Body Ritual Among The Nacirema Analysis

Culture is the way society expresses itself in an ever-changing world. Most people are so

familiar with their own culture that they do not easily recognize their culture’s uniqueness. People may face some opposition when observing how different a culture’s practices are from their own. Horace Miner’s article “Body Rituals among the Nacirema”, provides insight of how odd another culture may seem when people view it from their own perspective.

For hundreds of generations, the Nacirema culture has inherited and followed a set of

hygiene rituals that they have deemed necessary for everyday life. From time spent at a household shrine to regular visits to holy-mouth men, the Nacirema’s behavior indicates the displeasure with the natural human body,

and the desirous of physical perfection . That is why the Nacirema follow daily body rituals to ensure that they will remain healthy and diseases will not harm their bodies. While reading about the Nacirema culture’s peculiar practices, Americans may find them to be excessive and extravagant. However, on close observation, one can determine that this is an elaborated example of Americans’ normal hygiene methods.
Miner wrote this article to individuals to demonstrate how effortlessly someone can
overlook the uniqueness of their own culture. When learning about another culture, people must understand that their own culture is of no greater importance than another’s. This principle is known as ethnocentrism and it represents how individuals can view their culture to be more superior and advanced than other people’s cultures. The “odd” aspects of the Nacirema culture reflect how any culture can seem abnormal when looking at them with a narrow perspective.