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Body Ritual Among The Nacirema Analysis

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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. As a western civilization we are guilty of making other cultures seem strange and unrelatable by describing their culture in an exuberant way. However, Miner does an excellent job at executing the description of the “Nacirema” as foreign individuals with him being a American himself. This essay is told from an …show more content…

We as the audience see this through undeniable evidence that there was no real cultural insight of the Nacirema. As well as language/description Minor uses in the essay to describe the natives. Because the Emic and Etic methods take two completely different approaches to anthropology you can clearly see how this essay approached a certain method rather than the other. In writing the “Body Ritual Among the Nacirema”, Minor followed the guidelines that a Etic would take in conducting research of a particular culture. The Emic method gives a clear and accurate understanding of a culture due to the in-depth interview conducted by the anthropologist. But because there was a lack of information, confusion and strange descriptions of a non-exotic culture there is no way that this “Body Ritual Among the Nacirema” used the Emic method. Because of this it supports the fact that this essay was a Etic inspired

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Body Ritual of the Nacirema by Horace Miner is a clever piece that describes a foreign sounding culture only to be realized that the group being described is one that is much more familiar. Through his process of describing conventional habits or “rituals” in an unconventional way, he allows the reader to look at this culture through a very unique lens. The Nacirema are the Americans and a representation of the American culture. Although this might not be immediately apparent to the reader, there are a number of hints throughout the text to help come to this realization.

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The article written by Miner was one in which seemingly forced the student to keep reading. The varying ways in which the author described traditions created and passed down through generations of the Nacirema people evoked interest and question in the students mind. The student had never read this article, nor had he read an article written in such a way to make him feel emotions quite like the ones he felt while scrolling though the pages of this article. Fortunately, the student was able to find that he was not the sole student amongst his peers who had many questions and concerns that came to fruition while reading the Nacirema article. Questions fluttered around the readers head as he finished the first few paragraphs of the article.

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