Analysis Of Body Ritual Among The Nacirema

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Body Ritual Among the Nacirema Karie R. Shepherd Ivy Tech Community College Abstract The study of sociology allows us to understand the relationship between people and other cultures. As we define culture by a set of norms and values, we can also study how these cultures can often change over time. Several concepts, such as ethnocentrism and cultural relativism, can often change the way we think or view other cultures. These topics become more relevant as you read Horace Miner’s “Body Ritual Among the Nacirema” and force us to put these ideas into practice. How this short, but satirical, piece makes us initially feel or perhaps react to other cultures can say a lot about who we are as a person and our level of understanding and tolerance…show more content…
While we all have a basic understanding that other cultures have different mindsets or rituals when it comes to viewing or healing the human body, this group seems to take things to painful extremes and rely on unscientific and rudimentary forms of healing. To the average American, we simply cannot understand how a culture could continue to live their lives this way, especially with so many advances in modern medicine that would be available to them. However, upon further reflection, the reader soon realizes that perhaps this group of people is not that different after…show more content…
This is simply “viewing people’s behavior form the perspective of their own culture” (Schaefer, 2012, p. 54). As Americans, most of us are proud of our culture and what we believe. However, this does not mean that just because another culture chooses to live their lives differently, they are somehow “wrong”. It also does not make the way we live “right”. While the Nacrima’s practices seem strange to us, as Miner has written about them, cultural relativism is an important practice in our daily lives. While we do not have to necessarily accept a certain cultures norms and values or perhaps they are vastly different from our own belief system, to be less rigid of other cultural norms allows us to be more understanding or even empathetic of other

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