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Nacirema Culture Summary

693 Words3 Pages

This article by Horace Miner is, in a way, a comparison that is used to describe the American society. After reading the article for a couple of times, I came to realize that the name of the tribe, Nacirema, is American spelled backwards. Article also states that the tribe and its culture are characterized by highly developed market economy, which is also characteristic of the economy of the Unites States. What is so unusual for civilization living in such advanced economy and market are their rituals and traditions. The people from Nacirema culture pay great attention to their health and were ready to deal with irrational pain levels and procedures to achieve health and great looks, just like we are nowadays. This is a negative characteristic of a society. When too much attention is placed on physical looks, people begin to loose sight of what is really important and became superficial in their thinking and judging of others based on their appearance. Their main place of prayer takes place at a shrine. Shrine is the synonym for the bathroom. The chest built into wall is mirror, featuring medicine cabinet and other things we can’t imagine our daily life without. Medicine men are doctors, and holy mouth men are dentists. We can see that the similarities between Americans and the Nacirema people are obvious, when comparing …show more content…

I think that the negatives of the today’s society are dedicating too much time to physical look ad what’s on the outside. Another segment is taking preventive medicine a step further then we should. People take more pills then what they can remember the uses for, even though most of the time they don’t even have the use for them. This isn’t helping our bodies, and actually might even do us

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