Summary of Body Ritual Among the Nacirema Essay

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

What is the latipso used by Nacireman medicine men? The medicine men have an imposing temple, or latipso, in every community of any size. The latipso ceremonies are so harsh that it is phenomenal that a fair proportion of the really sick natives who enter the temple ever recover. Sick adults are not only willing but eager to undergo the protracted ritual purification, if they can afford to do so.

This instantly makes an American believe that Miner is describing any other culture but their own. However, the revelation of this article is that it depicts everyday American health practices but in a way the sounds ludicrous when applied to ourselves. Miner refers to the bathroom as a shrine where private ceremonies are held, medicine cabinets as charm boxes with magical potions, and the hospital as a temple. Healthcare providers are referred to magical practitioners; dentists are holy-mouth-men, doctors are medicine men, psychologists are the listeners, and pharmacists are herbalists. Ordinary routines such as shaving, blow drying hair, and dental procedures are characterized as sadistic and masochistic behaviour. Correspondingly, the tone and terminology used in this article implies that there are religious, supernatural and uncivilized factors involved in these

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.

The reaction essay is based upon Horace Miner’s article “Body Ritual Among the Nacirema,” published in Wiley-Blackwell’s, in conjunction with the American Anthropological Association, journal American Anthropologist. The essay will consist of two sections: an article summary and a reaction discussion.

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.

Horace Miner describes the people of the North American tribe the Naciremas as persons “devoted to economic pursuits (Body Ritual Among the Nacirema. Miner. 503.3.2)” and ritual activities of the human body. Miner uses a satirical style, play on words to abnormally describe such cultural upon this tribe. Throughout the text, Miner uses words and or phrases such as: “sadism, masochistic, neophyte, awls, and objects in the exorcism of the evils of the mouth involves almost unbelievable ritual torture of the client.” Horace Miner, uses those such words and phrases to describe the various everyday rituals conducted by the Naciremas by producing ethnocentrism through the readers of his text.

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.

Health care has been an issue for the United States of America for multiple years. Dental care, a topic that does not get much attention because people believe it is trivial, plays a major part in people’s lives, particularly children. Gerard van Honthorst’s The Tooth Puller shows a dentist pulling a patient’s tooth with five observers watching. Van Honthorst shows how in awe or scared people are of the dentist. There is a negative outlook on dentists and dental care: people are afraid of the dentist giving them their negative connotation, while dental care only causes pain in many people eyes. There is a problem in the health care system and improvement in the system is needed because health care is a right for every citizen, especially dental care. The United States of America’s government should allow dental therapist to conduct the procedure that normal dentist conduct for free for children under the age of twelve. The government should fund the teaching, training, and employment of dental therapists to care for underserved people.

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

In the article “Body Ritual among the Nacirema” talks about how society is obsessed with their physical appearance. However, I don't agree with that because there are many people who have a hold on many other things such as materialistic things. People today think having everything in life is the way to live happy and better than others. Material wealth is not only based on having money and goods, it can also be valuable/meaningful things people have in their possession as well as having a large amount of things they don't need. Having everything you want isn't always as important as you may think because there is other things out in the world that are better than having unnecessary and awfully expensive things.

In the article “Body Ritual among the Nacirema” the author uses magical and humorous word choice, to make the reader jump to assumptions about the culture. Miner mainly uses magical word choice. In the article, a primary focus is a shrine in the home which holds a box that contains potions and charms. The keeper of these objects in the box believes that they cannot live without them. He used the magical words to describe the bathroom and the objects inside it, such as a medicine cabinet that contains medication and such things. Well, he does explain how we use the items, but he makes the items seem more magical and obscure with his word choice. Also in a Latipso (or hospital) a Miracle worker performs rituals with assistants in costumes who move about the temple. Making the "ritual" seem more magical than it already is when in reality Miner is describing a surgical procedure in a hospital. He calls surgical scrubs costumes and masks as funny headdresses. The gift that

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.

In an essay written by Horace Miner, "Body Rituals among the Nacrima" Miner observes a culture through an outsider 's perspective. Miner, an anthropologist, studies the behavior and cultural development of the Nacrima. His distant perspective can be seen when he describes the rituals in which the people take part in as a "…. rite [involving] a practice which strikes the uninitiated stranger as revolting." The culture he speaks of is that of the Americans and Miner strategically uses word play to disguise this, fooling the reader into believing that the essay depicts an older, less advanced culture. He uses this distance to his advantage to force the reader to perceive the world we live in differently; One that is ritualistic and practices magic in order to sustain survival. For example, Miner states, the "witch doctor has the power to exorcise the devils that lodge in the heads of people who have been bewitched" when