The Concept of Cultural Relativism

Miner stated that “looking from far and above, from our high places of safety in the developed civilization, it is easy to see all the crudity and irrelevance of magic. But without its power and guidance early man could not have mastered his practical difficulties as he has done, nor could man have advanced to higher stages of civilization” (1956, p.507). This tells us that if we can see and understands everything that happens around us then we can move up but if we don’t then we can never advance in our life. This paper aims to talk about the relation of the body ritual among the Nacirema to the concepts of cultural relativism and cultural invisibility, to post materialism and culture of consumption.

Cultural relativism is a concept that refers to the fact that what is regarded as true, valued, or expected in one social system may not be so in another (Sociology. About.com, n.d.). While Cultural invisibility is defined as “Invisible”, those cultural and social groups whose outlines are difficult to identify (Gheller & Carrer, 2013). These two concepts are related to the article “the body ritual among Nacirema” because it can be understand be other people or not, can be accepted by people or not, and it be known by the people as a fact or just a made up concept. There are a lot of things in our society that are accepted and known to people but there are some things that is present in our society but that is unknown to all. The body ritual among the Nacirema is a culture that is only true on the Nacirema society, or if we are going to put it on backwards the Americans, they put so much importance on their physical appearance and their hygiene and health. For the Naciremas these rituals are accepted by everyone in the society, do...

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Over- all this article of Miner, “Body ritual among the Nacirema” is about the semi-obsession of people to its physical appearance, hygiene and health that when view by the other people find it’s weird and looks alien to them, but in fact if we analyze it deeper we can see that these rituals are basically the natural practices of a person who cares so much about their hygiene, health and appearance. Because they care so much, these rituals became part of their culture and being pass down to generation by generation. As they do this regularly they tend to consume more products regarding to this matter. This rituals make them a society, this become their common factor in each household. This is just one of the weirdest things that I have read but we need to think outside the box to understand the concept of the Nacirema and think of it as a normal ritual.