While reading the essay "Body Ritual of the Nacerima", I became increasingly aware that the "Nacerima" were actually Americans. There were many context clues that led me to believe this, including the location (in between Mexico and Canada) and the many "rituals" that took place daily. Also, the name of the "place where people go to die", latipso, which is a backwards spelling of hospital without the h. If I were to choose five words to describe this essay they would be: magical, insecure, ridiculous, monetary, and American.
Magical: This word comes to mind often throughout the text because there is a theme of magic, ranging from "holy-mouth-men" to the ceremonies that take place at the latipso. Medicine men are often referred to as magical practitioners, performing rituals to "help" the one who is willing to pay.
Insecure: I chose this word because many of the daily "rituals" that take place are based on appearance. The shrine that people spend so much time in front of is a medicine cabinet/mirror, usually placed in the bathroom. In that time, many average families had ony one or two bathrooms, while the richer families had several bathrooms, all with medicine cabinets. These medicine cabinets were stocked with "charmboxes" or perscription pills.
Ridiculous: This word should be abvious because the author makes many of our daily habits seem absolutely ludacris. He states that latipso is not meant to help anyone, but only gives out "harsh" treatments and the latipso is simply a place where people go to die. This is not the case in our society. We go to hospitals to get better.
Monetary: The medicine men do not help anyone, no matter how sick, unless they are willing to pay. Then, after being helped, they are expected to pay again for their services. Enough said.
American: Looking back at the article, I can see how an outsider would judge our society harshly. Many people do not rely heavily on outward appearance or a plethura of perscription medication. Nor do they go to "medicine men" for their ailments, such as tooth aches or pains. They also do not go to "witches" to talk about their earliest memories. This is a Western, culture, and it is very limited to a small number of societies whom are considered to be civilized.
Part B:
As an American, I feel like the words I chose to describe the civilization in the text were completely accurate. I have no issue stating that Americans are based on money and appearance. We strive to be skinny and rich from early adolescence. We go to school to get a degree so we can have high paying jobs. We spend the rest of our time going to gyms, getting our hair and nails done, making sure our teeth are healthy, and making sure our physical health are all in order.
I feel like some of the judgments I used were a little biased because the things we do daily don't seem ridiculous when we are partaking in them, but when we see them from another perspective, we think its weird and abnormal.
Unfortunately I can't think of any other words that is UNBIASED to replace any of my words.
It's important to avoid ethnocentrism when studying other cultures because what is wrong or abnormal to us is completely normal and justified to other cultures. We may not understand why some cultures do what they do but it doesn't mean our practices are any better than theirs.
I can see where you think that the person who wrote this can take things to a different level, but curious to know how you view tihngs, like under ridiclious you stated that when we are sick we go to hosptials, but in some cases some people dont, there are soem people that beleive that the land can help you servie and only take or do natural things to help them, where others cant afford health care so they dont go to the hosptial or just dont like to get help to go. so i guess its rather can go alot of ways. i really like how you see things and put it just curious to see what else. looking foward to your oppnion :)
ReplyDeleteI'M SO BRAVO FOR YOUR ABILITY TO DECODE THAT THE STORY WAS ABOUT AMERICANS. I WAS TOO BUSY CALLING THEM ALL CRAZY AND THEN FEELING A BIT SHORT AFTER PART B, WHEN I FOUND OUT IT WAS AMERICANS! I AM GOING TO HAVE TO TAME MY BIAS TONGUE NOW!
ReplyDeleteHmmm...
ReplyDeleteThere seems to be a running misconception that "accurate" and "unbiased" are the same thing.
These words are indeed completely accurate (in my opinion and in yours), but that is within the culturally specific definition of these terms. At the same time, some of them carry with them strong cultural biases that mean something specific within our culture but not across cultures. That is what we are trying to identify here.
The one word that really caught my attention is the word "ridiculous". It really doesn't succeed in providing a specific idea or picture of what this culture looks like or how it behaves when you hear that word. It provides no useful anthropological information to a reader outside of our culture. It is all bias and no concrete information.
What Miner is trying to teach here with his article is what an outsider might see looking into our culture, just as any anthropologist might not quite see another culture accurately by looking in from the outside. It is meant to give anthropology students the opportunity to be that "other" and to feel what it is like to be the subject of an ethnocentric anthropological report. Not so good, is it? :-)
Don't miss the message here. It is a useful one.
I completely agree that in our culture we can be described in many words as you discussed above but in terms to researching another culture even our own, we should consider questioning why we are the way we are rather than giving an opinion or being bias, something I did in writing part A of this assignment.
ReplyDelete