Horace Miner’s Body Ritual Among the Nacirema

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Horace Miner’s Body Ritual Among the Nacirema

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.

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 article, Miner gives a few hints that the Nairema are indeed Americans. The fact that Nacirema spelled backwards is American is a huge hint by itself. Another clue is the “holy-mouth-men.” If you sit down and think about it for a second it is obvious to realize that they are indeed dentists. Also the me...

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