Summary: The Mysterious Fall of the Nacirema

In 1972, Neil B. Thompson wrote an article following "Body Ritual Among the Nacirema" by Horace Miner. Thompson's article was titled "The Mysterious Fall of the Nacirema" and it was about the fall of the "Naricema" civilization. Research on the Nacirema heritage shows that the extinction of the Nacirema culture was caused by the development of the people themselves. They turned the landscape of hills full of trees into barren flat land. In some areas, Nacirema erected tall towers and statues made of steel. Some of these towers are arranged in a long line that rises to the horizon and each is connected by cables. In a period of about 300 solar cycles (based on radiocarbon dating), The Nacirema leave many ill things to the environment such as changing the appearance of air and water. In the last 50 solar cycles, the color of the water in their environment has changed from blue and green to red and brown. 

in Thompson 's "The Mysterious Fall of the Nacirema" the Nacirema society values equality and free will so that there is no caste division . Research shows the presence of the Elibomotua cult who performs rituals to create an intense sense of individual involvement in efforts to control the environment. This cult focuses on creating artistic symbols for man-made environmental systems. Archaeologists have uncovered a large collection of symbols of the Elibomotua cult. Unnatural colors, materials and sizes indicate cult values. Most people follow this cult and perform rituals of using and caring for objects called racperiodically. This is believed by researchers to have influenced the chemical characteristics of the air. 

See also: The Nacirema Culture Explained

The Nacirema Culture Explained

The Nacirema are a peculiar culture in North America. According to Horace Miner's account of them in his 1956 article "Body Ritual Among the Nacirema", one of their main characteristics is a highly negative sentiment towards the human body which is considered by them to be ugly and sick. Miner describes how the entire ritualistic practices of the Nacirema revolve around this core issue of the body. For example, every house of the Nacirema people has one or more shrines devoted to purifying the body, shrines containing charm-boxes full of supernatural substances aimed at keeping the body away from disease. The Nacirema have special medicine-men which hold secret knowledge of special substances. These medicine men also function in a central temple in which people undergo brutal practices aimed at "curing" them from illness. The Nacirema are also fascinated with their mouths, believing that they determine one's social status. For this hand they have holy mouth men which also perform elaborate and almost sadistic rituals on people's mouths. The Nacirema believe that parents bewitch their own children and therefore they have a special "shaman" charachter called a "listner" who exorcises them. Another interesting attribute of the Nacirema Miner points to is the practice of Nacirema men who scrape their faces with sharp instruments and the Nacirema women who bake their heads in ovens.

Miner's account of the Nacirema culture is in fact an ethnological satire. The Nacirema don't exist and they are in fact American culture (Nacirema in reverse). The shrines are explained as toilets, charm-boxes are medicine cabinets, medicine men are doctors, temples are hospitals, holy mouth men are dentists, men shave their faces while women dry their hair at beauty salons.

Miner's "Body Ritual Among the Nacirema" demonstrates the subject of cultural relativism and the argument that societies must be understood from their own context in order to be properly interpreted. On the other hand, Miner's alienated view of the "Nacirema culture" says a few very interesting things about American culture, unobservable from the inside. 

See also: "Body Ritual Among the Nacirema" / Miner - Analysis and Explanation 

These might also interest you:

Clifford Geertz: Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture
Clifford Geertz – From the Native's Point of View
Purity and Danger by Mary Douglas

Good books to have on this topic:

     

  

    

"Body Ritual Among the Nacirema" / Miner - Analysis and Explanation

"Body Ritual Among the Nacirema"(link for text summary) is a sarcastic account of the none-existing "Nacirema" tribe which is actually American culture (Nacirema in reverse is American). Miner uses this satire to say a few things about the nature of ethnological work (and American culture).

In Miner's article the special domestic shrines the Nacirema use are bathrooms. The special charm-box is the medicine cabinet. Medicine men are obviously doctors while holy mouth men are dentists. The latipso is a hospital and the listener is a psychologist. Finally, the men scraping their face are shaving while the women baking their heads are putting them in salon hair dryers.

The meaning of Miner's "Body Ritual Among the Nacirema" is that if we distance ourselves and our point of view, a culture will always look peculiar to us. On the other hand, looked at from within, even the strangest customs and practices might seem completely reasonable and justifiable. "Body Ritual Among the Nacirema" is important because it demonstrates the problem of representation in ethnography. The purpose of article is to raise the question of how can we study a different culture from the outside and how can we understand our own culture from within. The article thus demonstrates the topic of cultural relativism, arguing that there is no one objective viewpoint from which to assess cultures, and that every culture should be understood and interpreted from the native's point of view.

Following Miner's article we can ask ourselves, as anthropologists, how should we approach the study of a particular society. If we are to distance ourselves and look at it as if we were aliens (like Miner does in regards to the Nacirema) we might gain one perspective that notices the hidden obvious and asks questions only someone from the outside can ask (see for example Alfred Schuzt's "The Stranger"). On the other hand, if we don't have the inner context of a society we might fail to understand the meaning of different things we see in it.

Many American will be insulted by Miner's account of them, and will justly claim that he fails to account for many factors in what he describes. On the other hand, an American reading "Body Ritual Among the Nacirema" can gain a new interesting understanding about body culture in American society and see banal everyday practices in a new light.

see also: The Nacirema Culture explained

These might also interest you:

Clifford Geertz: Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture
Clifford Geertz – From the Native's Point of View
Purity and Danger by Mary Douglas

    

Good books to have on this topic:

     

  

Summary: "Body Ritual Among the Nacirema" / Horace Miner

"Body Ritual Among the Nacirema" by Horace Miner (1956) is an ethnological account of the Nacirema, a tribe located in North America. According to Miner, the Nacirema culture presents a highly developed market economy but with a main focus on ritual activity which focuses on the human body and its appearance of health. The Nacirema believe the body to be ugly and detestable and seek to avoid its uncleanliness through ritual and ceremony.

The houses of the Nacirema culture according to Miner have shrines devoted to this purpose, which also feature a status symbols. Ceremonies are performed privately and are seldom discussed with the exception being children which need to be socialized into the ritual. The Nacirema, according to Miner, have "charm-boxes" as the focal point of their shrines which are full of magical materials, distributed at the discretion of medicine men which use a secret old language. All materials are retained in the overflowing charm-boxer, and though the people of the Nacirema sometimes even forget their original purpose they still hang on to the materials, believing that they somehow protect them. The Nacirema use their shrine daily for the purpose of ablution, with the aid of pure holy water coming from the Water Temple.

The Nacirema also have "holy-mouth-men" which rank below the medicine men in social status. The holy-mouth-men are entrusted with taking care of the mouth, which is an object of obsession for the Nacirema who believe that it has "a supernatural influence on all social relationships". Miner also says that the Nacirema associate a healthy with moral characteristics. This is why the children of the Nacirema are brought up on the "mouth-rite", which Miner describes as inserting into the mouth a bundle of hog hairs along with magical powders and moving it around. The Nacirema also routinely seek the somewhat torturous practice of the mouth-men which exorcise their mouths using elaborate tools and supernatural substances.

The men of the Nacirema perform a daily ritual of scraping their face with a sharp instrument. Women on the other hand bake their heads in small ovens four times a month.

The medicine men of the Nacirema have imposing temples called latipso in which elaborate ceremonies are being held for seriously seek people, with the help vestal maidens. Miner writes that the Nacirema are eager to undergo ceremonies at the latipso, believing that it would keep them alive. These ceremonies come at a hefty cost of gifts and include being naked in the presence of others, something the Nacirema never do elsewhere.

Miner also describes a witchdoctor called the "listener" who can exorcise demons from bewitched people. The Nacirema  believe that parents, especially mothers, bewitch their own  children. The listener treats people simply by listening to their talk of themselves.

Towards the end of  "Body Ritual Among the Nacirema" Miner adds a few more characteristics of the tribe like "ritual fasts to make  fat people thin and ceremonial feasts to  make thin people fat" and a fixation with women breast size. On the other hand, intercourse is "taboo as a topic and scheduled as an act". Miner concludes that the Nacirema are "magic ridden people" whose survival is bewildering.  

Though Miner never discloses it in the article itself, "Body Ritual Among the Nacirema" is a satirical account of American society itself. The meaning of the satire will be discussed in the analysis part of our summary.  

See also: The Nacirema Culture explained

The Mysterious Fall of the Nacirema

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These might also interest you:

Clifford Geertz: Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture
Clifford Geertz – From the Native's Point of View
Purity and Danger by Mary Douglas

Good books to have on this topic: