Horace Miner's View Of The Nacirema Culture

As an introduction, Horace Miner in his essay provides again the definition of an anthropologist, in which we have to maintain an open mind regarding things we may not understand. He introduces the Nacirema people for their “exotic customs”. Extreme behaviors in human aspects that have been either suspected or been imagined can be found in this tribe. A study done on them was conducted due to many unknown (pre-study) details regarding this tribe.

The Nacirema culture views the human body is “ugly in its natural tendencies to debility and disease. The use of powerful rituals made in the shrines of homes are made to avert these diseases”. This shows a distorted (from a western perspective) view of the body and thus creating a need to engage in various rituals
What frequency misses out on, it is made equal by increasing the sadistic-ness of a certain rite or ritual, such as hitting nerves and the like…

The view of these rituals are severely negative on children, with them saying “ that is where people go to die”. Despite this, most people still continue to undergo these extremely sadistic rituals, ignoring the success rate of the rituals in terms of healing. Even if people die, they still continue to undergo these rituals, and even eagerly so. A gift is often required to undergo the ritual rites of the temples as well as to finish these rites. A psychological aspect is seen wherein they are put in a situation much different from what they are trained to do. In early development, they are trained to do their private matters in secret. An interesting psychological shock is seen when they are “exposed” in the things that “normally” would have been kept secret. This is necessary as the leaders in these rituals use this to examine the bodily functions. Women as well are subject “to the scrutiny” of the medicine men. All of these are used to achieve