The Nacirema Tribe

I am a part of the Nacirema tribe. However, I never knew of my roots until recently. After hearing about the odd traditions of “my tribe”, I was able to reflect on how odd society actually is.

After reading the “Body Ritual Among the Nacirema”, I thought it would be very interesting to list out and describe the significance of some of the “rituals” in the piece. 

1. “Much of the people’s time is devoted to economic pursuits”

As a country, we are very capitalistic and financially driven. In many cases, whether we like it or not, monetary gain trumps (unintentional yet ironic pun) morality in society. When taking a step back and viewing society, we can see how most of American’s lives are spent working or in an “economic pursuit” as money runs everything in this country, and is such a large part of our society.

2. “Every household has one or more shrines devoted to this purpose. The more powerful individuals in the society have several shrines… in fact the opulence of a house is often referred to in terms of the number of such ritual centers it possesses”

The actuality of the “shrines” described are in fact bathrooms, and the purpose of them being the shrines is due to mirrors being located in most bathrooms. Earlier in the piece, it is stated that another large concern of the “Nacirema people” involves appearance. It is very accurate to say that the wealth of someone can be determined by the amount of bathrooms they have, as this is extremely common in seeing how large a house/how expensive a house is. 

3. “Children… being initiated into these mysteries'' 

The significance of this ritual is simply potty training, and for obvious reasons how everyone conducts their own business in the bathroom is their own business/”mystery”. 

4. “Shrine box or chest… built into the wall. In this chest are kept the many charms and magical potions without which no native believes he could live… usually full or overflowing”

This magical chest refers to a medicine cabinet, and it is true that many believe that without medicine, they could never survive. Among the many odd rituals, I find this one the most normal as without medicine in certain cases people genuinely couldn’t survive. Lastly, many people tend to hoard leftover pills and such, hence the “overflowing” nature.

5. “Medicine men whose assistance should be rewarded with substantial gifts… decide what the ingredients should be and then write them down in an ancient and secret language”

The “Medicine men” are equivalent to doctors, and their substantial gifts as a reward for their treatment is referring to the expensive nature of healthcare/wealth of doctors. Their secret language is a play on the stereotypical “doctor scribble”, as well as how as a society we don’t know what doctors are prescribing us, we just trust their “magic” that the long foreign medical names for prescriptions will help us. 

6. “The mouth… which is believed to have a supernatural influence on  all social relationships” and ”ritual ablution of the mouth for children which is supposed to improve their moral fiber”

As an influence on social relationships, in many instances nice teeth are a large factor in deciding how attractive someone is. The “ritual ablution” the piece talks about would also be referring to the act of threatening to put soap in a child’s mouth if they are speaking disrespectfully or are swearing to “clean their mouth” from the bad things they’re saying, or “improv[ing] their moral fiber”. 

7. To avoid making this post WAY too long, the last aspect of Nacirema society I’ll talk about is about the “holy-mouth-man”. “These practitioners have an impressive set of paraphernalia… [and] the use of these objects is in the exorcism of the evils in the mouth” These magical mouth men also put “magical material” into decaying holes in the mouth, and even without decay they create holes to put magical material into. “The natives return to the holy-mouth-man year after year, despite the fact that their teeth continue to decay”

In reference to dentists, the author of this piece extremely dramatizes the experience of filling cavities by referring to it as an “exorcism of the evils in the mouth”. No one in society would think of such a normal activity as getting a cavity filled as an exorcism, but is a hyperbolic way of removing a negative aspect of a tooth. Even though most people in the American society go to the dentist 1-2 times a year, people still get tooth decay, and still have problems with their teeth. The oddity of paying someone to take care of your teeth and still having problems with them is an interesting aspect of society to comment on, and without the parody of this piece, I wouldn't have even thought twice about it.  

In regard to the piece as a whole, I was able to see nomalied aspects of American society that I wouldn’t have been able to see from an outside perspective without this piece. So many facets of our society are very odd and almost illogical from an outside perspective, and this piece allowed for me (and many others) to see these facets without the blinding lense of being American. It was extremely interesting to me to be able to view common parts of my life as an outsider, and will forever make me think differently on everything I do!