Cesar Chavez once stated “Preservation of one's own culture does not require contempt or disrespect for other cultures” . Americans are an ethnocentric group, they believe that America is the greatest country in the world. This ego makes Americans look at other cultures as unusual and inferior. Horace Miner wrote Body Rituals among the Nacirema with the purpose of showing Americans what our society looks like from an "outsider's" point of view.
In Body Rituals among the Nacirema, Horace Miner described the Nacirema people and their obsession with practicing rituals. The focus of these rituals is the human body because the Nacirema people believe that “the human body is ugly and that its natural tendency is to debility and disease” (Miner 1956:503). This belief caused the Nacirema people to create rituals to avoid being ugly or weak. One of the rituals is the mouth-rite, in which, they visit a holy-mouth man that inserts objects into their mouths for “exorcism of the evils of the mouth” (Miner 1956:505). This ritual was created because the Nacirema people believe that the condition in which they keep their mouths influences their relationships (Miner 1956:504). Another ritual is preferred by the Nacirema women, in this ritual the women alter their breasts …show more content…
He took a satirical approach so Americans can look at themselves without the preconceived notions they have from living in their society. Human beings are naturally biased. No matter how strange the things our own culture does, we defend them because we are a part of it. Many of the things that we do daily we see as completely normal because they are a part of our daily norms. Every morning we wake up and put “hog hairs” into our mouths and we do not question these things because we do them throughout our whole lives and it is something we developed from part generations (Miner
In Body Rituals among the Nacirema, Horace Miner described the Nacirema people and their obsession with practicing rituals. The focus of these rituals is the human body because the Nacirema people believe that “the human body is ugly and that its natural tendency is to debility and disease” (Miner 1956:503). This belief caused the Nacirema people to create rituals to avoid being ugly or weak. One of the rituals is the mouth-rite, in which, they visit a holy-mouth man that inserts objects into their mouths for “exorcism of the evils of the mouth” (Miner 1956:505). This ritual was created because the Nacirema people believe that the condition in which they keep their mouths influences their relationships (Miner 1956:504). Another ritual is preferred by the Nacirema women, in this ritual the women alter their breasts …show more content…
He took a satirical approach so Americans can look at themselves without the preconceived notions they have from living in their society. Human beings are naturally biased. No matter how strange the things our own culture does, we defend them because we are a part of it. Many of the things that we do daily we see as completely normal because they are a part of our daily norms. Every morning we wake up and put “hog hairs” into our mouths and we do not question these things because we do them throughout our whole lives and it is something we developed from part generations (Miner