Body Ritual Among the Nacirema Essay

In Horace mineworkers essay on the tribe of Nacirema, it takes little effort to determine that Nacirema is a depiction of a typical Americans health habits. This essay is important for two reasons It teaches principles about our own last and it makes us assess the value/downfall of feeling at other cultures with an etic approach. Without a doubt, this essay personalizes the consume of cultures and its respective peoples.Regarding the cyclorama of North American people, Miner clearly thinks we live with a level of vanity. We visualize the human body as ugly and we use ritual and ceremony to avert the unattractive characteristics. It takes extra counseling to understand Miners terminology. unless it becomes clear that he is pontificated on the use of the medical system, including dentists, psychiatrics, and hospitals. As a ritual, we spend extensive time and money on the idealistic notion of being disease-free. It is evoke that from our perspective, we view these efforts as imp roving the quality of our life. He, as a person facial expression in on our society, views these efforts as of undefiled self-interest. It is almost as if he respects more of a communal culture, instead than one of more singularity with some elements of communality. But it definitely makes me think about who is the corrupted one. In the end, he seems impressed by how advanced this particular civilization has become. Without being inside the culture, he appears to permit missed how oft we rely on each other, and how our cultural teamwork has created the car industry and com modeler imperiumto name only a few.As hinted in the paragraph above, what this essay demonstrated was the uniqueness of looking at a culture from the outside. Inherently, the scientific approach is taken with upmost respect. It is seen as a view without bias. In bench work, this approach is vital. But when studying societies, too many variables can obfuscate the entire interpretation. Minor sees our rituals a s defining our sense of truth. To that, he has a great point. We only have to looking introspectively to see how much work we exert toward the valuelesscars, houses, toys, etc. We sometimes do not put enough time in those of more valuefamily, friends, spiritually. Thatis precisely why Minor is so critical. But what Minor misses by not being in our society is that he is inherently blinded. He cannot take time off the subtleties of the society. For example, those with obnoxious behaviors of greed (e.g., Donald Trump) are often shunned. In the end, it takes balance between the emic and etic views to make more complete judgment of how tribes work.This essay certainly forced me to reflect on my personal rituals. It made me assess how much effort I make toward personal beauty. But it also made me think that we do these rituals for a purposeto be healthy and to progenate. Thus, I accept these rituals. But now I do them with the bounteous knowledge that they are cultural norms and my cho ice of doing them seems much less voluntary.