When I first read about "Body Ritual Among the Nacirema" I was a little surprised, but it was about life, basically about survival. I chose to focus on the "mouth rite." This routine of cleansing the teeth is almost sacred as the Naciremea people perform it every day in order to maintain confidence in their physical appearance. It seems all of these rituals are ultimately to impress others. They worry about their teeth decaying and damaging their social lives. The act of brushing their teeth is crucial to the Nacirema in order to socialize and form relationships. In the article “Body Rituals among the Nacirema” the daily rituals of the Nacirema tribe are examined by Horace Miner. One of the most important of these is the “mouth rite” which
They cleanse the mouth once or twice a year. The ‘Holy Mouth Men’ come around and use instruments to dig holes in healthy or even decaying teeth. Some parts of the mouth are even stuffed with magical substances to stop decay. This sounds to me like a very painful procedures, much like what the Nacirema women go through, depending upon the patterns of the moon, the women have their head baked! This is supposed to be a body cleansing ritual.
“Rifles, Blankets, and Beads” delivers an entertaining perspective on the Northern Athapaskan village of Tanacross. This book is an outstanding resource for anthropologists, students, and educators. In reviewing this book, the author brings a descriptive writing style when analyzing the Northern Athapaskan village of Tanacross culture and history with a focus on the potlatch giving us insight details how the potlatch celebrated among the Tanacross people. The author, William E. Simeone, is a great source for the Northern Athapaskan village of Tanacross because he lived there among the people. In addition to living there he also attended ceremonies in both Tanacross and surrounding villages, and participated in potlatches within the villages.
“Rifles, Blankets, and Beads” delivers an entertaining perspective on the Northern Athapaskan village of Tanacross. This book is an outstanding resource to anthropologists, students, and educators. In reviewing this book, the author brings a descriptive writing style when analyzing the Northern Athapaskan village of Tanacross culture and history with a focus on the potlatch giving us insight details how the potlatch is seen and celebrated among the Tanacross people. The author, William E. Simeone, is a great source on the Northern Athapaskan village of Tanacross because he lived there among the people. In addition to living there he also attended ceremonies in both Tanacross and surrounding villages, and participated in potlatches within
After reading “Body Ritual Among the Nacirema” I believe the Nacirema are the Americans. First Nacirema is American spelled backwards. I also think it is America because it said “North American group living… Little is known of their origin, al- though tradition states that they came from the east.”
Gender as a tool of analysis has been effective when analyzing Native societies. Gender roles in Native society inevitably shaped the tribe or band in which Natives lived in. Matrilineal or patrilineal Native societies controlled the daily operations, social hierarchy, religious influence, and the effects colonization had on that particular society based on the foundation. Using gender as a tool of analysis in Native societies, scholars are able to learn more about Natives because of the affects gender had in the characteristics and foundation of each society. In “Ranging Foresters and Women-Like Men”, A Nation of Women, and “To Live Among Us”, different scholars are able to use gender as a tool of analysis to understand the ways in which
We as the audience see this through undeniable evidence that there was no real cultural insight of the Nacirema. As well as language/description Minor uses in the essay to describe the natives. Because the Emic and Etic methods take two completely different approaches to anthropology you can clearly see how this essay approached a certain method rather than the other. In writing the “Body Ritual Among the Nacirema”, Minor followed the guidelines that a Etic would take in conducting research of a particular culture.
Horace Miner’s use of irony, satire, and invective help the piece succede. If the author did not use all three of these satiric devices, the paper would not make sense. Throughout the paper, the author uses these three devices which make the reader laugh. It also helps us to understand the article. First off, the article, Body Ritual among the Nacirema, the author states “...Notgnihsaw, who is otherwise known for two great strength- the throwing of a piece of wampum across the river Pa-To-Mac and the chopping down of a cherry tree in which the Spirit of Truth resided.”
In the mid-nineteenth century, a girl named Ni-bo-wi-se-gwe (Oona) was born in pitch darkness in the middle of the day when the sun and moon crossed paths. The book Night Flying Woman by Ignatia Broker is the biography of Broker’s great-great-grandmother, Oona. It describes Oona’s life through what Broker has learned from her grandparents when they passed down the stories. In the book, one of the main themes is passing traditions on. I chose this theme because, in the book, passing traditions on is a major part of the characters’ culture.
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.
Medicine men are doctors, and holy mouth men are dentists. We can see that the similarities between Americans and the Nacirema people are obvious, when comparing
Nevertheless, the culture develops from the rich natural habitat known as the natural resources to develop the economy. The main concern of the people of Nacirema, is the human body and their health. The
These rituals also create a sense of moral community, in which people conform to, which furthers their purpose and meaning in
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.
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.
Superstitions and Rituals Superstition. In the real world, it’s as close as one can get to magic, or what others like to call “The World of Harry Potter”. So what exactly does superstition have to do with magic, or more importantly, what even is this thing called superstition? So although previously being stated that superstition is the closest thing to magic, they start out small and quite reasonable, like a ritual.