In Horace Miner’s Body Ritual Among the Nacirema, Miner demonstrates how the Nacirema’s culture and performed rituals are poorly understood. The Nacirema, whose roots originate from North America, are depicted as a group of people whose rituals revolve around the human body. The natives who belong to this group find the human body unpleasant. Consequently, the Nacirema are strongly in favour of seeking help from practitioners in order to improve the way they feel in their bodies. This specific group of people value substances such as magical potions in order to help their bodies recover. The Nacirema who are ill go to a temple called the latipso and seek the medicine men for help. They also see seek for other practitioners such as the holy-mouth-man …show more content…
The author, Horace Miner, uses a technique that is inaudible to the conscious mind and compares the Nacirema’s rituals to the rituals of present day Americans (Nacirema spelt backwards is American).
DISCUSSION Miner describes shrines as a secret place where the Nacirema experience rituals without the company of others. A shrine is a chest that is built into the wall of their home. These shrines contain several magical potions and charms that he or she believes will help improve their body’s condition (504). The author, Miner, subliminally compares shrines to a modern day medicine cabinet where medication and make-up are stored. Many individuals use these products on a daily basis and assume it will make them feel in good shape and look presentable. When the Nacirema are ill, they go to latipso to meet the medicine men where they can potentially get cured. However, the medicine men expect a gift in return for their services (505). Many of them undergo practices that may not even improve their state and may even be the leading cause to kill them
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Both the Nacirema and individuals of today’s society are culture obsessed with rituals that correspond to the human body. Most readers may find the Nacirema culture and the activities that they are engaged in are strange and unusual, however it is a matter of perspective.
Readers who cringed at the thought of their unusual activities might feel ethnocentric in the sense that their culture may seem a lot more “normal” compared to the Nacirema’s culture. Nonetheless, the study of anthropology teaches individuals to look at cultures through the cultural relativism lens. Cultural relativism raises the importance of analyzing cultures in their own terms before criticizing them.
Although, keeping valuable magical positions in shrines and giving gifts to the medicine men in hope they will recover in return may seem odd to the naked eye, they are all very similar to the activities many perform today. Not only did Miner predict the many rituals people would be engaged in today, he delivers the message that culture is based on rituals and that each culture defines its reality and acceptable behaviour through them. Thus, individuals should look at rituals in depth before judging them because what might seem strange to one may not seem strange to
Rituals help many people to feel more in control of their lives. Both American baseball players and Malinowski’s Trobriand Islanders practice some sort or ritual. In each case, the ritual is used to bring comfort in the face of
“Body Ritual among the Nacirema” by Horace Miner was a very interesting read. It took me a while to actually, fully understand the meaning of the article. The first time that I read through the article I was dumbfounded on how strange the rituals described in the article were. I genuinely thought that the author was describing a very primitive culture found in a remote area of the Americas and did not have the slightest clue that the author was talking about the American culture found in the United States. Originally, the article made me wonder how, in such an advanced world, there could still be such a primitive culture as the one described in the article. The article “Body Ritual among the Nacirema” by Horace Miner opened my eyes to how another person may look at the American culture and how strange it may seem to them.
...uals, even if they don't agree with them. It really falls to nurses to address the situation properly, and effectively ensure that the cultural communication between the doctor and the patient does not break down. Nurses most of all have to communicate with patients in a healing way, even if they do not agree with mystical remedies because the nurse has to recognize that there is nonetheless a function that mystical ritual remedies do serve, even to western medicine: to comfort the patients and their families. Ancient rituals or customs, retained to some extent or respected by western caregivers, can serve to maintain a healing and positive attitude, and as a psycholgocial support which the nurse can provide through respect and symbolic use of non-western cultural myths as a psychological stimulant to assist the healing process and inspire the patient thereof.
Human needs are similar- health, physical appearance, human body and economic resources to meet these needs. Nacirema culture bears some semblance to more civilized culture. While reading this article it seems most of the practices are similar with modern culture. A major difference is the magic, ritual and the crude method of doing things. One of the cultural practices that stood out for me is the “holy-mouth-men” ritual, which seems like what a dentist will do. I also find interesting the diagnostic ability of the diviner.
In 1785, a Christ Child was said to have appeared. A shepherd boy from the village of Tayankani played with the child, but the child disappeared. The child was believed to have disappeared into a rock that was left with his imprint. This is the story behind the pilgrimage to the rock, but those of our community don’t pay much attention to it. Their purpose in the event is to ‘honor’ their supernatural beings. They pay homage to Rit’i (the snow), Taytakuna (Fathers), and the great Apus (Lord Mountains).
“The contents of Vodou rituals – from private healing consultations to public dances and possessions-performances- are composed from the lives of the particular people performing them. When I began to bring my own life to the system for healing, I began to understand more of what it meant for Haitians to do that (Brown, 134).”
A spiritual ritual would be performed while the ill received medicine. A spiritual ritual would be performed to rid the ill of bad spirits and cleanse the spirit. Native Americans believed that a person became ill when a bad spirit entered the body. It is the shaman’s job to try to purify the ill’s spirit. Every tribe across the nation has a shaman. A shaman or medicine man/woman would perform this ritual. A shaman uses the spiritual world to help heal the sick. Shaman were highly regarded as chiefs and tribal spiritual leaders. Shaman were often born into a family with many generations of shaman. Shamans who were not born into, they had visons that lead them to study medicine. Being the shaman was a full-time job. In return of their services to the tribe, the tribe would provide food, shelter, and any assistance needed to the shaman.
In reading one, Body Rituals Among the Nacirema, since this is my second time reading this article this year I have a clear understanding of what the Nacirema tribe believes to be deviant and how they seek to get the deviance out of their daily lives. This community believes that their bodies are deviant, hence men and women would visit a godly like medicine man to perform what we would consider as deviant medical
The article equips the reader with the tools needed to better understand other cultures, in terms of their own beliefs and rituals. Miner’s original approach does create a certain level of confusion that forces the reader to critically evaluate his purpose. “Body Ritual among the Nacirema” by Horace Miner ultimately brings people together, by illuminating the eccentricities present in all
The article “The Body Ritual among the Nacirema” gave me a different perspective of how humans look at the human body. I was very shocked and upset because of how much we think the human body is ugly. These people see the body as ugly dirty, and a thing that needs to be hidden and covered. They don’t only think the body is ugly but they think that they must continuously change their body image may it be their teeth breast, whatever it needs to be changed to be seen as prettier. I was able to make distinct connections with the article about some of the changes but I could wasn’t able to connect the painful rituals with body change. I love learning about different cultures and I’m usually not too harsh however, I thought they were much more abusive to their body and unappreciative of it. I could usually watch a video about a Malaysian rural tribe that put metal rings around their neck that makes their neck so thin and long that usually when they are removed their neck snaps however I thought that the Nacirema people’s rituals were worse than that. The Nacirema people practically go to medicine men and can sometimes end up dead because of the extreme changes their trying to do to their bodies and that is just considered to be a part of culture. I was also shocked that the Nacirema people would go to the temple the
Medicine men utilize the use of herbs, ceremony, song, stories and prayer to treat each person individually. Medicine men’s healing beliefs advocates a personalized treatment plan for each individual’s unique health problems. Consequently The medicine man is unswervingly devoted to his calling for his entire life, both publicly and privately. Frequently he fasted and his thoughts would reflect upon the supernatural. Publicly his duties were numerous and onerous; dedicated children to the Great Spirit, carried out the setting up of the chief, conferred military honors on the warrior, held leadership positions for war, enforced orders, appointed officers for the buffalo hunts, and when planting the maize he decided on the time to plant.
Miner does an exceptional job in disguising the Nacirema as Americans. Some of the things he disguises are the bathroom, which he says is a cleansing shrine. He disguises the medicine chest as the main device in the shrine, a bundle of hog hairs on a stick as a toothbrush, and magical potions as medicine (Miner).
In this essay I will include the relation with anthropology and the disorder. The striking similarities between the form and content of normal ritual and the ritualistic behavior of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.
While is a common conception that pre-modern societies are primitive compared to their modern counterpart, this is not often the case, theses societies have complex systems within their society especially within their spirituality and religion. It is this complexity that has allowed aspects of pre-modern societies to evolve and adapt into modern societies. Myths, rituals and sorcery have been terms to describe the activities of pre-modern societies, but these activities have also been found to exist within modern society as well. This essay will further discuss the connections between pre-modern and modern societies that has allowed for myths, rituals and sorcery to exist in the modern societies.
Ethnocentrism and cultural relativism are two contrasting terms that are displayed by different people all over the world. Simply put, ethnocentrism is defined as “judging other groups from the perspective of one’s own cultural point of view.” Cultural relativism, on the other hand, is defined as “the view that all beliefs are equally valid and that truth itself is relative, depending on the situation, environment, and individual.” Each of these ideas has found its way into the minds of people worldwide. The difficult part is attempting to understand why an individual portrays one or the other. It is a question that anthropologists have been asking themselves for years.