Miner's “Body Ritual Among the Nacirema” (1956) | Hacker News Reader

Miner's “Body Ritual Among the Nacirema” (1956)

msu.edu

51 pointsplasticchris20 comments

Reminds me of the trend a few years ago to describe American current events using language and tropes normally reserved for coverage of foreign countries. Here's an example from Slate, I seem to remember other sites doing it too.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_world_/2013/09/30/potential_g...

Incarcerated in such a body, man's only hope is to avert these characteristics through the use of ritual and ceremony. Every household has one or more shrines devoted to this purpose. The more powerful individuals in the society have several shrines in their houses and, in fact, the opulence of a house is often referred to in terms of the number of such ritual centers it possesses. Most houses are of wattle and daub construction, but the shrine rooms of the more wealthy are walled with stone. Poorer families imitate the rich by applying pottery plaques to their shrine walls.

This is fantastic stuff

A huge responsibility has weighed on me for 35 years because of this article.

I love playing with words and will requently reverse interesting ones in conversation. It’s annoying, I know.

When we were in college my then-girlfriend was assigned this essay without being told it was American backwards. She told me about it, but I didn’t see it written. The word “Nassirema”, as I heard it, wasn’t interesting backwards so I didn’t say anything.

She was given a test in a psyche course at UCI and she treated the essay as if it were actual anthropological research. She had no reason to believe otherwise. When she didn’t get the joke the professor downgraded her. She asked why and the answer was, well, you’re just supposed to know this osmotically. She successfully challenged the downgrade but complained to me afterward that I never bothered to reverse it while we chatted.

I still feel like an idiot almost 4 decades later.

> She asked why and the answer was, well, you’re just supposed to know this osmotically.

Well. I think you're supposed to be sharp enough to figure it out on your own. It's not exactly subtle.

I actually missed it till I read the comments section. I'm not sure it's as obvious as you think. It's like the man-in-gorilla-suit-during-basketball effect. If you're not looking for satire, you don't see it.

Yeah, had to read it in high school and immediately noticed the "tribe's" name was just "America" spelled backward. I'd already come to the realization that so much of what we do is inane, so it was quite interesting to see my peers draw similar conclusions after having a fast one pulled on them.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/neely-steinberg/dating-advice...

Edit: Also, if you think this whole thing is merely humor. It's not: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nacirema

Let's just say that "dating" is a ritual practiced only by the Nacirema. Other peoples go about the matter in entirely different ways. Here's an essay by the irrepressible Dima Vorobiev on Quora about dating in Russia: https://www.quora.com/What-was-dating-like-in-the-Soviet-Uni...

"We didn’t even have a word for it."

I found that even more amusing than pieces on the Nacirema people, probably because the humor is darker and more biting. That tends to work for me.

This seems to be more about the 40s-50s. From what my dad/stepdad told me, dating was extremely easy in USSR in late 70's and 80's, supposedly much more so than in US today (I wasn't there so I only have their word to go on). The 'official' culture may have repressed the concept of sex but it didn't stop most men from seeing several women at the same time.

Also, there wasn't a distinct word for dating, but there was a word for it, the word is/was 'meeting'. It was just the context that defined the meaning.

We were asked to read this once at the beginning of a class in graduate school. One student got hot under the collar and said, "I know all about North American peoples and there's no tribe like this in North America." I said that there was...in fact, I was very familiar with it...

I had to read this in middle school (ages ago) and it has really stuck with me. Whenever I read about some “strange” practice of another culture, I think of this study and it quickly rearranges my perspective.

I also experienced this in 6th grade social studies, and it stuck with me beyond almost anything else. There are probably three things I can recall directly from that class, and two are about the (first) Gulf War since it was coincident.

This is pure Baader-Meinhof as well, since I was thinking about it on Friday and trying to remember the details before looking it up. I got the medicine cabinet and beauty ritual, but had forgotten the rest.

See also David Macaulay's 'Motel of the Mysteries:

https://wearethemutants.com/2017/12/06/david-macauleys-motel...

An extract:

http://sultanaeducation.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Motel...

Placebo effect is real people. The Nacirema may be onto something.

I thought the placebo effect was just that: an effect. I didn't realize that it manifested itself into flesh (real people).

i think i read this for three different classes as an undergrad

Golly, I haven't heard this one since junior high history class, in 1967.

An anthropology classic!

235 years after the Persian Letters!

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