Horace Miner Reaction
This was a fun assignment from an Anthropology course I took in 2021 — It allowed me space to make a deeper consideration of our cultural norms and values. I hope you enjoy!
Horace Miner’s article Body Ritual among the Nacirema is a clever, and I would argue successful, attempt to get the American reader to think about their own culture through an objective and anthropological lens. Miner demonstrates how the seemingly banal and unnoticeable tendrils of culture so deeply rooted in everyday-ness, such as morning hygiene or a medicine cabinet overflowing with expired prescriptions, can stand out as cruel, nonsensical and sadistic to an observer of differing cultural origins. For example, in my first read of Miner’s article, I hadn’t quite figured out the punch line when I read about the gift required to both enter and depart the latipso. My initial reaction of slight confusion, but acceptance; “weird, that one is required to offer salutations twice, but ok.” After realizing Miner’s intent, I re-read his article with the smirk of one who is in on the inside joke. Yet, when I came to the paragraph about a gift required to both enter and exit the latipso, I felt anger at the injustices dealt by the American healthcare system. Is Miner pointing out a risk in romanticizing assumed ritual acts? A risk in losing the human element when one breaks culture down past the lived-ness into facts and classification? If I view another culture as a bizarre object, I am not taking into account the lived experiences of the subjects of those cultures, i.e. the people. And people are, after all, subjects having an experience of culture, not objects of that culture. Thus, in objectifying perceived ritual acts by romanticizing their exotic-ness, am I also objectifying and overlooking something that is actually a systemic problem within the community I am observing? The complexities of the human experience are such that only through a holistic approach, where the cultural body is viewed as a systemic whole, could we begin to truly understand the relationship between individuals and social institutions and beliefs.
Miner’s other observations strips the cultural event of its banality and points to aspects which he, as an outsider, considers “cruel” and “sadistic.” Specifically, Nacirema dental practices and the continued reliance on the “holy-mouth-man,” even though “their teeth continue to decay” (Miner, p 505). The most important point of Miner’s article, I argue, is from this observation. Regardless of the “success” of the rite, the people continue to practice it as it provides meaning and a mechanism of agency for their lives and their health. This is why it is so important to take into consideration the perspective of the people living in the culture that is being observed. Because people do things and continue to do things or uphold beliefs that provide meaning and agency in a chaotic and indeterminate world.
On a personal level, and aside from the known horrors of modern dentistry, I see the “devotion to economic pursuits” as an insensible and often harmful habit of the Nacirema natives (Miner, p 503). The cultural devotion to productivity and consumption of natural resources pushes well past their needs for basic survival, although, or mostly like because, this is clearly linked to their social worth. The locals of this culture are seen to work themselves to physical, mental and emotional exhaustion for the attainment of material goods, which are again undoubtedly related to social status among their peers. Hierarchically, they place productivity and economic gain above food production, child rearing and family time.
Another habit I am privy to which Miner did not unpack in his article is the cultural dissociation of death from food consumption. The cultural repulsion and drive away from death seems so strong among the Naciremas that they even procure their meat pre-butchered, pre-cooked and packed in a clear man-made film, thus totally disassociating themselves with the life of the chicken who provided the meat. To the Naciremas, chicken is both an animal and an insult, meaning “trepidation about doing something ill advised.” Whilst tender is the term referring to the meat itself. In this way, there is no cultural connection made between the eaten food and the life from which it came - the entire process of death is avoided all together. While the death-avoidance practice is more systemic than ritualistic, the Naciremas are also known to devoutly worship youth. For in the same market where the pre-butchered meat is vended, one can also peruse an inexhaustible variety of potions, creams, salves and pre-made tablets to sustain cultural ideals such as “healthy glow,” “extra whitening,” “smooth move,” “baby soft,” and “lasting shine.” The Naciremas will often seek counsel from their sacred priests of youth, who, in exchange for an extravagant gift, will provide man made creams and acids to anoint oneself with. Some youth-priests even perform bodily altering procedures, injecting potions and removing fatty tissue or pulling the skin of the face back towards the ears. This is also to emulate and retain physical resemblances to the demi-gods they worship, who all embody their ideal of the Forever Young. The Forever Young are an ever revolving pantheon of demi-gods, worshiped for their skills in ritual dance, song, or sometimes just for the Forever Young qualities which they embody.
For the Naciremas, death is not even in the cultural picture. They seem to spend the entirety of their lives pursuing economic gains to fund their worship of the Forever Young through physical emulation. Native idioms such as “live in the moment,” “ carpe diem,” “yolo,” and “cash rules everything around me,” best embody this ideal. And although they practice complicated funerary rites, the Naciremas erect only one ancestral shrine at the place of a person's burial spot in a collective mass yard. They may keep images of loved ones who have died, but they perform no other death rites, nor ancestral worship besides a pilgrimage once or twice a year to their loved one’s shrine in the yard. When one of the Forever Youngs die, however, great public displays of sorrow and demonstrations of similar-ness are displayed towards the Forever Young. The native will display images of the deceased demi-god on their feed, share stories of how touched and affected they were by the demi-god’s beauty and skill. For in confronting the death of a Forever Young the native is forced to acknowledge their own death and more painfully, their existence as a being-unto-death.
Work Cited
Miner, Horace. "Body Ritual Among the Nacirema." American Anthropologist. 58.3 (1956): 503--507.
