Rituals Of Nacirema

Horace Miner’s “Body Ritual among the Nacirema” was a very entertaining essay. The essay made made fun of American culture without directly stating the name of the culture, other than including the word American spelled backwards. Miner bring to the reader’s attention the odd rituals practiced in America that the normal citizen would not find strange at all. However, by presenting his essay in this form he shows how strange American customs are from the view of someone in a different country.

“People often say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and I say that the most liberating thing about beauty is realizing that you are the beholder,” according to Salma Hayek. Society should have a positive outlook on body image, rather than face a disorder that can change one’s whole life. Negative body image can result from the media, with photoshop and editing, celebrity fad diets, and society’s look at the perfect image. Negative body image can lead to dangerous eating disorders, such as bulimia and anorexia. It can also take a risk to unhealthy habits, such as smoking, alcohol, and drugs. It is important to stress the effects of body image, because the world still struggles with this today. Society should not be affected by

Body Ritual Among the Nacirema What is the precise geographical location of this strange tribe, the Nacirema? The Nacirema is a North American group living in the territory between the Canadian Cree, the Yaqui and Tarahumare of Mexico, and the Carib and Arawak of the Antilles. Little is known of their origin, though tradition states that they came from the east.

Over those years, I believe that their culture has undergone social changes or even degreased it member. For one reason could be that outsider would want to stop their extreme ways compared to their culture. In other factor that might have been exposures to our culture and the technical advances from recent years. Culture is dynamic meaning it can have adopted to new changes, but it can also loose traditional knowledge in the process (Blanco). I believe this has been the case for the Nacirema, but I also believe that our culture is not that different from theirs. One example as mention earlier is that we both trust a “medicine men” or a doctor that prescribes us medicine or “magical potion” that is suppose to heal us. Another example how are society protrude our body. “… pervasive aversion to the natural body and its function. There are ritual fasts to make fat people thin and ceremonial feast to make thin people fat (Miner). Similarity, we set unrealistic standard for people which makes people want to go on diets or seek breast surgery to achieve that ideal body image imposed my society. It may not be as extreme as their culture, but many cultures aspect do overlap one other. We are not as different or as righteous as we envision our culture to

The author here has mentioned “Shrine”, which in fact, is not a temple or any religious place but rather it is a bathroom and the ritual performed in the shrine are the daily activities that we do in the bathroom. The author has focused on the chest or a box that is built in the wall of the shrine. It refers to the cabinet and the charms and the magical potions in the chest are the medicines. The medicine men and the herbalist, by this, the author means the pharmacists who can understand the labels written outside the medicine bottles. The font under the charm box is the sink where we wash our hands and face with the water from the tap. The water temple of the community is the water tank from where the water is distributed in different houses.

A body image is a subjective combination of all the thoughts, emotions, and judgments that an individual may perceive about his or her own body. Each individual has a unique perception of his or her own body. This image is strongly influenced and often times skewed due to the increasing pressure created from outside, societal factors. With a world that is continuously creating new forms of social media and entertainment, individuals are constantly exposed to images that supposedly define bodily perfection and are then expected to resemble these images in order to fit in and/or please society. The expectations that have been put in place by society has created unwanted pressure on individuals who feel as if they need to resemble these images to get society’s approval.

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

After reading Horace Miner’s Body Ritual Among the Nacirema I cannot say that I would want to be part of the tribe. A huge reason would be that I could never go from my own Christian faith to the religious practices of the Nacirema. My second reason for not wanting to be part of the tribe is that I could never be subjected to the horrific medical practices and “magical potions” used on every citizen in the tribe.

This is about a culture called Nacirema that is practiced in many different place and was brought to the attention of the Anthropologist attention by Professor Linton to talk about this culture that was poorly understood. The Nacirema is a type of culture that is summed up as that these people that believe in this culture that the human body is ugly and that the natural tendencies are meant to debilitate and cause disease. They are also big believes in rituals and ceremonies in the household to preform these ceremonies either as a family but in most cases it was privately. Where they would receive charms and other items form the medicine man of the community that would help with a certain problem. They would use these magic items to help with

In the article “Body Rituals among the Nacirema” by Horace Miner, the author uses this piece to describe American rituals in a different perspective. For example he uses this “tribe” called Nacirema which is just American spelled backwards, also uses the word “Notgnihsaw”.. Washington which is described as a cultural hero who is known for two great feats of strength. This piece uses three types of satirical devices: Invective, irony, and satire. Invective is a group overstatement, extreme exaggeration. Some pieces of this article that use invective would be how much time people spend so much time getting ready in the morning, buy so many medications for every illness, and go running to the doctor

“Body Rituals Among the Nacirema” by Horace Miner’s ethnography based passage centers on the isolated land of Nacirema. There, anthropologist studies studied the “odd” behavioral rituals and cultural norms that the Nacirema people have such as drilling holes into the mouth and a charm box the people bow their heads into. Seemingly being a foreign land will almost disturbing customs, the reader soon learns that Nacirema, in reality, is America and the routinely activities that is initially portrayed to be peculiar are things that we do on a daily basis. The main purpose for creating Nacirema is to provide an unbiased opinion to all, allowing the views to create their own opinion about some of the activities Americans do. Allowing the reader

For us to properly learn about culture, we must understand the meaning of cultural relativism and ethnocentrism. The two concepts challenge one another. Reading the article, we must pull away from our ethnocentric views and think critically about the Nacirema people's. However, the description of the culture creates an ideology that is hard to agree with. For example, the Nacirema peoples take part in a rite that involves hog hairs and magical powders. The Nacirema rituals do sound strange and displeasing but, we have to learn to recognize our ethnocentric judgments.

"Body image is the perception that a person has of their physical self and the thoughts and feelings that result from that perception.” The American society has been broadcasting a certain type of body,

How do people view the body? The answer varies from location, religion and culture. How western cultures view the body and how the body is treated (our body and others) are different from how non western cultures view and treat bodies. We can see the differences in the western and non western bodies in such works as Anne Fadiman’s account of a Hmong child in America and in articles like Genital Surgeries: Gendering Bodies. Along with the many differences between western and non western thoughts there are also several similarities. Especially when it comes to metaphors of the body.

Society follows a norm that requires a general agreement between groups in order to function as a whole. Human beings are social “group animals” (Lessing 1) and need each other to survive with the intention to get along or fit in. These desires to conform “influence our idea about ourselves” (Lessing 1) and people lose a sense of their inner self based on these insecurities. The false concept of ideal beauty of body image is displayed in the media and it pressures young women and men to accept this particular notion of beauty. The role of the media comes into play because it pressures individuals to give in, since they appeal to our need, which is to be accepted. Although, people oppose to media pressuring individuals to conform, it is clear