The Body Ritual of the Nacirema Essay -- Horace Miner Egocentrism Essa

The Body Ritual of the Nacirema It is human nature to describe ones own culture as the some advanced and most intellectual. Unfortunately, it is also common practice to look down upon the practices of another culture because they are not similar to ones own traditions. The ability to do this can sometimes be a damaging characteristic for society as a whole. Horace Miner realized the implications of egocentric views and wrote a groundbreaking try to open societys eyes to their biases. The Body Ritual of the Nacirema was written by Horace Miner for shock value. The article describes the rituals of a people which on the surface seem to be barbaric and highly out of date for that time at which the article was written. Some of the rituals described were women voluntarily baking their heads in ovens and visits to a holy-mouth man, which were extremely harmful and costly, in order to gain social acceptance from their peers. Another unheard of tradition described in this ess ay was that of the sick people going to a temple where they had to give very large gi...