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Body Ritual among the Nacirema: An Anthropological Satire

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Added on  2019-09-27

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This essay analyzes Horace Miner's article 'Body Ritual among the Nacirema' and discusses the importance of reading anthropology papers without judging other cultures. The paper is a satire on the society where we easily overlook the similarities and judge others only on the basis of dissimilarities. The author has successfully proven his point of reading the anthropology papers without any will to judge others’ cultures.

Body Ritual among the Nacirema: An Anthropological Satire

   Added on 2019-09-27

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Demetrius Jenkins Sr.Professor Yvonne Turner201801 English 101_OL130 July 2017IntroductionThe following argumentative essay is an attempt to understand the authors perspective towards writing an anthropology paper and our perspective as a reader towards the reading the same paper. This essay will put some light on article written by Horace Miner titled as “Body Ritual among the Nacirema” that is anthropology paper which presents American society and its daily rituals in an unrecognized strange way. In this regard, the thesis statement of the following can be stated as “Whether the description provided by anthropology papers should be written and read with the purpose of judging any culture or not.”Body Ritual among the NaciremaThe article "Body Ritual among the Nacirema" written by Horace Miner is a satirical anthropology paper on other anthropology papers that describe "others" culture after considering their own culture as superior. Miner has explained Nacirema culture as strange in a manner similar to other anthropology papers but reveals the twist to us in the end. The description provided is actually about American society spelled backward as Nacirema in such a manner thatwe do not recognize it until it is revealed to us in the end (Miner 503).The arguments given by Miner describe the regular everyday habits of the people of the tribe in ways which are unfamiliar and weird to us. This impression provided by Horace Miner about Nacirema makes us judge the tribe as strange without any logic. Moreover, this makes the paper a satire on the society where we easily overlook the similarities and judge others only on
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Body Ritual among the Nacirema1the basis of dissimilarities. The buildings and familiar objects are described on the basis of their use and materials without using any familiar adjectives so that these things remain unrecognized until the end (Burde 549). The paper makes fun of American’s grooming habits and has genuinely expressed the insufficiently enlightened American values.Horace Miner has excellently made us think illogical about ourselves only without lettingus know about the twist until we reach the end of the paper. There are arguments that are in favorthat the paper makes us look at our own culture with a different perspective that is from the perspective of a foreigner. Further, it can be considered as a reasonable evaluation of the modern American culture. For us as the reader who likes reading about others’ cultures or study cultural anthropology, this paper changes our way of reading the anthropologic explanations of different foreign cultures. While reading any anthropological paper, we always have a pre-assumption about the superiority of our own culture over others. Generally, we are not aware of this pre-assumption as it comes to us naturally (DeVita, 2015). This may affect our understanding of the anthropological study as Horace Miner’s paper makes us aware about this pre-assumption to improve our further readings. It has also been argued that reading of the paper might even change our way of understand own cultural behaviors and beliefs. We can start considering different perspectives of looking at others' societal beliefs and norms.ConclusionOn the basis of the arguments discussed above, it can be concluded that Horace Miner has successfully proven his point of reading the anthropology papers without any will to judge others’ cultures. We should read the anthropology papers with the objective of gathering knowledge about their daily rituals and the reasons behind them. Hence, our thesis statement can
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