RESPONSE on Body Rituals among the Nacirema- HOARCE MINER (1956)

Hoarce Miner is an American anthropologist, who writes about a North American group 'Nacirema' from the 1950s. Miner writes about their body rituals, most of which are sadist and torturous. Some of them even die during the rituals, yet they continue to perform the rituals as they believe that "the human body is ugly and that its natural tendency is to debility and disease." These rituals bring purpose and meaning to the lives of the people of Nacirema.

Image taken from :https://usandculture.wordpress.com/tag/nacirema/

On closer inspection, one notes that 'Nacirema' is 'America' spelled backwards and moreover, their hero 'Notginhsaw' is 'Washington' spelled backwards! So this paper is about the Americans only, whose culture, Miner claims is "still very poorly understood". He says that anthropologists are "so familiar with the diversity in ways ... that he is not apt to be surprised by even the most exotic customs". This comment is quite sarcastic and I think he means to say that American anthropologists thought that tribes in other parts of the world were backwards and 'primitive'. However, they fail to see their own selves.

Miner comments on the American obsession with what they call 'beauty'. The private 'shrine' he talks about is the bathroom and the "chest" with charms and magical potions is the medicine cabinet. The temple, 'latispo' is hospital spelled backwards without the ‘h’. And the 'listener' is the modern day psycho-therapist. Miner is pointing towards the fact that we are not better than the people whom we call 'primitives'. We seem to have made progress but in fact, we fail to see that we also are nothing but "magic-ridden people".

Miner refers to the modern day dentists as the “holy-mouth-men”. He comments that oral health is related to ‘moral characteristics’ and hence the people get painful and torturous procedures done by the dentists, even though their oral health continues to decay. They fear that they will lose friends, family, and everything if they do not perform these body rituals. I think Miner is pointing to the fault in out thought which leads us to believe that appearances are everything, and that hiding the ‘ugliness’ of the body will lead to a successful life.

This paper by Miner is a revolution of sorts. It challenged the view of the Americans, it challenged their belief that they were ‘superior’ to the ‘primitive’ tribes.

link to Body Rituals among the Nacirema- HOARCE MINER (1956): https://www.sfu.ca/~palys/Miner-1956-BodyRitualAmongTheNacirema.pdf