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Body Ritual Among The Nacirema By Horace Miner Summary

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In Horace Miner's Body Ritual among the Nacirema, Miner depicted the Nacirema as a culture obsessed with rituals who focused on the human body as a whole. Miner (1956, p.503) stated that the fundamental belief underlying the whole system appears to be that the human body is ugly and that it's natural tendency is to debility and disease. This paper aims to show the main points of the article, how it is different and similar to todays modern society, and how it shows the culture of consumption and American liberal economics. Upon reading the article, one would think that the rituals being done daily would be gruesome and morbid. In my opinion, Miner did this in order to show how much an outsiders perspective can affect ones perception of a …show more content…

They are similar in such a way that in every culture, each one has a certain routine that is followed by all of its members belonging in the society. Their daily routines such as sanitation as cited in Miner's Body Ritual among the Nacirema, is something considered as “holy” or done in secrecy which is something done by majority of their society. Every society is similar in a way that majority of them follow the same routines in their day to day lives. Another similarity can be the use of medicine. Up until this day, the use of herbal and generic medicines still exists. It also has been further improved by the use of technology. When it comes to the differences one would be very clear, nothing is exactly similar to another. In today's generation, people live in diverse and different societies with different cultures. These little things make them distinct from others and also sets an identity for them. Miner also showed the culture of the Nacirema to be very dependent on their rituals and 'magical' beliefs. In today's modern societies, people are not only dependent on rituals but also on other major factors such as politics, education, and religion which are part of the pillars of …show more content…

According to Clugston (2007) consumption is a self-induced and societal disorder-- a societal addiction. Every American is addicted to excessive consumption; we are all living beyond our means – most of us individually. Seeing how the Nacirema focuses so much on their physical appearance, it shows how too self-absorbed they are and how they are never contented with what they have. Sorman (2011) defined liberal economics as a body of thought based on Adam Smith's ideas about the forces of supply and demand in the marketplace, emphasizing the social and economic benefits when individuals pursue their own self-interest. Liberal economics can be directly related in such a way that in the culture of the Americans, they would buy products which are meant for self enhancement and for the betterment of their well being like make-up, toothpaste, facial cleansers, etc. Because of that, more products are being sold thus increasing the economy. Another way on how liberal economics is directly related would be how most of their decisions are made individually rather than as a collective group. This is because they are more focused on themselves, rather than the group as a whole. They put their needs first before

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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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Miner takes the simple American traditions and breaks them down to their raw form. For example, the way he describes the plain task of brushing our teeth as “inserting a small bundle of hog hairs into the mouth, along with certain magical powders, and then moving the small bundle in a highly formalized series of gestures.” In all honesty, the way he describes it is completely factual, but because we have become so used to doing it, we do not see how peculiar it essentially looks. Miner takes how we would explain another cultures traditions and turns it on ourselves. He evaluates what we see as normal and transforms it into something that seems unnecessary or strange.

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These rituals also create a sense of moral community, in which people conform to, which furthers their purpose and meaning in

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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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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 culture that Miner is describing is the Nacirema culture. The Nacirema culture is very complex with many different and harsh rituals. Their culture believes that the human body is ugly, so they perform many brutal rituals to make their body as perfect as it can be. The author of this article, Horace Miner, uses descriptive and harsh detail to describe the brutal rituals that the Nacirema culture to elicit reactions from the reader. For example, Miner explains a daily ritual that is called mouth-rite, and Miner introduces the practice by saying “Despite the fact that these people are so punctilious about care of the mouth, this rite involves a practice which strikes the uninitiated stranger as revolting” (American Anthropologist pg. 504).

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