The “Body Ritual Among the Nacirema” is a sardonic piece by Horace Miner that exposes Western civilization’s misconceptions of the behaviour and way of life of other cultures. He demonstrates how an etic or an outsider perspective can influence the perspective on the undetected culture. Miner introduces the Nacirema tribe who are to be perceived as an uncivilized culture with barbaric rituals. He highlights a few of the Nacirema body rituals which include the focus on the appearance and health of the human body, the holy mouth men, and medicine men. One of the main body rituals performed by the Nacirema is what Miner describes as “the focus of this activity is the human body, the appearance and health of which loom as a dominant concern
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In this article, Miner takes an etic perspective approach as he is an American anthropologist with the outsider perspective when observing among the Nacirema. It is this approach that is executed so well that it makes readers assume the Nacirema are comparable to an alien culture when compared to the readers own culture. For example, when Miner describes the acts men shaving he says, “this part of the rite involves scraping and lacerating the surface of the face with a sharp instrument.” (Miner, pg. 505) It sounds terrifying, yet this is essentially and literally what is being done when shaving. Miner ethnographic fieldwork and participation observation among the Nacirema is an excellent of anthropologists who literally put their lives into their work. It is a much more suitable approach to better understand the Nacirema people rather than the armchair approach. It is more suitable considering the pre-judgements and misconceptions that could arise when reading documents and articles of a culture without experiencing and attempting to understand their ways on a day-to-day basis. A great example of having these issues arise are the readers reading “Body Rituals Among the Nacirema,” –thinking they are a bizarre culture based off of words on a page, only to realize you
In this article, Miner takes an etic perspective approach as he is an American anthropologist with the outsider perspective when observing among the Nacirema. It is this approach that is executed so well that it makes readers assume the Nacirema are comparable to an alien culture when compared to the readers own culture. For example, when Miner describes the acts men shaving he says, “this part of the rite involves scraping and lacerating the surface of the face with a sharp instrument.” (Miner, pg. 505) It sounds terrifying, yet this is essentially and literally what is being done when shaving. Miner ethnographic fieldwork and participation observation among the Nacirema is an excellent of anthropologists who literally put their lives into their work. It is a much more suitable approach to better understand the Nacirema people rather than the armchair approach. It is more suitable considering the pre-judgements and misconceptions that could arise when reading documents and articles of a culture without experiencing and attempting to understand their ways on a day-to-day basis. A great example of having these issues arise are the readers reading “Body Rituals Among the Nacirema,” –thinking they are a bizarre culture based off of words on a page, only to realize you