly stress the importance of remaining unbiased while studying and comparing other religions. In particular, Ludwig emphasizes the importance of observing different religions by trying to understand the intensions behind various actions without any preconceived ideals (Ludwig, p4). Problems with bias and the use of harsh language are apparent in the description of American culture in Body Rituals of the Nacirema. Specifically, the use of primitive language to describe tasks such as shaving has such a strong bias that American readers misunderstand the description of their own culture (Galbraith, p2). Overall, even though Eliade did not address this problem, his movement towards a cross-cultural comparison is a step in the right direction to understanding the general functions of religion.

A previous study by Menon and Shweder detailed the “cultural expertise” of Oriyas regarding the icon of Kali, a goddess well-known in their culture. For Oriyas, the image of Kali biting her tongue represents “lajya”, or shame. However, their conception of shame may differ from typical western views of shame. What emerged from the interviews conducted in Menon and Shweder’s study was that shame seemed to be a respected duty of the women in the culture, and brought about social harmony. This idea seems to be reconcilable with Markus and Kitayama’s review of independent and interdependent cultures, if it is assumed that the Oriyas interviewed were from an interdependent culture. In an interdependent culture, the self is construed in relation to others; a self is thought of as complete only in a social context. Conversely, in independent cultures, which are typically western, the self is thought of as entirely separate from others, and is encouraged to strive for their own desires without thought to how their actions may affect others. That is not to say that those in independent cultures have no empathy for those around them, and neither is it true that those in interdependent cultures are unable to think for themselves. It is simply a construal of the self in relation to others, and as Markus and Kitayama showed, this leads to several different ways of interacting with the world when a person originates from an independent or an interdependent culture.