Body Ritual Among The Nacirema By Horace Miner

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.

Horace Miner, a American Anthropologist wrote an academic essay titled “Body Ritual Among the Nacirema.” In this article Miner described some of the bizarre rituals and practices of the “Nacirema” which the reader comes to find out that he is talking about North Americans. The way Miner goes into detail about how these people live makes them seem foreign. Thus making the norm for an American lifestyle seem odd because the certain type of lingo Miner uses to make this “tribe” more exotic then the actually are. His point in doing this is to show the reader how obnoxious anthropologist can be when they are explain a different culture. As a western civilization we are guilty of making other cultures seem strange and unrelatable by describing their

In the book “Body Ritual Among the Nacirema” by Horace Miner, it describes the people of the Nacirema tribe; a North American group with a culture distinguished by their highly developed market economy as well as the immense amount of importance placed on the very specific ritual activity based around the human body’s appearance and impurities. Their customs and rituals are large part of who they are and when investigated closely this is very apparent as it gives more insight into who the Nacirema are as a whole.

Although the Nacirema tribe has very unique methods and focus on the human body and appearence, they are similar to our society. I feel like this tribe's beliefs are particularly similar to ours because they try to achieve "beauty" just like we try to be "prettier" or "perfect". The Nacirema can be described as a weird/unique tribe because they use torture to achieve their beliefs. One thing that striked me as particularly odd was the "mouth-rite" and "latispo" rituals because the people knew that they might die if they went through them and they still do it. They do this because they want to fit in and it is also something that has been tought all their lives. In a way, we also go through a type of torture when we decide on changing the way

“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

By keeping reading this article, I do understand that Nacirema is a tribe with a deep and unique connection with their culture. For example, they have a created a special structure of society for their ritual and ceremony of the human body. Indeed, the Nacirema tribe has a deep believe in their religion, culture and their belief. We understand from this perspective that our diversity makes us certainly different, but connected. For example Horace mentions that Nacirema body cleansing is a must for social recognition, and mouth rituals make them (the Nacirema) more accepted by others. These rituals may look odd to some point of view. In this logic, one may argue that the author emphasizes the fact that diversity acknowledgement can be complex.

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 readers attention the odd rituals practiced in America that the normal citizen would not find strange at all. However, by presenting his essay in the this form he shows how strange American customs are from the view of someone in a different country.

The Nacirema May sound like strange a tribe, but if you read very closely you will notice they are not. Nacirema is American spelled backwards and latipso is ospital backwards which almost spells hospital. In this passage the American people are really the ones who are being talked about. All the rituals that are spoken of describe our everyday life. Bathrooms are described as shrines and medicine cabinets as charm boxes. Doctors are referred to as medicine men and dentists to holy-mouth-men as they rid the mouth of evils. The story of the “Nacirema” really does make a good point about out how we have a ridiculous amount of medications, and we take unnecessary trips to the hospital too often. Miner, the author is trying to illustrate the obsessions of the American people like our obsession with self-image and health and how strange and

Another similarity is the region where the Nacirema live, “the territory between the Canadian Cree, the Yaqui and Tarahumare of Mexico” (2). I believe that Miner was describing the location of America. If you focus on the “rituals” of the Nacirema when thinking of America, many of the practitioners are real careers people choose to have. The way Miner describes the jobs makes you think about how awful it might sound to people from other nations who don’t have these types of occupations where they are from. Not only did Miner talk about the jobs, but he also mentioned a place called, “the latipso”, which is hospital backwards without the “h”. He describes this place as a temple to the Nacirema, where the sick go to die. This description sounds a whole lot like how someone would depict a hospital. I believe Miner uses these tricky descriptions as a way to show us the reality of what is really going on in our society. He lists several, “practitioners”, which are real possible careers for one to pursue in America.

The Nacirema tribe is a North American group with a highly developed market economy that has evolved into a rich natural habitat. The underlying belief of the Nacirema is the human body is ugly and that it has a tendency to weakness and illness. The Nacirema believe that the condition of one’s mouth has influence on their social relationships and believe that if not in good condition, their lovers will leave them, their gums will bleed and their teeth will fall out, etc. So in order to maintain a healthy mouth, they perform a mouth-rite which is one of their daily body rituals, but this certain one involves moving a bundle of hog hair with magical powders sprinkled throughout around their mouths in order to cleanse and protect. Nacirema rituals

The story relates to how we seek perfection on our bodies. It demonstrates how people will perform extreme procedures to achieve perfection, and even after this they will still feel they are ugly and not perfect. The rituals performed by the Nacirema tribe may seem inhumane, but if compared to our current culture and the procedures people perform on their bodies there is no much difference. I viewed the things they did as bizarre, but on close analysis of our culture, I realized they are no different from the things we do to achieve bodily perfection. I believe that other people who look or read about the things we do think if them as been inhumane.

I’ll be totally honest with you; I had absolutely no idea what was going on when we were reading “Body Ritual Among the Nacirema” by Horace Miner. There was not a single part of me that was in on the joke, and while that says a great deal about my personal gullibility, it also says a great deal about the success of Miner’s work. For my own pride, and my own grade, I’ll chose to focus what that fact says about Miner’s work in terms of class discussion prompts, cultural relativism, and ethnocentrism.

support, providing cures to illnesses not only using herbs, but also via the spirit world. They would

hardest thing to forget, is that ritual. We had thought it was fake, as she had not said otherwise, but it wasn't. It was on a dark, warm night in July, the 19th to be exact, and we had gone to a small field in the woods. I had planned a camp out with Rae, Aria and Courtney and told them to bring something they wanted to do. I arrived at the spot at 7 p.m. and waited for the others to show up. "Hey Jade!" I heard Rae yell as she rode her bicycle up the hill. I went by Jade at my old school, I had felt the name Shannon didn't fit me so I went by my middle name instead. I yelled back "Hey Rae! What's in the bag?!" "Just my clothes and something I brought to do! It's one of those ritual things you see on the internet!" She put down her bike next

The Ostava ritual of the Circle of Life Coven is communicative in various ways. As Bird’s put it, Ostava is constitutive because it follows a scripts that provide outlines and this was seen in the way the participants new how to prepare the living room and the altars as well as knowing when to call for each quarters. Moreover, the ritual is also constitutive because without participants, the tunnel of birth could not be done and the calling of the quarters will not be possible. This ritual is self-representative because it makes statement about who they are and also identify themselves with character and roles that are asked for in their scripts. In the Ostava ritual this was seen with how the elders had different roles in the ritual and