Analysis Of The Article ' Body Ritual Among The Veldt ' By Horace Miner

Effective communication has many aspects that can be described as either transparent or a hidden unknown, which in many readings it describes how ambiguity is a necessary evil in communications. The “Triangle of Linguistic Structure” can give phonology meaning form, semantics the value of meaning, and pragmatics that feature the intention to uncertain communications. The direct statements of saying someone is dead, can be harmful so they use etiquette to give reason to use a buffer and instead say they have moved away. For a literary example I will use “Who am I this time?” by Vonnegut and “Body Ritual among the Nacirema” by Miner, for both readings use ambiguity to hide an allegory of communication concepts. The “Body Ritual among the Nacirema”

In 1956 a professor from the University of Michigan, Horace Miner, wrote an article in The American Anthropologist that has become a mainstay of learning for anthropology students. Miner published the article to show a fictional exotic society called “Body Ritual among the Nacirema” as an example of how one’s own limited perspective might affect the perception of a foreign culture (Miner, 1956, p. 503). The article uses subtle humor to make the reader more comfortable in examining cultural behaviors, physical appearance, and health as the reader soon discovers that the actual society being examined is the American society. To the reader, the article begins to sound very familiar after each paragraph is

Body Ritual Among the Nacirema What is the precise geographical location of this strange tribe, the Nacirema? The Nacirema is a North American group living in the territory between the Canadian Cree, the Yaqui and Tarahumare of Mexico, and the Carib and Arawak of the Antilles. Little is known of their origin, though tradition states that they came from the east.

In the essay “Body Ritual Among the Nacirema”, anthropologist Horace Miner depicts a group of people known as the “Nacirema”, but is referring to Americans, whose cultural beliefs are deeply rooted in the perspective that the human body is prune to sickness and disfiguration. Consequently, a substantial part of their lives is spent on unusual rituals and customs to improve conditions of the body that are filled with magical components. Moreover, Miner uses the Nacirema’s unusual culture to establish his view that we simply could not judge another culture that it is different from our own, as opposed to another anthropologist Malinowski’s point that we can judge another culture since we are

Horace Minor applied satire in his article “Body Ritual among the Nacirema.” to the culture of the American people. Several ways in which “Body Ritual among the Nacirema” relate to the core concepts of sociology are through the use of sociological imagination, ethnocentrism and cultural relativism. The American culture is described by Minor in a very unique and humorous way. The author uses satire to examine the rituals that are every day in American culture. The reader thinks at the beginning of the article that they are reading about some uncivilized tribe of people but soon realized that the “rituals” that are being performed are just everyday events that take place in every American household.

In this article, Miner takes the role of an outsider and judges the Nacirema just as we judge other cultures. Miner does an exceptional job of wording things in such a way that we don’t even recognize our own culture. Miner wants us to realize that when someone, such as an anthropologist describes another culture, we can interpret that into being abnormal but in actuality, it is, by all means, very normal.

After reading Horace Miner’s Body Ritual Among the Nacirema I cannot say that I would want to be part of the tribe. A huge reason would be that I could never go from my own Christian faith to the religious practices of the Nacirema. My second reason for not wanting to be part of the tribe is that I could never be subjected to the horrific medical practices and “magical potions” used on every citizen in the tribe.

Horace Miner describes the people of the North American tribe the Naciremas as persons “devoted to economic pursuits (Body Ritual Among the Nacirema. Miner. 503.3.2)” and ritual activities of the human body. Miner uses a satirical style, play on words to abnormally describe such cultural upon this tribe. Throughout the text, Miner uses words and or phrases such as: “sadism, masochistic, neophyte, awls, and objects in the exorcism of the evils of the mouth involves almost unbelievable ritual torture of the client.” Horace Miner, uses those such words and phrases to describe the various everyday rituals conducted by the Naciremas by producing ethnocentrism through the readers of his text.

Miner (1956) discussed the body rituals among the Nacirema. The Nacirema are human beings, just like all other humans. They bleed, they love, they are born, and they die. However, for some reason, the Nacirema consider themselves a special breed of humans. This belief is so ingrained in their traditions and cultures that some have taken it to the extreme. Scholars have argued that the Nacirema’s inflated sense of pride stems from the greatness of their ancestors. They descended from a great group of warriors who came together and agreed on the future of their descendants. This essay will examine the Nacirema’s obsession with oil and how this informs their aggressive behavior.

The author’s purpose in writing this article was not to show the “Nacirema” as an example of how extreme human behavior can become, but how an outside perspective can affect your perception of an alien culture. If one were to look at the “Nacirema’s” cultural behaviors regarding physical appearance and health without any insight or knowledge of the specific beliefs or values of that culture, they might seem bizarre and even incomprehensible. By showing behaviors and “rituals” performed by this unknown tribe, Miner allowed others to see that the way studies were representing distinctive cultures was narrowminded and defective. Without the proper comprehension of the basis of any society, huge cultural misunderstandings could occur. Of

The reason why Horace Miner writes this article to express people’s language, beliefs, and norms as well as material objects that are passed down from generations compared to Americans. Thus creating what is known as a culture. Making things seem abnormal than what we as Americans are accustomed to known as norms. No two cultures are exactly alike they all differ from one another, for example the “Nacirema present such an unusual aspect that it seems desirable to describe them as an example of the extremes to which human behavior can go.” (22.). As Miner uses the Nacirema’s unique culture to help inform others to realize that we cannot judge other cultures, but to try and understand them and practice cultural relativism.

The basic focus of nacirema people is their bodies appearance and the way of which they should be cared for. This is their main focus because they believe that the human body is ugly and its main tendency is to disability and disease. Therefore they complete powerful rituals and ceremonies to try and rid these natural tendencies of which they despise so much. The shrine these ceremonies are performed to and in front of is a box or chest built into the wall that holds many charms and potions that are believed to be magic. A daily ritual is the mouth-rite where a bundle of hog hairs and magical powder is inserted into the mouth and a series of movements are done. Then twice a year they visit a holy mouth man who performs an exorcism on the mouth

Culture traditions a direct connection of mothers and infants. This book “Ancient Bodies, Modern Customs, and Our Health’ is about the tradition or culture of mother and infants and how their health is affected. The author is Elizabeth D. Whitaker is an anthropology researcher and lecturer and writer. Whitaker earned her bachelor’s degree from Duke University, master from University of Minnesota, and Ph.D from Emory University.

The traditions of rituals is strongly examined by author Nicholas B. Dirks in Ritual and Resistance: Subversion as a Social Fact, where he attempts to persuade readers of the drawbacks of ritual practices through an anthropological point of view. Dirks explains to his readers of the fundamentals of rituals as: “brimming with resistance”, “opposed to [everyday]”, along with the centrality of the subject of power (Dirks 1994, 483-503). Continuing to state his supporting arguments through the article, Dirk’s concludes that too much of regular (daily) ritual practices creates a normalization in the ritual itself (Dirks 1994, 483-503). Understanding the perspective of the creation of ordinarity of the practices, one could argue that the repetition of a curtain act of a tradition can become a normality such as Dirks states in his writings; however, if the act of tradition is not conducted daily, yet instead semi-annually/annually, there would not be a normality. Dirks presents his thesis as “[focussing] on everyday forms of resistance, critiquing both anthropological assumptions about ritual and historical reifications of [the] assumptions” (Dirks 1994, 483). Dirks finds the negative components of ritual practices, and continually supports his facts through other scholars opinions as well, however in a separate article of ritual subject matter, Niels Gutschow writes about the respecting aspects of ritual. In Ritual Chariots of Nepal Gutschow explains to the readers the

In the early twentieth century there was a notion to see the cultural evolution between the present bodies and the primitive excavated bodies. The bodies were analyzed to understand the migration and movement. New Archeology was the turning point in the study of the body. New Archeology focused on ethnographic observation to understand unobservable human behavior. There was a ‘Loss of innocence’, which highlighted the role of the body in development with New Archeology. The actions of people was expressed by the body was the overall meaning. There was a rise in the ‘archeology of death’, which put the dead body in the reflected social position that was found to understand the body’s social personal. There was a strive to understand social organization with the use of skeletal analysis. The body shows movement, and expansion of culture. The body exemplifies history. There is a large fracture between the difference with the biophysical body and the culturally constructed body. There is a tension with constructionist and biophysical views. Osteoarchaeologists focus more on the physical body taken out of cultural context and the do not focus as much on the past social life. There is a vast different in interpretative