Nacirema Rituals – Horace Miner, “Body Ritual among the Nacirema”

Horace Miner’s classic “Body Ritual among the Nacirema” endures as a first-day favorite for Introduction to Anthropology courses on bizarre Nacirema Rituals. I am now using the 2012 version re-printed in the 10th edition of Applying Anthropology: An Introductory Reader. I’ve updated a Nacirema Rituals PowerPoint based on this reading–please feel free to use, modify, and share.

I use Nacirema Rituals as a way to introduce anthropology, ideas of human similarity and difference, ethnocentrism, and cultural relativism. It corresponds to the material in the section on Human Nature and Anthropology. I’ve recently been rediscovering just how current these issues continue to be. Accounts of human beings as inherently warlike, only tamed by modern states and modern moral codes, have become newly popular and quite entrenched. See War, Peace, & Human Nature: Convergence of Evolution & Culture for a new book that will hopefully provide a counter-narrative.

The presentation preserves the “surprise” of the Nacirema, revealing their identity on slide 5. I use this article on the first day of class, giving students 20 minutes to read and report back. I always wonder how much I should preserve this surprise. It seems especially strange in 2013 as a simple search on Nacirema Rituals reveals a Wikipedia Nacirema that gives it all away. There are also several videos on YouTube–Who are the Nacirema? seems like one of the better ones, capturing how my classes often proceed.

With a bit of tweaking, I probably could have preserved the sadistic surprise, but decided to preempt it quickly this year. I then emphasize how Miner’s article is in some ways prophetic and has enduring relevance.

I also incorporate two slides that could critique how Nacirema Rituals are usually introduced. First, from Renato Rosaldo’s Culture and Truth: The Remaking of Social Analysis:

In retrospect, one wonders why Miner’s article was taken simply as a good-natured joke rather than as a scathing critique of ethnographic discourse. Who could continue to feel comfortable describing other people in terms that sound ludicrous when applied to ourselves? (1989:52)

I use this to underscore how we need to be careful when reading overgeneralizing ethnographic accounts.

Second, from Michaela di Leonardo, Exotics at Home, on how Miner’s language

effaces the colonial encounter through which we have developed notions of “witch doctors” and “exotic rituals.” Miner’s whimsical frame also denies stratification and power dynamics on the American end. (1998:61)

I’ve always felt Miner’s account of Nacirema Rituals is misleading on the power dynamics of various ethnocentrisms–the sections from di Leonardo emphasize this aspect.

Still, Miner’s article remains an ideal way to introduce anthropology. If nothing else, students should attain the cultural capital to be able to follow anthropological insider talk, like Kerim Friedman’s wonderful Political Ritual among the Nacirema analyzing our etabed.

I wonder if teaching Nacirema Rituals will be at all influenced by the March 2013 release of Papoose’s long delayed Nacirema Dream. As far as I can tell, Papoose has not read Horace Miner. But, Nacirema Dream, what a title!