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The Nacirema Culture

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The Nacirema is a society that despite of possessing a highly developed market economy, they dedicate much of their time to numerous rituals every day. They believe that the human body possess a high propensity to debility and disease. It is said that they perform rituals and ceremonies to avoid these characteristics.
In the Nacirema culture, there is at least one or more shrines in every house. This sanctuaries are built into the walls. They consist of a chest that contains many magical potions and charms. These items come from the medicine men. They are the ones who decide which ingredients must contain the potions, and they write them down in a language that only they and herbalists would understand. The help of these specialized practitioners …show more content…

Four times a month, the ladies had to place their heads in small ovens for about an hour as part of the ritual. That also makes me question why they feel the need to perform this ritual. Was it for physical appearance? At some extent, this ritual resembles today’s society where some women gets under a hair dryer for an hour or more every week to get their hair done and look more attractive.
Also, in every community, the medicine men had a temple that has been built to treat the sickest people specifically. The only problem is that the only way to receive treatment there is by giving a rich gift to the custodian in order to be admitted. It does not matter how ill the patient was, basically they had to pay.
The Nacirema people were not used to exposure their bodies, but for this rituals they had to take off their clothes and let the maidens bathing them and see them performing the natural function of their bodies into a sacred vessel. This is how the medicine men would deduce the nature of their illnesses. Again, this is how modern medicine is nowadays with the difference that doctors do not use magical powers to guess an illness, they actually use scientific methods to diagnose a disease. On the other hand, women had to let the medicine men to analyze, touch, and stimulate their naked bodies, but people that attended these ceremonies had a truly faith in these

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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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In Miner’s essay on the Nacirema culture has many comparisons to the United States’ cultures. There are many examples that Miner provides in his essay. The first comparison is to a chest which in the United States’ culture is a medicine cabinet. The second comparison that is made is about the fascination with mouth some people in the United States fear the dentist in the Nacirema culture “They believe that their teeth will fall out, their gums bleed, their jaws shrink, their friends will desert them, and their lovers reject them (Nanda, Warms 2).

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Nacirema Body Ritual The Nacirema culture was a nation that originated by the culture hero, Notgnihsaw. Their culture was characterized by a rich natural habitat. Now while they spent some time working on economic pursuits, majority of their day is spent in ritual activity. They believe that the human body is ugly and that it has a tendency to debility and disease and that the only way to protect themselves is through ritual and ceremony.

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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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Priests and priestesses went to temples to help watch the people to make sure they did not get the gods angry so that they could keep living there happy lives.

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Most of them wearing a mask that completely covered their faces. A priest would hold the body up while another priest, which was adorned with a mask allowing them to speak, would commence the ceremony. As it commenced, the priest would touch the eyes, nose, ears, and of course the mouth to restore the five senses to the body and thus reanimating the dead body to then continue with the

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Some of those rituals are avoiding exposure of their body and bathing in secret. They believe that the body is an ugly thing. In order to make it better they have to perform a ritual and ceremony. Many of their homes have multiple shrines dedicated to this purpose. The more powerful

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The man on the altar was the complete opposite of the other people. It seemed like he did take a bath in sludge or even worse. His unkempt hairs and beard were sticky and long, he looked malnourished and didn´t seem to have any muscles at all. His only clothing

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Natron was a unique salt that dries out the body to evacuate moisture. The priests washed off the salt and after that utilized supplies, such as cloth, to cushion up the ranges that had contracted, so that the body remained a similar shape. The body was tightly wrapped with linen straps various times. Also prayers were written on the strips and put in ornaments between the coatings so that the body was secured while in transit to the afterlife. The priest would then put on a mask that resembled the dead person’s face.

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