Abstract:
Horace Miner’s stage throughout the whole article of “Body Ritual Among the Nacirema” was to prove to all of us, Americans, we are not superior to anyone else or any other culture, society, or perhaps religion. We are all the same, and just to need to keep in the back of our heads that everybody does anything differently. Be it a remarkable difference, or perhaps barely obvious, each person really does everything not the same as the next person. Throughout this kind of essay willbe examples about how Miner’s article went to demonstrate how ethnocentric Americans by using sociological creativity.
Abstr
Anthropologist, Horace Miner, composed an article over a tribe known as the Nacirema, who originated from Between the Canadian Cree, the Yaqui and Tarahumare of Mexico, plus the Carib and Arawak in the Antilles. This type of tribe is indeed superficial, and focuses a great deal time on the bodily physical appearance. The people with this tribe proceed through many daily rituals to remain healthy, clean, and as perfect as possible.
This group that is spoken of is definitely the American. Nacirema is American spelled in reverse. Throughout the document, Miner, strived to prove how ethnocentric we, People in america, are through sociological creativeness.
Reading the content without knowing it really is about Americans will put a person in the point of view of an outsider from a unique culture. We believe the group, Nacirema, believes that the body of a human is unpleasant and its normal leaning to weakness and disease is usually an awful thing, and that all their only aspire to avoid these types of characteristic with the human body, is to keep up with all their daily traditions. Americans are always trying to develop new ideas to prevent normal aging, the deterioration, and weakness with the body. We all feel so ashamed of our intended weak physiques that the traditions performed in our families’ shrines (bathrooms) will be kept totally private and really should not always be shared with any individual. Just because of the shamefulness, we now have already tested that we are not a perfect persons.
Americans can alter their looks in simple, almost no efforts ways. “…Professor Linton known in speaking about a distinctive section of the daily human body ritual which is only performed by males. This part of the rite includes scraping and lacerating the surface of the face having a sharp instrument. ” (Miner Paragraph 12) This practice described the process of men shaving their encounter with a razor and combined with ritual is a possibility of reducing the face. “Special women’s rituals are performed only four times during each tacha month, but what they shortage in regularity is made up in barbarity. Within this service, women cook their brain in small ovens for approximately an hour. ” (Miner Passage 12) This ceremony is talking about women going to manage to get thier hair completed improve their appears. The small ovens are outdated hair dryers, which would dried their hair into the style that woman desired it to get. Another ritual that the Nacirema people go through is to find a holy-mouth man (dentist).
The holy-mouth man pokes and prods at the customer’s teeth, and it is not always a great experience. The holy-mouth guy likes carrying out uncomfortable and slightly painful rituals around the client’s the teeth. The client allows for the holy-mouth man to whatever he or she likes with their teeth. The person ritual of shaving, female ritual of getting their hair completed, and gonna see a holy-mouth man at least once a year every have sadistic and masochistic qualities. The specialists that complete these types of services like seeing their very own client not comfortable and in soreness on a few level.
The individuals of the Nacirema tribe always return these specialists and continue the rituals, showing that in some sort of approach that they must like staying uncomfortable and in pain. People today belonging to the Nacirema tribe can also bodily change their appearance by having an exclusive medicine man alter areas of the body. Mainly the ladies of the group are the kinds who start to see the specialist. These specialists can make a woman’s chest larger or smaller in the event that needed. Different surgery, besides on the breasts, can be performed, like the face, stomach, and biceps and triceps.
To view each one of these rituals that have been aforementioned, coming from an outsider’s point of view could make the American people seem barbaric, odd, and not natural. The people from the American culture are so concerned about self-image it is almost sickening to look at this from one more view level. The people should go to virtually any length to look better and stay seeking young that they may go through a large number of painful and uncomfortable traditions. Talking about intercourse is a certainly not something to speak about openly, especially in public. In order to avoid pregnancy “the use of marvelous materials or perhaps by constraining intercourse towards the certain phases of the moon. ” (Miner Section 19)
Contraception is taken up avoid getting pregnant, and when women do become pregnant they have on loose clothing as to hide the fact that there are carrying a child. Other cultures see sex as a natural thing to reproduce, and that pregnancy is known as a beautiful thing. They find us not talking and being available about love-making as taboo. We, Us citizens, are not superior to anyone else. That is what Horace Miner wanted to get around to all individuals. He wanted us to think outside of this. We need to not look at different cultures as strange, while different and unique for the reason that other ethnicities look at all of us and believe we are the weird types.
References:
http://jihunkmla.blogspot.com/2013/05/review-on-nacirema-colored-glasses-i.html https://www.msu.edu/~jdowell/miner.html
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