Rituals: A Brief Analysis Of The Nacirema Culture

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Nacirema Claim: The Nacirema believe that certain rituals and ceremonies must be practiced to maintain and improve the condition of their bodies and social status because of superstitious beliefs and they believe the human body is ugly and the only way from preventing it from getting weak and diseased is to practice powerful rituals devoted to this purpose Evidence: This culture of these people is still poorly understood, even after being studied by various anthropologists. But we do know some things that can lead us to making the conclusion of why they do the things they do. They live around the Canadian Creel the Yaqui and Tarahumare of Mexico and they are wealthy people. In paragraph 4 they speak about how families create shrines in their houses. In this shrine is a box with potions and charms that they believe are needed to…show more content…
They go to the medicine man and go through one ritual that involves stopping the decay of ones teeth, even though they come back year after year with their teeth still decaying. They do all this for their teeth to keep mentally keep themselves feeling like their doing the right thing in a way. Like "oh no my teeth are decaying again but it’s okay because I’m going back to the medicine man". It’s all this superstition in a village and everyone wants to do what everyone else is doing. It’s almost like any other society. People want to fit in so they do what everyone else is doing. In this case they made it almost as a religion to follow. "The fact that these temple ceremonies may not cure, and may even kill the neophyte, in no way decreases the people’s faith in the medicine man"(17). The people go to these sadistic ceremonies day after day and they expect outcomes out each one of them. They don’t want their body to get weak so they keep going to the rituals. As painful as they get, they’re superstition dominates their feelings and actions. They have many rituals for your

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