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Body ritual among the nacirema explained
Body ritual among the nacirema explained
Understanding of ethnocentrism and culture
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What is the Nacirema? The reading, “Body Ritual Among the Nacirema”, shows the strange and torturous culture traits of the Nacirema of North America. This people are extremely barbaric in their practices, and often torture themselves just to look good. In our modern society, it seems nearly impossible to us to understand, or even partake in these horrific actions. But there is something hidden within the Nacirema culture that would shock the modern American world. The Nacirema is a tribe that lives in North America, whose founder crossed a river and cut down a cherry tree for the spirit of truth. They are obsessed with their body, and feel they are inherently ugly and prone to disease. To help prevent this, they have a sacred box where they …show more content…
The whole reading describes the American culture complex of Americans. A culture complex is a collection of culture traits in a society. Our American culture complex is our obsession with looking good. This is created by our culture traits of dental hygiene, medicine obsession, and often over reliance of doctors. We think there is nothing wrong with the way we leave and treat our bodies, but we really are not making them better. We subject ourselves to almost torturous treatments to look good, and we will still rot away. We even pay people to perform these tortures on us. Why do we allow this? Our own ethnocentrism lets us believe that us as Americans cannot do anything wrong. So, we do not see these things are torturous, because they have been passed from generation to generation to be seen as normal. It takes some sociologist and archeologist to come in and spell American backwards and change names like medicine cabinet to sacred box, or teeth fillings to magic inserts, for us to see the true nature of our own torture. The authors of this simple little research article are trying to show us that we cannot just act like what we are doing is not harming us as much as it is hurting us. We have to understand that our actions have consequences, and that we need to understand we cannot make our bodies, or even ourselves as wholes,
The Nacierma culture was mentioned in this article because, according to anthropologists, they have a variety of human behavior practices which are considered as being highly unusual and extreme compared to other diverse cultures who also have unusual and bizarre forms of human behavior. The Nacierma practice these strange behaviors in order to keep their bodies clean, healthy, pure, and disease-free, where they go through intense measures in order to do so. This culture was also mentioned because, according to anthropologists, they are
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.
The Ho-Chunk Nation members take part in the Native American Church, otherwise known as NAC to most tribal members. The NAC is a peyote based religion. This religion first came in contact with the tribe during the 1900s. Peyote is a hallucinogen that comes from the flower of a thornless cactus. Members of the NAC believe in the Great Spirit who controls the waterbird and thunderbird spirits. Taking peyote is believed to allow people to communicate with the Great Spirit for guidance and
The audience of this publication is the typical health-conscious American folk that are grappling with the pressures of modernity and the morality of embracing natural course of life. The readers are notably people well aware of the controve...
In the article “Body Ritual Among the Nacerima” by Horace Miner wee see the framework for social construction of the Nacerima culture. The Nacerima fundamental belief is to avert their bodies debilitating characteristics with powerful
The southwest coast of Florida used to be inhabited by the Calusa. “It seemed that by any contemporary measure the Calusa Indian people had been complex when Spaniards arrived in the 1500’s…The Calusa king ruled over all of South Florida from his capital town on Mound Key. According to Spanish accounts, the Calusa had permanent towns, tributary relations, wealth accumulation, social stratification, royal sibling marriage, an elite military, human sacrifice, engineered canals, high mounds, well-developed art and music, and a religion that included elaborate rituals, a trinity of spirits, and life after death” (Marquardt 2)
The implementation of the NAGPRA has provoked a ranging conflict in interest between two groups, the scientists on one hand and the Native American tribes on the other. As expressed by Burt, scientists have held that the skeletal remains are a source of information that helps in relating the early and the new world (304). They argue that understanding the human evolution is beneficial to the modern communities as they are able to appreciate their history and origin. Conversely, the Native American tribes are of the views that preserving human remains prevents their spirits from resting. Unrest of the spirits may bring misfortune on the current and future generations. In terms of learning their history, the Native Americans bel...
I think this article actually refers to Americian. The author spelled the key words backwards, like Nacirema and Notgnihsaw. Although the author used different way to describe our daily activities, we still can see some similarities from the article. Also, I agree with you that the words the author used to describe each activity make it stranger and let people think this is a barbaric nation. We have the same things in our society, but if we are in the different situation or view our culture in the different way, people’s attitude would change and that’s why the differences exist.
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
In “Body Ritual among the Nacirema”, Horace Miner (1956) revisits the rituals of a North American group, the Nacirema, as first described by Professor Linton in the early 1900s. Miner depicts these people as quite vain; obsessive over money, appearance and health. While the economic status of a Nacirema individual is extremely important, nothing compares to the significance of the rituals of the body. These rituals tend to involve various steps that allow the Nacirema people to present themselves to the world in their fittest, most beautiful form. The majority of these rituals are performed by the individual in their own home, in extreme privacy. The body is viewed as a disgusting vessel, in need of constant upkeep to be presentable to others. The Nacirema home contains one or more ‘shrines’, devoted to transforming the body into the definition of health and beauty. The main purpose of the shrine is to hold charms and magical potions, bought from
The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act established Indian nations as the owners of Native American cultural objects, including human remains, which were found on Federal land. It requires that the American Indians provide substantial amounts of information to validate their claims. However, only federally recognized tribes are recognized under this act, so if you are an unrecognized tribe good luck claiming anything that belongs to you. After this, the existing anthropological literature will be consulted. In some instances, Indians will disagree with the literature and take steps to correct it. Indians are also likely to provide additional information that had not yet been documented. The interpretations will be written from the perspective of the claiming tribe, how they view the world, and their perception of significance of objects in religious ceremonial rites. While some might raise the question of scientific objectivity, no one will deny that this perspective had often been lacking in the literature. These interpretations are bound to bring about new insights which will challenge earlier assumptions (5).
Unlike Las Casas’s idealistic and pacifistic descriptions of the indigenous, Montaigne portrays the natives as flawed, and sometimes violent individuals. He goes on to use these flaws as criticism towards his fellow Europeans. The main topic Montaigne covers and uses to compare Indian and European practices is cannibalism. To a civilized European, cannibalism seems like a brutish, primal, barbaric practice. Montaigne defends the natives by pleading their thought process in eating another human’s flesh. “After [the natives] have long time used and treated their prisoners well… kill him with swords: which done, they roast him and eat him in common… not to nourish themselves with it, but to represent an extreme and inexpiable revenge”(Montagne Paragraph 11). Contrary to the belief that the cannibals are not unable to feed themselves, so must resort to eating human flesh, they do it out of revenge, after killing their victim relatively humanely. Montaigne goes on to compare the practices of Europeans in relation to the cannibals, and in doing so, he shows that the cannibals are no more savage than people who are considered to be more advanced: “[The Portuguese] bury [their prisoners] up to the middle, and against the upper part of the body to shoot arrows, and then being almost dead, to hang them up”(Montaigne Paragraph 12). The way the Portuguese kill their prisoners is much more torturous and dehumanizing than the method of the cannibals. Montaigne then tells the chilling fact that the natives began to follow this method of killing (Montaigne Paragraph 12). Those who are considered to be barbaric by Europeans took the method of revenge because it was “more smartful and cruel than theirs”(Montaigne Paragraph 12). This implies an awful characteristic among the explorers: their method of killing is so barbaric; that the “barbarians” themselves felt inclined to follow their example. By
In Horace Miner’s article, “Body Ritual Among the Nacirema”, he talks about a tribe and describes their odd behavior. He tells about how the tribe performs these strange daily rituals and how their peculiarity is extreme, but in fact he is actually speaking of Americans as a whole (Miner). Miner uses this style of writing to more effectively prove his point: that Americans are ethnocentric.
Shrines that Nacirema use for their secret ceremonials are bathrooms. Group of vestal maidens work in temple to heal the sick were actually nurses or medical workers in hospital, and bundle of hog hairs are toothbrush. Miner depicts daily routine like brushing our teeth in uncanny way like using bundle of hog hairs into mouth as daily private mouth-rite ceremony. Breast augmentation was a unique ritual to make women’s breasts big in Miner’s article. Miner manipulates language by describe regular human behaviors into something odd, many things Nacirema act created allusions as Nacirema is from an exotic tribe from ancient time. Reader can get Minor’s sense of humor when he portrayed American as Nacirema, and when he referred a dentist as Holy-mouth-men. I saw the humor of Miner’s story. Miner’s use of ironic humor on regular daily routine, made reader to feel what those activities were something bad we did toward our body. His manipulation of language made regular activities of human beings seem uncivilized. His way of ironic humor made me know that sometimes what we do daily and considered as a natural things to do, might be rather odd for people from a different culture to
There are traditions and or rituals that we participate in year after year, even though we have forgotten what the meaning is or where it has come from. Every one of us has experienced some type of ritual or tradition in some form or fashion. Wedding and marriage rituals and traditions also fall true to this. There are different cultures that celebrate in different ways all over the world. There is a tradition for Eastern Europe, Western Europe, and South America, North America and even Caribbean traditions and Oceania traditions. I suppose there is a tradition or ritual for every corner of our world and for every tribe. I have even seen weddings for animals. Everyone seems to be getting into a ceremony! Within all of these different ceremonies, traditions and rituals have changed over the years. To go back hundreds of years ago, some couples did not even know each other when they were to be married, or paired up by the tribes or royal parents to choose the couple that would best suite the family. Just imagine not even meeting the one that you are supposed to marry and spend the rest of your life with until the day of the ceremony. These traditions were kept sacred and carried out just because that is the way that it has always been done. Most wedding ceremonies would consist of the same rituals and traditions that would be carried on down from generations. Most people doesn’t even know what most of the traditions mean. Unfortunately with time, and more modern ways, these rituals are being changed.