Culture of Nacirema Also Known as American

Culture of Nacirema also known as American

Several anthropologists and sociologists have used the term Nacirema to study characteristics of citizens of the United States' behaviors and societies. I felt a form of culture shock when first reading "Body Ritual among the Narcirema" by anthropologist, Horace Miner. After reading more I could see the similarities of the mentioned extremes and the modern-day American culture. Once I finished reading the paper, I had a better understanding of how other cultures viewed Americans. The correlations between the culture of Narcirema, in Horace Miner's "Body Ritual among the Narcirema" and the American culture may be expressed differently but are consistent with one another.

Miner's clever way of using a form of word play by spelling "American" backwards makes Americans use their own prejudice ways against our own social culture. He chose not to specifically say it was about the American culture so that he could demonstrate our ethnocentric tendencies. Americans are overall an ethnocentric culture, which means the tendency to assume that one's culture and way of life represent the norm or are superior to all others. Because we are ethnocentric, if we did not realize that this was about American culture we would be judgmental and think that the cultural practices performed by this culture were illogical or even ridiculous. That I believe was one of the hopes Miner had in writing this paper, he would have successfully made us negatively view our own culture and not even realize it. We would ultimately be ethnocentric against ourselves. I think he was trying to open our eyes to see how Americans are ethnocentric; this is how others may view us and maybe give us a more open mind and understanding of other cultures. Americans just like other cultures do things that wouldn't seem normal to others and if we all were less ethnocentric we might realize that we do a lot of the same things but in different ways.

"Nacirema culture is characterized by a highly developed market economy which has evolved in a rich natural habitat" (Schaefer 52). That could definitely be the same description for the American culture. There were other practices of the American culture that Miner disguised in a clever way. "While each family has at least one such shrine, the rituals associated