In Horace Miner’s “Body Ritual among the Nacirema” he describes various habits and traditions the Nacireman people go through in everyday life and throughout the year. Miner also describes different places and how the people interact with each other as a society. While describing some of the customs, he points out how barbaric and sometimes inhumane the rituals are. Another reoccurring topic is the Nacireman people’s ideas of beauty and what ways to make themselves better looking. Miner concludes with the fact it is arduous to understand a different culture other than our own when only looked at face value. To comprehend the complexity of another culture we must have an open mind. Especially when the other culture is so different. The Nacirema people seem to be a very self-obsessed. The whole population puts much thought into the image they portray. They are obsessed with what others in the community will think. Each person undergoes …show more content…
Had I not read the instructions first I probably would not have understood that Miner was describing America until well into the article. Maybe not even until I read the instructions and the question stating what he did. Most people would not realize that Miner was describing America because they would not see the “rituals” that he explains as anything unusual even though they probably do some of them every day. Nearly everyone in America brushes their teeth at least once a day. They just do not see it as something out of the ordinary. I believe part of the reason a vast amount of the people reading Miner’s book would not recognize America as Nacirema is the language he uses in describing the ways the people do their “rituals”. Many people take medicine, brush their teeth, go to the dentist, and go to the hospital but it is the way they think about it and how Miner describes it that do not line up in their
Modern America has a few similarities with the Natives that are carried over time, too what is now known as the new modern style in America. Instead, the Natives do still keep their practice the same and nothing has changed. The essay Herold Miner wrote; the body Ritual of Nacirema, describe a native’s tradition everyday lives by giving themselves a safe place to price possessions and the body modification on a native women. Today, the same tradition is still carried on, but in a different modern way it is done from what the natives usually do.
Their hope for whatever it is they want pushes them to be their best selves and in the end it improves their lives and their well
They become ashamed to be who they are because of others and this causes them to shut down. Which causes a major impact on
Reading Response: “Some Could Suckle over Their Shoulder In historian Jennifer L. Morgan’s article, “Some Could Suckle over Their Shoulder” complies journal entries from various European explorers dating from the sixteenth to eighteenth century, and argues that the authors of these journal “ represented African women’s bodies and sexual behavior to distinguish Africans women from European women”(25). European explorers commonly described the Native American and African women encountered as savage, beastly, and monstrous. The European dairy entries also make note of preconceived notation of the African women sexual behaviors noting that they are strange (shameful), animalistic, and hypersexual.
The Emic method gives a clear and accurate understanding of a culture due to the in-depth interview conducted by the anthropologist. But because there was a lack of information, confusion and strange descriptions of a non-exotic culture there is no way that this “Body Ritual Among the Nacirema” used the Emic method. Because of this it supports the fact that this essay was a Etic inspired
In “The Foreign Travels of Sir John Mandeville,” John Mandeville provides an account of his travels by creating an imaginative geography of the people and places he visits. Through this imaginative geography the idea of the Western “self” is explored by highlighting the differences between “self,” and the “other” – the peoples of civilizations Mandeville visits. It is in this way that the Western identity is formed – it is not concerned with what Western civilization is but more, what it is not. This dichotomy between self and other is explored in Mandeville’s writing in several capacities, specifically: the civilized human and the savage animals, the pious Christians and the uncivilized pagans, and the good and the evil.
The article written by Miner was one in which seemingly forced the student to keep reading. The varying ways in which the author described traditions created and passed down through generations of the Nacirema people evoked interest and question in the students mind. The student had never read this article, nor had he read an article written in such a way to make him feel emotions quite like the ones he felt while scrolling though the pages of this article. Fortunately, the student was able to find that he was not the sole student amongst his peers who had many questions and concerns that came to fruition while reading the Nacirema article. Questions fluttered around the readers head as he finished the first few paragraphs of the article.
This concept of body labor the Kang uses shows us how and why the actions, beliefs and feelings that seem so natural and justified for one group of people can seem rude, demeaning or simply incomprehensible to another group of people. During this study in an attempt to get to know the women better and in a sense to help them assimilate into their new country. Kang offers to teach the women English; after one lessen, they choose not to continue. When asked why they tell her how they need to know how to say phrases like “‘You look like you lost weight’, this showed Kang that the manicurist understood the expectations that they attend to their customer’s needs, a task that many did consciously and often times humorously(Kang pg. 26). In the opening of Kang’s, book she writes “Two women, virtual strangers, sit hand in hand across a narrow table both intent on the same thing-the achievement of the perfect manicure”(Kang pg. 1).
Across the world, traditions are carried throughout many communities, and when others try to change these said traditions, there is typically backfire and disagreement. In the short story “Dead Man’s Path” by Chinua Achebe, the same background is used to fuel the story’s plot. Although it is believed that keeping certain traditions alive will prevent people from changing with the times, these traditions must still be respected and appreciated for keeping past generations alive. The plot of the story follows a new headmaster of a school named Obi who has plans of implementing changes to the school.
In the study called Body Ritual Among the Nacirema, the author calls the rituals and ceremonies the people perform “excessive”. They are insane rituals that people in America wouldn’t seem to think about doing. They sound so different, and unusual. As one reads the fieldwork, it raises a lot of questions and concerns. To anyone from another country it would seem these rituals are excessive because of the way they are performed, and the things they use to perform them.
Ethnocentrism is a situation whereby a group has a belief that their culture is more superior as well as desirable in comparison to other cultures. In Avatar, the humans have an assumption that they have dominance and are superior to the Na’vi tribe. The humans express their dominance by an attack and destruction of the Na’vi tribe’s home tree. The humans are of the opinion that they should educate the Na’vi tribe in the human ways since they consider their ways to be better.
Not Just a Bowl Beauty is one of the main foci in society today where selfies, beauty enhancement or plastic surgery, celebrities, and the media reign over society—constantly defining what people should aim for in terms of appearance. Appearances are everything to many people rather than inner beauty such as character and values. In turn, this beauty-obsessed world has led to people becoming more shallow, superficial, and unaccepting towards anything besides the “norm.” It is quite ironic to have a “norm” considering how each individual is different and live in different cultures and such. People are not meant to be or look the same neither should they adhere to a certain standard in which someone else has established.
Horace Miner, the author of “Body Ritual among the Nacirema”, used very interesting and descriptive choice of words to describe the routines that modern Americans go through from an outsider point of view. He gives different terms to describe mundane routines, like brushing your teeth, and exaggerate the details as something that is bizarre. Some rituals Miner described as illogical because there was a low rate of success in what they are trying to achieve. This reveals that what determines something to be socially acceptable is not through logic, but only though the popularity of the community. One of the rituals that Miner described as illogical but everyone still do the ritual was the fact that the people kept going to the “holy-mouth-man”, or also known as the dentist, even if their teeth are still decaying.
They are obsessed the room, which has practially raised them, and have become addicted to what it can do.
While ancient civilizations had commonly put their women in the lower level of the society, the Etruscans treated their women differently. Etruscan women are known to be taken seriously and enjoyed a great deal of freedom and equality with that of men. For instance, while most Roman societies considered symposiums, such as those that included festive drinking, sex and the involvement in the sharing of thoughts to be an all-man’s affair, it was not so among the Etruscans. Women in the Etruscan society are allowed to attend banquets, and share a toast with men, signifying how they are equally treated in the society. While historians have difficulty interpreting the literary works of the Etruscans, they shifted their focus on other archaeological