Horace Miner's 'Body Rituals Among The Nacirema'

"Body Rituals among the Nacirema" was a well written article. Horace Miner presented a strong argument to back up the claim of magic and the human body being a major factor in the Nacirema culture rituals. The opinions and biases were kept to a minumum, and rather let the argument speak for itself. The article did not come of as harsh nor judgmental, but some choice words made the culture sound more exotic in some situations than need be. The format was also logically laid out and easy for the reader to follow. The author was trying to get across the point of magical practices and rituals setting this culture apart from many others, and he did a great job at it. The article is very informative and only contained information on rituals pertaining …show more content…
The ideas were well thought out, supported, and discussed in full to back up the main idea. The body/magical rituals carried out by the Nacirema were each given their own paragraph and written in terms than a stranger to the culture could understand.Although, at the end of the article, several different topics were shoved into one paragraph and would have been better left out if not discussed thouroughly. The ideas concerning the latispo cermemony did not seem well thought out. The ceremony was described as being so harsh that it 's phenomenol a fair amount of patients even survive, and "that 's the place you go to die", but the ceremony events he chose to speak of are typical hospital procedure described with words that could be best suited in a different context. The focus also seemed to shift off of the physically painful treatments carried out at the latispo, as he began to speak about the taboo, for their culture, in being naked infront of others, which could have been further discussed as its ' own topic. The reference he made to Malinowski also seemed out of place, as the quote was discussing seeing the irrelevance of magic in developed civilization, my mind couldn 't help but wonder back to Horace description of the Nacirema being a highly developed economy which evolved into a rich habitat after devotion to economic …show more content…
The author did not try and claim to understand the entirety of the culture and their traditions with a misguided viewpoint. He did a great job trying to understand and describe how and where the rituals are held, who conducts them, and the mythology and beliefs behind them. He remained respectful to their culture, for example, by referring to it as unique rather than a derrogatory word. At the beginning of the article the author declared the Nacirema culture as being an extreme culture, and he chose the right words to carry out the same extreme mood throughout the paper; However, some words seemed out of context for the information being given. A few examples would be the "magical" contreception, after discussing pregnancy being infrequent; being "afflicted" with larger breast; "jabbing" of needles into mouths and flesh. In other instances, sentences were also worded in a way to sound more extreme such as: "..excreta are used by a diviner to ascertain the course and nature of the clients sickness"; "..subjected to the scrutiny,manipulation and prodding of the medicine men";"..roll them about on their beds of pain while performing ablutions, in the formal movements of which the maidens are highly trained;"..medicine men come to their clients and jab magically treated needles into their flesh". The author describes some practices as being barbaric, in which many could