Horace Miner’s Book Body Ritual Among the Nacirema

Categories: Nacirema

Essay, Pages 8 (1956 words)

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Abstract

Here in America we view ourselves as one of the most, if not the most, advanced societies in the world. Most of us feel that we are just the best, but if you really look at a lot of the aspects of our society in the eyes that Horace Miner provides in his paper “Body Ritual among the Nacirema” you may begin to think otherwise. In Horace’s paper he shows the reader how the United States of America could be viewed from the perspective of a more advance, or more developed country.

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You could think of it as what aliens might view us. I guess you could even say a that an underdeveloped country would view us in this way too, but by the tone it seems that its meant to be a view of America by someone that views America how Americans see other cultures such as an African tribe or third world country or cultures of that sort.

The main topics he covers are on the vanity of Americans, but he also covers doctors, dentist, therapists, hospitals, and a few others things.

Horace starts out by discussing the Nacirema shrine. The shrine is where the Nacirema worship themselves. This is obviously a bathroom. Since this is poking fun at Americans vanity, wherever people focus their time on cleaning and grooming and pampering themselves would be their shrine. How many shrines you have, and how nice your shrine is, is determined by how much money you have. Every Nacireman at least has one though.

The Nacireman’s think the body is ugly and disease and dies if they don’t take care of it so performing these “ceremonies” are important and dire to survival and acceptance.

Now two parts of the shrine that are most important are this charm box or chest that is built into the wall, and the font that is under this charm box/chest. We know these things as a medicine cabinet and the sink that is underneath. Our water supposedly comes from some magical water temple where a priest makes it pure with ceremonies, which as we know our water is provided by our local water company who cleanse and treats it to make it full of chemical or pure by American standards.

Now in this charm box I mentioned before are tons of charms and potions and things, which Nacirema believe they can’t live without, and they have so many that they don’t even know what all of them are for anymore. Well since the charm box is a medicine cabinet then we can safely assume that these charms are medicines, specifically prescription medicine. We know they are prescription medicines because they get them from the medicine men. Medicine men are just simply doctors. We must pay our doctors to get medicine and their services. In the paper he describes this as giving the medicine men gifts. In real life I hear all the time that you cannot read doctors writing especially on prescriptions and its comical that Horace writes that they write in a secret language that only the pharmacist can read, well, the herbalist as he puts it.

As I said before he also writes about dentist and therapist, or what he calls “the holy-mouth-men” and “the listeners”. Since oral hygiene is something that is crucial in the Nacirema the holy-mouth-men are very important. Their ceremony described sound like a scene from the movie “Saw” but in all reality it is nothing more than getting a cavity filled. When he talks about the therepist he talks about how they expel the demons from your head but in reality they help get rid of your bad thoughts. The way he puts it though it makes it seem like they just listen and that’s it, that they serve no real purpose.

Horace then goes on to describe several other things that ill describe briefly. He calls hospital, “Latipso”, and he talks about how crazy it is that the Nacireman even their people there because how horrible the care is. He makes some decent points but for the most part is just more crazy tribal exaggeration. He writes again how the Nacirema just basically hate their bodies, and if their fat then they don’t eat and eat a bunch if they are skinny. He talks about boobs how they are either too big or too small and how girls get implants. He also says that some girls with implants show them off to make a good living, a.k.a strippers. Then the last topic he talks about is sex and how were not supposed to talk about it and we try to prevent it but conception is still high (I mean that’s totally true.weve all seen teen mom).

“It is hard to understand how they have managed to exist so long under the burdens which they have imposed upon themselves. But even such exotic customs as these take on real meaning when they are viewed with the insight provided by Malinowski when he wrote “Looking from far and above, from our high places of safety in the developed civilization, it is easy to see all the crudity and irrelevance of magic. But without its power and guidance early man could not have mastered his practical difficulties as he has done, nor could man have advanced to the higher stages of civilization.””(Miner) This part of the paper is what the whole paper is making fun of. This piece of satire is how americans view other cultures. We often say the same, that it a surprise that they’ve made it this far. I think America has made a little too complex in some aspect and parts of our life’s are burdens. Our lives here in America are not perfect and our customs defenatly aren’t either, so to judge another culture that is at least mildly surviving is wrong. We cannot sit back and judge cultures that use “magic” because as the quote says, it is from these cultures that Americans came from.

Horace Miner’s point throughout the entire article of “Body Ritual Among the Nacirema” was to prove to us, Americans, that we are not superior to anyone else or any other culture, society, or religion. We are all the same, and we just to need to keep in the back of our minds that everyone does everything differently. Whether it is a dramatic difference, or barely noticeable, each person does everything different from the next person. Throughout this essay willbe examples on how Miner’s article went to prove how ethnocentric Americans through the use of sociological imagination.

Anthropologist, Horace Miner, wrote an article on a tribe called the Nacirema, who originated from Between the Canadian Cree, the Yaqui and Tarahumare of Mexico, and the Carib and Arawak of the Antilles. This specific tribe is so superficial, and focuses so much time on their bodily appearance. The people of this tribe go through many daily rituals to stay healthy, clean, and as perfect as possible. This tribe that is spoken of is the American. Nacirema is American spelled backwards. Throughout the article, Miner, strived to prove how ethnocentric we, Americans, are through sociological imagination.

Reading the article without knowing it is about Americans will put a person in the point of view of an outsider from a different culture. We think the tribe, Nacirema, thinks that the human body is ugly and its natural leaning to weakness and disease is an awful thing, and that their only hope to avoid these characteristic of the human body, is to keep up with their daily rituals. Americans are always trying to come up with new ideas to prevent natural aging, the deterioration, and weakness of the body. We feel so ashamed of our supposed weak bodies that the rituals performed in our families’ shrines (bathrooms) are kept completely private and should not be shared with anyone. Just because of our shamefulness, we have already proven that we are not a perfect people.

Americans can alter their appearances in simple, almost no effort ways. “…Professor Linton referred in discussing a distinctive part of the daily body ritual which is only performed by men. This part of the rite includes scraping and lacerating the surface of the face with a sharp instrument.” (Miner Paragraph 12) This ritual described the process of men shaving their face with a razor and along with the ritual is a possibility of cutting the face. “Special women’s rites are performed only four times during each lunar month, but what they lack in frequency is made up in barbarity. As part of this ceremony, women bake their head in small ovens for about an hour.” (Miner Paragraph 12) This ceremony is talking about women going to get their hair done to improve their looks. The small ovens are old fashioned hair dryers, which would dry their hair into the style that woman wanted it to be. Another ritual that the Nacirema people go through is to find a holy-mouth man (dentist).

The holy-mouth man pokes and prods at the client’s teeth, and it is not always a pleasant experience. The holy-mouth man likes performing uncomfortable and slightly painful rituals on the client’s teeth. The client allows for the holy-mouth man to whatever he or she likes with their teeth. The man ritual of shaving, woman ritual of getting their hair done, and going to see a holy-mouth man at least once a year all have sadistic and masochistic qualities. The specialists that complete these services like seeing their client uncomfortable and in pain on some level.

The people of the Nacirema tribe continue to return these specialists and continue the rituals, proving that in some sort of way that they must like being uncomfortable and in pain. People of the Nacirema tribe can also physically change their appearance by having a special medicine man alter parts of the body. Mainly the women of the tribe are the ones who see the specialist. These specialists can make a woman’s breasts larger or smaller if needed. Other surgery, besides on the breasts, can be performed, such as the face, stomach, and arms.

To view all these rituals that have been aforementioned, from an outsider’s point of view can make the American people look barbaric, weird, and not natural. The people of the American culture are so wrapped up in self-image that it is almost sickening to look at it from another view point. The people will go to almost any length to look better and stay looking young that they will go through many painful and uncomfortable rituals. Talking about sexual intercourse is a not something to talk about openly, especially in public. To avoid pregnancy “the use of magical materials or by limiting intercourse to the certain phases of the moon.” (Miner Paragraph 19)

Birth control is taken to avoid becoming pregnant, and when women do become pregnant they wear loose clothing as to hide the fact that there are carrying a child. Other cultures see intercourse as a natural thing to reproduce, and that pregnancy is a beautiful thing. They see us not talking and being open about sex as taboo. We, Americans, are not superior to anyone else. That is what Horace Miner wanted to get across to all of us. He wanted us to think outside of the box. We need not to look at other cultures as strange, but just as different and unique because the other cultures look at us and think we are the weird ones.