Nacirema Culture By Horace Miner

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).

I was very scared after reading Miner’s article because of the descriptive details he used. If I had to practice those rituals I would be contemplating my life because it would be better than having to go through pain. Throughout Miner’s article, he describes Nacirema culture as both a material and nonmaterial culture. An example that shows that the Nacirema is a material culture is the fact that all the households that are of the Nacirema culture have shrines, and out of all the rooms in the houses, the shrines are the wealthiest rooms. Miner described that the families who are poorer put pottery plaques on the walls of their shrines to make them look a lot richer and imitate the richer families. This is material culture because the material culture has to do with art and the Nacirema culture uses art to fancy up their shrines. Minor also describes many rituals that make the Nacirema a nonmaterial culture too. There are a few examples that show the nonmaterial part of the Nacirema culture. One example is that the Nacirema culture believes that the magical materials in their charm-boxes that are in their shrines are supposed to heal certain