Question

The Nacirema are STRANGE and SAVAGE, aren't they? Face laceration, magical tooth potions and women baking their heads! Makes you feel good to be a civilized American, right? This article, and this people have a twist, however. Hold the word Nacirema up to a mirror. What do you see?

Horace Miner is a modern American anthropologist, trained at the University of Chicago. Why do you think Miner would write such an essay? What point is he trying to make?

Answer 1

The type of essay and the words as well as the tone that has been implemented by Miner in his essay is one infused with satirical connotations to depict the bizarre behaviors that American are driven by and ones that they have incorporated, quite profusely, into their day to day routines to expose the absurdity of the American way of life.

He predominantly wrote this essay in the realm of anthropology to be able to give the varied experts in his field a nuanced as well as objective overview of the American Society that can be difficult to achieve due to the parochial views that we harbor with respect to a given culture.

If we are to notice, his careful detailed description of the so called 'rituals' these Naciremas indulge in are veritably the practices that an average American indulges in. But, these details and the imageries implied are merely masked by different words, than those that are normally used for these processes and concepts, which fosters and creates distance from these aspects - which we invariably close and, hence, subjective towards - in order to provide a fresh perspective and new focal point to view each facet from.

He is tries to expose the hypocrisy that cultures hone and the deep ethnocentricity that people from cultures harbor towards their own culture, neglecting others as a result.