Miner's "Body Ritual among the Nacirema"

Body Ritual among the Nacirema

Cultural Configurations and General Observations

  • Most cultures exhibit a particular configuration or style.
  • A single value or pattern of perceiving the world often leaves its stamp on several institutions in society.
    • Examples include:
      • "Machismo" in Spanish-influenced cultures.
      • "Face" in Japanese culture.
      • "Pollution by females" in some highland New Guinea cultures.
  • Horace Miner demonstrates that "attitudes about the body" have a pervasive influence on many institutions in Nacirema society.
  • The text is 1151 words, not including notes.
  • Anthropologists are familiar with the diversity of human behavior in similar situations, making them unsurprised by exotic customs.
  • If a logically possible combination of behavior has not been found, an anthropologist might suspect its presence in an undescribed tribe.
    • This point was expressed by Murdock (1949: 71) regarding clan organization.
  • The magical beliefs and practices of the Nacirema are unusually extreme, serving as an example of how far human behavior can go.

Introduction to the Nacirema

  • Professor Linton first brought the Nacirema ritual to anthropologists' attention twenty years ago (1936: 326).
  • The culture of the Nacirema is still very poorly understood.
  • They are a North American group.
  • Their territory lies between:
    • The Canadian Cree.
    • The Yaqui and Tarahumare of Mexico.
    • The Carib and Arawak of the Antilles.
  • Little is known about their origin, though tradition states they came from the east.
  • According to Nacirema mythology (missing text from original), their nation was originated by a culture hero, Notgnihsaw.
    • Notgnihsaw is known for two great feats of strength:
      • Throwing a piece of wampum across the river Pa-To-Mac.
      • Chopping down a cherry tree where the Spirit of Truth resided.

Nacirema Culture and Ethos

  • Nacirema culture is characterized by a highly developed market economy.
  • This economy evolved in a rich natural habitat.
  • Much of the people's time is devoted to economic pursuits.
  • A large part of the fruits of these labors and a considerable portion of the day are spent in ritual activity.
  • The focus of this ritual activity is the human body.
  • The appearance and health of the human body are a dominant concern in the ethos of the people.
  • While concern for the body is not unusual, its ceremonial aspects and associated philosophy among the Nacirema are unique.
  • The fundamental belief underlying their system is that:
    • The human body is ugly.
    • Its natural tendency is towards debility and disease.
  • Man's only hope, incarcerated in such a body, is to avert these characteristics through ritual and ceremony.

Household Shrines

  • Every household has at least one shrine devoted to body ritual.
  • More powerful individuals in society have several shrines in their houses.
  • The opulence of a house is often referred to in terms of the number of ritual centers it possesses.
  • Most houses are of wattle and daub construction.
  • Shrine rooms of wealthier families are walled with stone.
  • Poorer families imitate the rich by applying pottery plaques to their shrine walls.
  • The rituals associated with these shrines are private and secret, not family ceremonies.
  • Rites are normally discussed with children only during their initiation into these mysteries.
  • Access was gained to examine shrines and have rituals described through establishing sufficient rapport with the natives.

The Charm-box

  • The focal point of the shrine is a box or chest built into the wall.
  • This chest stores many charms and magical potions, considered essential for survival by natives.
  • These preparations are secured from specialized practitioners.
  • The most powerful practitioners are medicine men.
    • Their assistance requires substantial gifts as reward.
    • Medicine men do not provide curative potions but decide ingredients and write them down in an ancient, secret language.
    • This writing is understood only by medicine men and herbalists.
    • Herbalists, for another gift, provide the required charm.
  • Charms are not disposed of after use; they are placed in the household shrine's charm-box.
  • As magical materials are specific for certain ills and people have many maladies (real or imagined), charm-boxes are usually full to overflowing.
  • The numerous magical packets cause people to forget their purposes and fear using them again.
  • Natives are vague on the reason for retaining old magical materials.
  • It is assumed that the presence of these materials in the charm-box, before which body rituals are conducted, somehow protects the worshiper.

Daily Ablution and Holy Waters

  • Beneath the charm-box is a small font.
  • Each day, every family member, in succession, enters the shrine room.
  • They bow their heads before the charm-box.
  • They mingle different sorts of holy water in the font.
  • They proceeds with a brief rite of ablution.
    • Ablution is a washing or cleansing of the body or a part of the body, from the Latin abluere, meaning "to wash away."
  • Holy waters are secured from the community's Water Temple.
  • Priests at the Water Temple conduct elaborate ceremonies to make the liquid ritually pure.

Holy-Mouth-Men and Mouth Rituals

  • Below medicine men in prestige are specialists designated as "holy-mouth-men."
  • The Nacirema have an almost pathological horror of and fascination with the mouth.
  • The condition of the mouth is believed to have a supernatural influence on all social relationships.
  • Without mouth rituals, they believe:
    • Their teeth would fall out.
    • Their gums would bleed.
    • Their jaws would shrink.
    • Their friends would desert them.
    • Their lovers would reject them.
  • A strong relationship is believed to exist between oral and moral characteristics.
    • For example, a ritual ablution of the mouth for children is supposed to improve their moral fiber.
  • The daily body ritual includes a mouth-rite performed by everyone.
  • Despite being punctilious (marked by precise observance of etiquette and conduct) about mouth care, this rite involves a practice shocking to an uninitiated stranger.
  • The ritual reportedly consists of:
    • Inserting a small bundle of hog hairs into the mouth.
    • Inserting certain magical powders.
    • Moving the bundle in a highly formalized series of gestures.
    • Note: Since Professor Miner's original research, Nacirema have almost universally abandoned natural bristles for oil-based polymerized synthetics and semi-liquefied the magical powders.
  • In addition to the private daily mouth-rite, people seek a holy-mouth-man once or twice a year.
  • These practitioners possess an impressive set of paraphernalia:
    • A variety of augers.
    • Awls.
    • Probes.
    • Prods.
  • The use of these objects in exorcising mouth evils involves "almost unbelievable ritual torture."
  • The holy-mouth-man opens the client's mouth and uses the tools to:
    • Enlarge any holes created by decay in the teeth.
    • Insert magical materials into these holes.
    • If no natural holes exist, gouge out large sections of one or more teeth for supernatural substance application.
  • From the client's view, these ministrations (tending to religious or important functions) aim to arrest decay and draw friends.
  • The rite's sacred and traditional character is evident in natives returning yearly, despite continued tooth decay.
  • Further study should inquire into the personality structure of the Nacirema.
  • The gleam in a holy-mouth-man's eye as he jabs an awl into an exposed nerve suggests sadism.
  • If sadism is established, an interesting pattern emerges, as most of the population shows definite masochistic tendencies.

Gender-Specific Rituals

  • Professor Linton referred to males' masochistic tendencies when discussing a distinctive part of the daily body ritual performed only by men.
    • This male rite involves scraping and lacerating the face surface with a sharp instrument.
  • Special women's rites are performed only four times during each lunar month.
    • What these rites lack in frequency, they make up for in barbarity.
    • As part of this ceremony, women bake their heads in small ovens for about an hour.
  • Theoretically, it's interesting that a preponderantly masochistic people have developed sadistic specialists.

Latipso Temples (Medicine Men's Temples)

  • Medicine men have an imposing temple, or latipso, in every community of any size.
  • More elaborate ceremonies for very sick patients can only be performed at this temple.
  • These ceremonies involve not only the thaumaturge (miracle-worker) but also a permanent group of vestal maidens.
  • Vestal maidens move sedately about the temple chambers in distinctive costume and headdress.
  • Latipso ceremonies are so harsh that it is phenomenal that a fair proportion of really sick natives recover.
  • Small children, whose indoctrination is incomplete, resist going to the temple because "that is where you go to die."
  • Despite this, sick adults are willing and eager to undergo protracted ritual purification, if they can afford it.
  • Guardians of many temples will not admit a client, no matter how ill or grave the emergency, if they cannot give a rich gift to the custodian.
  • Even after gaining admission and surviving the ceremonies, guardians will not permit exit until another gift is made.

Latipso Temple Procedures and Patient Experiences

  • Supplicants entering the temple are first stripped of all clothes.
  • In everyday life, the Nacirema avoid body exposure and natural functions, performing bathing and excretory acts secretly in the household shrine as part of body-rites.
  • Psychological shock results from the sudden loss of body secrecy upon entry into the latipso.
  • A man, whose own wife has never seen him excrete, finds himself naked and assisted by a vestal maiden while performing natural functions into a sacred vessel.
  • This ceremonial treatment is necessitated because excretions are used by a diviner to ascertain the course and nature of the client's sickness.
  • Female clients find their naked bodies subjected to the scrutiny, manipulation, and prodding of medicine men.
  • Few supplicants are well enough to do anything but lie on their hard beds.
  • Daily ceremonies, like holy-mouth-men rites, involve discomfort and torture.
  • With ritual precision, vestals awaken their miserable charges each dawn and roll them about on beds of pain while performing ablutions.
  • The maidens are highly trained in the formal movements of ablutions.
  • At other times, they insert magic wands into the supplicant's mouth or force them to eat healing substances.
  • From time to time, medicine men jab magically treated needles into clients' flesh.
  • The fact that these temple ceremonies may not cure, and may even kill, the neophyte, does not decrease the people's faith in medicine men.

The "Listener" (Witch-Doctor)

  • There is another kind of practitioner known as a "listener."
  • This witch-doctor has the power to exorcise devils lodged in the heads of bewitched people.
  • The Nacirema believe parents bewitch their own children.
  • Mothers are particularly suspected of cursing children while teaching them secret body rituals.
  • The witch-doctor's counter-magic is unusual due to its lack of ritual.
  • The patient simply tells the "listener" all troubles and fears, starting with the earliest difficulties remembered.
  • The memory displayed by the Nacirema in these exorcism sessions is truly remarkable.
  • Patients commonly bemoan rejection felt upon being weaned as a babe.
  • A few individuals trace their troubles back to the traumatic effects of their own birth.

Native Aesthetics and Body Aversion

  • Certain practices are based on native aesthetics but stem from a pervasive aversion to the natural body and its functions.
  • Ritual fasts are used to make fat people thin.
  • Ceremonial feasts are used to make thin people fat.
  • Other rites are used to make women's breasts larger if small, and smaller if large.
  • General dissatisfaction with breast shape is symbolized by the ideal form being virtually outside the range of human variation.
  • A few women with almost inhuman hypermammary development are idolized and earn a handsome living by traveling from village to village, permitting natives to stare at them for a fee.

Reproductive and Excretory Functions

  • Excretory functions are ritualized, routinized, and relegated to secrecy.
  • Natural reproductive functions are similarly distorted.
  • Intercourse is taboo as a topic and scheduled as an act.
  • Efforts are made to avoid pregnancy using magical materials or by limiting intercourse to certain phases of the moon.
  • Conception is very infrequent.
  • When pregnant, women dress to hide their condition.
  • Parturition (childbirth) takes place in secret, without friends or relatives to assist.
  • The majority of women do not nurse their infants.

Conclusion and Anthropological Reflection

  • The review of Nacirema ritual life shows them to be a magic-ridden people.
  • It is hard to understand how they have existed so long under the burdens they impose on themselves.
  • Even such exotic customs take on real meaning when viewed with the insight provided by Malinowski (1948: 70):
    • "Looking from far and above, from our high places of safety in the developed civilization, it is easy to see all the crudity and irrelevance of magic. But without its power and guidance early man could not have mastered his practical difficulties as he has done, nor could man have advanced to the higher stages of civilization."
  • This statement can be analyzed in the context of Arthur C. Clarke's Third Law: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

References Cited

  • Linton, Ralph. 1936. The Study of Man. New York: D. Appleton-Century Co.
  • Malinowski, Bronislaw. 1948. Magic, Science, and Religion. Glencoe: The Free Press.
  • Murdock, George P. 1949. Social Structure. New York: The Macmillan Co.

Annotations and Footnotes

  • Source Text: "Body Ritual among the Nacirema," American Anthropologist 58 (1956): 503-507. (PDF: http://www.aaanet.org/pubs/bodyrit.pdf)
  • Footnotes: Added by Dowell.
  • George Peter Murdock (1897-1985): Famous ethnographer.
  • Ralph Linton (1893-1953): Best known for studies of enculturation.
    • Maintained that all culture is learned rather than inherited.
    • Asserted that enculturation is the process by which a society's culture is transmitted from one generation to the next.
    • Claimed culture is humanity's "social heredity."
  • Ablution: A washing or cleansing of the body or a part of the body. From the Latin abluere, to wash away.
  • Punctilious: Marked by precise observance of the finer points of etiquette and formal conduct.
  • Miner's Original Research on Mouth-Rite:
    • In the original research, the private mouth-rite utilized natural bristles.
    • Magical powders were in powder form.
    • Updates: The Nacirema have almost universally abandoned natural bristles for oil-based polymerized synthetics, and powders have generally been semi-liquefied.
    • Other cultural updates are eschewed for parsimony.
  • Ministrations: Tending to religious or other important functions.
  • Thaumaturge: A miracle-worker.
  • Bronislaw Malinowski (1884-1942): Famous cultural anthropologist.
    • Best known for his argument that people everywhere share common biological and psychological needs.
    • Argued that the function of all cultural institutions is to fulfill such needs, and the nature of the institution is determined by its function.
  • Clarke's Third Law (Arthur C. Clarke): "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."