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Body Ritual Among The Nacirema Essay

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Don’t ask why it is necessary that you duck boots, just get them. They are not really that fashionable, and they are very expensive. Everyone else has them, though, so I have to get them, no doubt about it. In the article Body Ritual Among the Nacirema, by Horace Miner, American culture is satirized due to the way some practices and beliefs are so deeply indoctrinated into us that the American people fail to recognize how strange all of them really are. In “1848: When America Came of Age,” by Kurt Andersen, American society from the 19th century, most specifically the year 1848, is described by a series of movements and the emergence of the many beliefs that dominate American culture. In American culture, faith without question and with the …show more content…

In fact, many practices in modern American culture depend on the faith of the people. New dietary plans and magical weight losing programs are always the buzz on the internet and some people do indeed have faith that these work. With nearly no science to back up these trendy magical programs that are supposed to improve your health, many people still their money in them with the hope they will progress. While there are inherent negative aspects of faith in this way, there are also positive things that can come out of it. Whether it be hygiene, health, or the economy, the American people have been thrust into situations of uncertainty but have somehow prevailed. Sometimes it happens by pure luck, like when gold was struck in California and began a movement of people of the west. Sometimes by sheer hard work and hard headedness. In retrospect, many decisions are made in good faith that the results will be favorable, and there are a plethora of historical examples to back this claim up. For example, Thomas Jefferson, as president, took a major decision against the wishes of congress when he completed the Louisiana Purchase, and this decision changed the future for the better. Though never certain if what we put our faith into will catapult us into success, it is a gamble the American people are always willing to take as long as there is a purpose and a vision of progress in

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After reading “Body Ritual Among the Nacirema” I believe the Nacirema are the Americans. First Nacirema is American spelled backwards. I also think it is America because it said “North American group living… Little is known of their origin, al- though tradition states that they came from the east.”

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Body Ritual among the Nacirema was written by Horace Miner in 1956. This piece was crafted as an excellent accumulation of the techniques of ironic, symbolism and use of a didactic tone that made this piece a great success. An example of where irony is used in the text is the way he makes us see the tribe as foreign and exotic and we judge it, but then we realize that Nacirema is American spelled backwards and the reader see that it is not a foreign tribe - but indeed the modern American people themselves. There is also mass irony around Notgnihsaw and the chopping down of the cherry tree in which the Spirit of Truth resided, because Notgnihsaw spelled backwards is Washington. Miner is using irony because America is supposed to be built on

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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.

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Horace Miner, the author of “Body Ritual among the Nacirema”, used very interesting and descriptive choice of words to describe the routines that modern Americans go through from an outsider point of view. He gives different terms to describe mundane routines, like brushing your teeth, and exaggerate the details as something that is bizarre. Some rituals Miner described as illogical because there was a low rate of success in what they are trying to achieve. This reveals that what determines something to be socially acceptable is not through logic, but only though the popularity of the community. One of the rituals that Miner described as illogical but everyone still do the ritual was the fact that the people kept going to the “holy-mouth-man”, or also known as the dentist, even if their teeth are still decaying.

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“The focus of this activity is the human body, the appearance and health of which loom as a dominant concern in the ethos of the people.” (Henslin, Chapter 8, P. 88) This quote stood out to me because of how outlandish it first seemed. As I continued reading and Henslin went more in depth about the Nacirema rituals, I was thinking to myself how strange it all seemed. Then it dawned on me that my perception of it was biased because of how I have lived my whole life.

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In the study called Body Ritual Among the Nacirema, the author calls the rituals and ceremonies the people perform “excessive”. They are insane rituals that people in America wouldn’t seem to think about doing. They sound so different, and unusual. As one reads the fieldwork, it raises a lot of questions and concerns. To anyone from another country it would seem these rituals are excessive because of the way they are performed, and the things they use to perform them.

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