Argumentative Essay: Body Ritual among the Nacirema and Anthropology

This argumentative essay examines Horace Miner's 'Body Ritual among the Nacirema,' a satirical critique of anthropological writing. The essay explores Miner's perspective and the reader's pre-assumptions when reading anthropology papers, questioning whether descriptions should be used to judge cultures. It analyzes how Miner describes American culture in an unfamiliar way, prompting readers to question their own cultural biases. The essay concludes that anthropology papers should be read to gain knowledge about different cultures, rather than to judge them, and emphasizes the importance of understanding cultural rituals and their underlying reasons. The essay references the original article by Miner and supporting works by Burde and DeVita.

Running Head: Body Ritual among the Nacirema
BODY RITUAL AMONG THE NACIREMA

Body Ritual among the Nacirema 1
Introduction
The following argumentative essay is an attempt to understand the authors perspective
towards writing an anthropology and our perspective as a reader towards the reading the same
paper. The essay also suggests prerequisite assumptions to the authors and readers before writing
and reading any anthropology paper. 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 Nacirema
The 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 that
we 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. This makes the paper a
satire on the society where we easily overlook the similarities and judge others only on the 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.

Body Ritual among the Nacirema 2
Horace Miner has excellently made us think illogical about ourselves only without letting
us know about the twist until we reach the end of the paper. There are arguments that are in favor
that the paper makes us look at our own culture with a different perspective that is from the
perspective of a foreigner. 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.
Conclusion
On 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
be restated as “the description provided by anthropology papers should not be written and read
with the purpose of judging any culture.”

Body Ritual among the Nacirema 3
Works Cited
Miner, Horace. "Body ritual among the Nacirema." American anthropologist58.3 (1956): 503-
507.
Burde, Mark. "Social‐Science Fiction: The Genesis and Legacy of Horace Miner's “Body Ritual
among the Nacirema”." American Anthropologist 116.3 (2014): 549-561.
DeVita, Philip R. Distant mirrors: America as a foreign culture. Waveland Press, 2015.