Body Ritual among the Nacirema Kaitlyn McGee Ivy Tech Community College Introduction to Sociology CEL Ms. Cecil Clifton February 2, 2015 Abstract In Horace Miner’s Body Ritual among the Nacirema, he writes about a group of people known as the Nacirema but is referring to the Americans. The Nacirema people have a culture obsessed with rituals of the human body. There is a description of a shrine where this obsession takes place daily. These repeated rituals taken place show the obsession Americans have with their appearances. They fear the naturalness of the human body and take precautions of cleaning and examining themselves in front of this show called shrine.
Still even an inexperienced evaluator soon realizes the connection between the Nacirema and the United States. In fact, the word “Nacirema” is “American” spelled backwards. Miner further correlates the Nacirema to Americans by describing the location of this tribe to be in North America and refers to the feats of their hero whose name happens to be Washington spelled backwards (Miner 503). Miner describes the Nacirema people as a culture obsessed with rituals regarding to the vanity of the human body. In reality many of these rituals are considered to be normal hygiene practices by most civilized cultures.
To fully get the attention of the reader on the subject of television, the author had to do excessive research, especially on the ancient of the television. Neil Postman has so many facts to back up his argument; he even goes back to the 19th century. Readers can now have the same argument as Postman bring in the book; he gives enough facts that as a class we can have a discussion (argument). Postman, I don’t believe he uses Pathos; it’s more the emotional change that the people take from reading this book that changes the emotion of what they think the television media has done to society. But isn’t what Postman used.
Address to the Toothache by Robert Burns ANOTHER COLUMN ABOUT SCOTTISH POETRY. WARNING: DO NOT READ THE FOLLOWING IF YOU HAVE ANY DENTAL APPOINTMENTS COMING UP. ADDRESS TO THE TOOTHACHE BY ROBERT BURNS My curse upon your venom sting, That shoots my tortured gums along And through my lug gig utter a twang With gnawing vengeance, Tearing my nerves with bitter pang, Like racking engines? A down my beard the slavers trickle, I throw the wee stools over the mickle, While round the fire the giglets keckle, To see me loup, An' raving mad, I wish a heckle Were i' their doup! When fevers burn or ague freezes, Rheumatics gnaw or colic squeezes, Our neebors sympathise to ease us Wi' pitying moan; But thee!
The first one is that our rights are not well enough protected. If we had a written constitution with a proper Bill of Rights, as they have in America, we would feel safer and more sure that we would be protected from governments that wish to take too much power. We have lost many of our rights in the UK and this is because we do not have a written Bill of Rights and because government and Parliament have too much uncontrolled power. Another argument is that the people of the UK would feel more patriotic and identify more with politics if there was a written and codified constitution as they have in the USA. Every American citizen knows about their constitution and they are proud of it.
Analysis of Riverside City Campus "The fundamental belief underlying the whole system appears to be that the human body is ugly and that its natural tendency is to debility and disease. Incarcerated in such a body, man's only hope is to avert these characteristics through the use of the powerful influences of ritual and ceremony." This was said by Bromislaw Malinowski, a British anthropologist, in Horace Miner's essay," Body Ritual among the Nacirema." In the essay, Miner shows the reader how an outsider views American culture, through sociological concepts of ethnocentrism and values. James M. Henslin, defines "ethnocentrism" as "the use of one's own culture as a yardstick for judging the ways of other individuals or societies, generally
Sociology 9/13/13 My Analysis of “Body Ritual Among The Nacirema” Horace Miner writes about the bizarre tribal practices of the Nacirema in “Body Ritual Among The Nacirema.” While reading through his report it becomes ever more aware that he is inadvertently speaking abut the American people. Nacirema is American spelled backwards. Miner takes things we do in our every day lives that are accepted by society, and turns them around and calls the rituals. These rituals are talked about in such a way that makes the reader think the Nacirema people are crazy, almost making the foreigners seam animalistic. When in real life they were doing things such as going to the doctor and getting there teeth cleaned.
The narrator claims that the hallway of the building in which Winston lives “smelt of boiled cabbage and old rag mats”. This initial image exposes the dilapidating condition of this society, for it is a world that smells and is offensive to its citizens. Not only does this society offend the sense of sight. The imagery of the “rotting nineteenth – century homes,” suggest that the society of Oceania is not moving forward because it is still trapped in the past. The citizens of Oceania are made to feel the decay of the society in their own body.
Cultural Stereotypes and Fears It has been said that there is a “price to living in America” (Lam 2003), one that I believe effects all types of people whether they were born here or not. In reading two separate essays, “Who Will Light Incense When Mother’s Gone” by Vietnamese writer Andrew Lam and “About Men” by Gretel Ehrlich, it became apparent to me that there are many cultural fears and stereotypes floating around our nation. Through these themes, the reader is able to see just what the price of living in America is. In “Who Will Light Incense When Mother’s Gone”, Andrew Lam begins to describe the contrast between his new life as a first generation American citizen compared to his mother’s traditional Vietnamese culture. It is extremely apparent that there is a divide between mother and son, with Andrew
Heart of Darkness Theme Essay: Race In Joseph Conrad's novella Heart of Darkness, Marlow is shocked to see mans inhumanity to man from how he and his men treat or call the natives. And the mission of “civilizing” and “enlightening” native people because they are to savage for salvation. Also the divide of races of black and white adds to the themes that Conrad uses of light and darkness, good and evil. The use of white as good and black as evil is challenged when we view it through the theme of race. “A lot of people, mostly black and naked, moved about like ants.” Conrad's statement shows that the person (either Marlow or narrator) see the natives as tiny little insects.