Sociology > Body Ritual Among the Nacirema by Horace Miner

In the paper, Miner describes the Nacirema, a little-known tribe living in North America, between the Canadian Cree, the Yaqui and Tarahumare of Mexico, and the Carib and Arawak of the Antilles. In this article the author discussed the rituals performed by the Nacirema culture.

The Nacirema society is extremely affected by religious belief. They spend most of their day in ritual activity. They believe that the human body is ugly and that its natural tendency is to debility and disease. They think that their mind is trapped and the only way to avoid sickness is through rituals and ceremonies. Every house has at least one shrines, which is a holy place for the private and secret ceremony. In the shrine there is a box or chest which contains many charms and magical potions and it’s usually full because they have many kind of sicknesses. In this society the most powerful practitioners are the Medicine Men whose help is rewarded by gifts. Another powerful magician is the Holy Mouth Man.

The Nacerima have a tremendous fascination with the mouth, they think it has a supernatural power in their social relationships and they perform the mouth rite daily. Some other customs of the Nacirema include the Great Temples or latipso which are run by the Medicine Men and they are helped out by maidens dressed in white. In the latipso ceremonies are performed on the very sick. Another custom is one in which the men once a day scrape their faces with very sharp objects and the women bake their heads in a small oven for an hour four times during each lunar month. Miner mentions one other kind of practitioner, known as a “listener” who is some kind of a witch-doctor who has the power to exorcise the devils from people heads. Tradition says that the Nacirema came from the East and their nation was originated by a culture hero, Notgnihsaw who chopped down a cherry tree in which the Spirit of Truth lives.

When I read the article for the very first time I found the body rituals of the Nacirema strange and questioned their sanity and judgment. Each ritual seemed shallow, painful, and lacking true meaning. I was simply shocked. I was also relieved that I don’t live in such a culture. But of course as an anthropology student I tried not to be ethnocentric. When I read the article several times and did some research I realized that Miner’s “Body Ritual Among the Nacirema” is a satire on the culture of the United States. The story is trying to tell that this is how our culture looks from the outside. Miner reveals how illogical and strange other culture would perceive the American’s obsession with appearance and materialism.

The point is that for us diets, doctors, dentist, hospitals are part of what we believe is to be healthy and to be beautiful, but probably for other cultures is not effective since they have another standards of beauty and non traditional methods to be healthy. We think of our culture as very normal while other cultures probably think our daily rituals are unnatural. This story is trying to tell us not to look down on other cultures just because it doesn’t make any sense to us, because other cultures might do the same to us. We should learn to respect other culture’s beliefs, lifestyles, and daily rituals, even if they seem odd to us.