Essay about Two Views on Culture and Anthropology

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 society today, the discipline of anthropology has made a tremendous shift from the practices it employed years ago. Anthropologists of today have a very different focus from their predecessors, who would focus on relating problems of distant peoples to the Western world. In more modern times, their goal has become much more local, in focusing on human problems and issues within the societies they live.

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.

143). She illustrates how essential culture is to anthropology and how anthropology helps to balance culture, as well as its ties with race. She considers culture and race as opposites. “Culture is learned and can change,” (Abu-Lughod, p. 144), and race is something inborn. Although she can only depict and explain the concept of culture, and how it has become necessary and not the reasons behind it.

1) Horace Minor’s Nacirema was taking a look the American public in the 1950’s when Minor wrote the article. It was a satirical piece to give an objective look ‘to’ Americans, and Westerners alike, from the outside perspective without the immediate knowledge that it was western culture, but instead trying with the façade of a tribe. This article was riddled with symbols and symbolism that drew direct connections from a mysterious tribe to a well known western culture. For example the doctors, dentists and psychologists were all forms of medicine men: the doctors were actually named medicine men, the dentists were named ‘Mouth men’, and the psychologists were knows as ‘the listeners’. All three practitioners, just like in western society, were held in high regard, were higher up on the social latter and were very important to the entire tribe. This mirrors the respect and social structure that western society has for these types of professions. Also, the body shaming of the women in the tribe and the lack of respect that man has for women in the work place and otherwise in western culture, especially in the 50’s, draws more connections to identify the tribe as Americans. I really loved the attempt to make our forefathers into tribal gods. Washington being named Notgnihsaw, a man who couldn’t and didn’t lie when being confronted about the cherry tree he cut down. He also crossed a frozen river to fight a war. Everything from the unrealistic vanity the tribe would experience

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.

“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

Alexie uses first hand experiences all throughout his article to depict the reality of American Indian’s lives. By appealing to the pathos, he gives his readers the ability to empathize with him, experiencing both the trials and triumphs. His use of analogies provides his audience with visuals that portray his experiences more accurately. When Alexie writes about himself in

In the article Horace Miner satirizes America's culture and lifestyle. He is writing in the point of view of an outsider that never exposed to western or American culture. Often times when we write articles of different cultures, we say their life consists of many rituals and ceremonies.But we don't realize that our everyday looks like rituals to outsiders.Often time when we associate rituals with every culture except Western culture. The author uses allusion, hyperbole, and irony to humorously mock Americans culture while, at the same time showing the readers a different view of their daily lives.The whole writing is an allusions of American culture, that he wrote from a nonwestern exposed person viewpoint.There is also hyperbole the author

Cold Water, directed by Noriko Ogami is a documentary from 1986 about cross-cultural adaptation and culture shock. It is about diving into a new culture and having it feel, as one foreign student puts it, like a “plunge into cold water.” Twelve Boston University foreign students express their perceptions of their experiences in the U.S. as each of them (plus one American student and three specialists) is interviewed about living and studying in a new culture. Initial focus is on the arrival and immediate post-arrival period and the culture shock which, for most of the interviewees, follows on its heels. It becomes clear that central to the problems encountered

When comparing cultures, one must form a definition of what culture is. Culture can be easily defined as the social behavior and normality’s found in human societies. It can also be easily made up of a composed arrangement of educated conduct and thought designs. Culture is a sorted out framework since it includes many parts. Throughout the world, there are many cultures that are both very different and also very similar. "Culture encompasses religion, food, what we wear, how we wear it, our language, marriage, music, what we believe is right or wrong, how we sit at table, how we greet visitors, how we behave and one million other things." (Cristina De Rossi.)

For the purposes of this piece, culture is defined as “the full range of human patterned experience” as described by Cole (1996) cited in Gla ̆veanu & Jovchelovitch (2017, p.113). This chapter also provides a description of the importance culture plays in psychological research.

United States was built on immigrants and some of the immigrants were pushed from their homeland because of some reasons while other reasons such as America dream pulled them to the United States. Most of these immigrants came from China in 1949, when the communist party took over. These immigrants came with their cultures and languages which are significant in everyone's lives because they play a major role in the development of individual’s characteristics. Many observers

"Culture is not an exotic notion studied by a select group of anthropologists in the