American free essay sample

The original use of the term was in Body Ritual Among the Nacirema, which satirizes anthropological papers on other cultures, and the culture of the United States. Horace Miner wrote the paper and originally published it in the June 1956 edition of American Anthropologist. In the paper, Miner describes the Nacirema, a little-known tribe living in North America. The way in which he writes about the curious practices that this group performs distances readers from the fact that the North American group described actually corresponds to modern-day Americans of the mid-1950s. The article sometimes serves as a demonstration of a gestalt shift with relation to sociology. Miner presents the Nacirema as a group living in the territory between the Canadian Cree, the Yaqui and Tarahumare of Mexico, and the Carib and Arawak of the Antilles. The paper describes the typical Western ideal for oral cleanliness, as well as providing an outside view on hospital-care and on psychiatry. We will write a custom essay sample on American or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page Miners article became a popular work, reprinted in many introductory anthropology and sociology textbooks. It is also given as an example of process analysis in The Bedford Reader, a literature textbook. The article itself received the most reprint permission requests of any article in American Anthropologist, but has become part of the public domain. Some of the popular aspects of Nacirema culture include: Medicine men and women (doctors, psychiatrists, and pharmacists), a charm-box (medicine cabinet), the mouth-rite ritual (brushing teeth), and a cultural hero known as Notgnihsaw (Washington spelled backwards). [edit]The Mysterious Fall of the Nacirema In 1972 Neil B. Thompson revisited the Nacirema after the fall of their civilization. Thompsons paper, unlike Miners, primarily offered a social commentary focused on environmental issues. Thompson paid special attention to the Elibomotua Cult and their efforts to modify the environment. The high esteem of the cult is demonstrated by the fact that near every population center, when not disturbed by the accumulation of debris, archeologists have found large and orderly collections of the Elibomotua Cult symbol. The vast number of these collections has given us the opportunity to reconstruct with considerable confidence the principal ideas of the cult. The newest symbols seem to have nearly approached the ultimate of the Naciremas cultural ideal. Their colors, material, and size suggest an enclosed mobile device that corresponds to no color or shape found in nature, although some authorities suggest that, at some early time in the development, the egg may have been the model. The device was provided with its own climate control system as well as a system that screened out many of the shorter rays of the light spectrum. This article is reprinted and appears as the final chapter in an anthology called Nacirema: Readings on American Culture. The volume contains an array of scholarly investigations into American social anthropology as well as one more article in the Nacirema series, by Willard Walker of Wesleyan University: (American Anthropologist, Volume 72, Issue 1, pages 102–105, February 1970) The Retention of Folk Linguistic Concepts and the TIYCIR Caste in Contemporary Nacireman Culture. This article laments the corrosive and subjugating ritual of attending sguwlz.