This is a classic essay to be sure, first appearing in American Anthropologist in 1956 and being reprinted and taught to students of social science ever since.
Miner describes the mysterious Nacirema tribe as an objective social scientist should. He documents their daily rituals for oral cleanliness and visits to the tribal medicine men and herbalists. He notes their obsession with the human body and how they go about preserving and fretting over it, from body rituals undertaken at temples to the efforts taken to conceal bodily functions such as excretion and reproduction.
Of course, this essay is an anthropological satire of American culture. Through his distant perspective, Miner instructs us not to take our own culture for granted and to try to recognize that our own "civilized" bias for viewing the world is a hindrance to studying the nature of different societies (and even our own, which he makes foreign in this analysis) and the objective truths of the world. He proves that other cultures' values and beliefs, norms and rituals, histories and mythologies, etc. should not be discounted or made subject to our own personal judgements, but accepted as social facts that can help us understand the society that they're a part of.
Relevance: 3/5 (neutral)
Salience: 5/5 (very salient)
References:
- Linton, Ralph. 1936. The Study of Man. New York: Appleton-Century.
- Malinowski, Bronislaw. 1948. Magic, Science, and Religion. Glencoe, IL: Free Press.
- Murdock, George P. 1949. Social Structure. New York: Macmillan.
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