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Why I love archaeology...
Topic Started: Nov 1 2011, 09:50 AM (137 Views)
ivorythumper
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I am so adjective that I verb nouns!
Remains Of Ancient Race Of Job Creators Found In Rust Belt
The dogma lives loudly within me.
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sue
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HOLY CARP!!!
^_^
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big al
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Bull-Carp
Too true to be really funny, living as I do near Pitt's Burg.

Reminiscent of one of my favorites...

Quote:
 
"Body Ritual among the Nacirema"
Horace Miner [1 - footnotes are at the end of this document]


Reprinted by permission of the American Anthropological Association from
American Anthropologist 58:3, June 1956. Not for sale or further reproduction.
1151 words



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 the society. Examples are "machismo" in Spanish-influenced cultures, "face"
in Japanese culture, and "pollution by females" in some highland New Guinea
cultures. Here Horace Miner demonstrates that "attitudes about the body" have
a pervasive influence on many institutions in Nacirema society.




The anthropologist has become so familiar with the diversity of ways in which
different people behave in similar situations that he is not apt to be
surprised by even the most exotic customs. In fact, if all of the logically
possible combinations of behavior have not been found somewhere in the world,
he is apt to suspect that they must be present in some yet undescribed tribe.
The point has, in fact, been expressed with respect to clan organization by
Murdock.[2] In this light, the magical beliefs and practices of the Nacirema
present such unusual aspects that it seems desirable to describe them as an
example of the extremes to which human behavior can go.

Professor Linton [3] first brought the ritual of the Nacirema to the attention
of anthropologists twenty years ago, but the culture of this people is still
very poorly understood. They are a North American group living in the
territory between the Canadian Cree, the Yaqui and Tarahumare of Mexico, and
the Carib and Arawak of the Antilles. Little is known of their origin,
although tradition states that they came from the east....

Nacirema culture is characterized by a highly developed market economy which
has evolved in a rich natural habitat. While 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 activity is the human body, the appearance and health of which loom as a
dominant concern in the ethos of the people. While such a concern is certainly
not unusual, its ceremonial aspects and associated philosophy are unique.

The fundamental belief underlying the whole system appears to be that the
human body is ugly and that its natural tendency is to debility and disease.
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.

While each family has at least one such shrine, the rituals associated with it
are not family ceremonies but are private and secret. The rites are normally
only discussed with children, and then only during the period when they are
being initiated into these mysteries. I was able, however, to establish
sufficient rapport with the natives to examine these shrines and to have the
rituals described to me.

The focal point of the shrine is a box or chest which is built into the wall.
In this chest are kept the many charms and magical potions without which no
native believes he could live. These preparations are secured from a variety
of specialized practitioners. The most powerful of these are the medicine men,
whose assistance must be rewarded with substantial gifts. However, the
medicine men do not provide the curative potions for their clients, but decide
what the ingredients should be and then write them down in an ancient and
secret language. This writing is understood only by the medicine men and by
the herbalists who, for another gift, provide the required charm.

The charm is not disposed of after it has served its purpose, but is placed in
the charmbox of the household shrine. As these magical materials are specific
for certain ills, and the real or imagined maladies of the people are many,
the charm-box is usually full to overflowing. The magical packets are so
numerous that people forget what their purposes were and fear to use them
again. While the natives are very vague on this point, we can only assume that
the idea in retaining all the old magical materials is that their presence in
the charm-box, before which the body rituals are conducted, will in some way
protect the worshipper.

Beneath the charm-box is a small font. Each day every member of the family, in
succession, enters the shrine room, bows his head before the charm-box,
mingles different sorts of holy water in the font, and proceeds with a brief
rite of ablution.[4] The holy waters are secured from the Water Temple of the
community, where the priests conduct elaborate ceremonies to make the liquid
ritually pure.

In the hierarchy of magical practitioners, and below the medicine men in
prestige, are specialists whose designation is best translated as
"holy-mouth-men." The Nacirema have an almost pathological horror of and
fascination with the mouth, the condition of which is believed to have a
supernatural influence on all social relationships. Were it not for the
rituals of the mouth, they believe that their teeth would fall out, their gums
bleed, their jaws shrink, their friends desert them, and their lovers reject
them. They also believe that a strong relationship exists between oral and
moral characteristics. For example, there is a ritual ablution of the mouth
for children which is supposed to improve their moral fiber.

The daily body ritual performed by everyone includes a mouth-rite. Despite the
fact that these people are so punctilious [5] about care of the mouth, this
rite involves a practice which strikes the uninitiated stranger as revolting.
It was reported to me that the ritual consists of inserting a small bundle of
hog hairs into the mouth, along with certain magical powders, and then moving
the bundle in a highly formalized series of gestures.[6]

In addition to the private mouth-rite, the people seek out a holy-mouth-man
once or twice a year. These practitioners have an impressive set of
paraphernalia, consisting of a variety of augers, awls, probes, and prods. The
use of these items in the exorcism of the evils of the mouth involves almost
unbelievable ritual torture of the client. The holy-mouth-man opens the
client's mouth and, using the above mentioned tools, enlarges any holes which
decay may have created in the teeth. Magical materials are put into these
holes. If there are no naturally occurring holes in the teeth, large sections
of one or more teeth are gouged out so that the supernatural substance can be
applied. In the client's view, the purpose of these ministrations [7] is to
arrest decay and to draw friends. The extremely sacred and traditional
character of the rite is evident in the fact that the natives return to the
holy-mouth-men year after year, despite the fact that their teeth continue to
decay.

It is to be hoped that, when a thorough study of the Nacirema is made, there
will be careful inquiry into the personality structure of these people. One
has but to watch the gleam in the eye of a holy-mouth-man, as he jabs an awl
into an exposed nerve, to suspect that a certain amount of sadism is involved.
If this can be established, a very interesting pattern emerges, for most of
the population shows definite masochistic tendencies. It was to these that
Professor Linton referred in discussing a distinctive part of the daily body
ritual which is performed only by men. This part of the rite includes scraping
and lacerating the surface of the face with a sharp instrument. Special
women's rites are performed only four times during each lunar month, but what
they lack in frequency is made up in barbarity. As part of this ceremony,
women bake their heads in small ovens for about an hour. The theoretically
interesting point is that what seems to be a preponderantly masochistic people
have developed sadistic specialists.

The medicine men have an imposing temple, or latipso, in every community of
any size. The more elaborate ceremonies required to treat very sick patients
can only be performed at this temple. These ceremonies involve not only the
thaumaturge [8] but a permanent group of vestal maidens who move sedately
about the temple chambers in distinctive costume and headdress.

The latipso ceremonies are so harsh that it is phenomenal that a fair
proportion of the really sick natives who enter the temple ever recover. Small
children whose indoctrination is still incomplete have been known to resist
attempts to take them to the temple because "that is where you go to die."
Despite this fact, sick adults are not only willing but eager to undergo the
protracted ritual purification, if they can afford to do so. No matter how ill
the supplicant or how grave the emergency, the guardians of many temples will
not admit a client if he cannot give a rich gift to the custodian. Even after
one has gained and survived the ceremonies, the guardians will not permit the
neophyte to leave until he makes still another gift.

The supplicant entering the temple is first stripped of all his or her
clothes. In everyday life the Nacirema avoids exposure of his body and its
natural functions. Bathing and excretory acts are performed only in the
secrecy of the household shrine, where they are ritualized as part of the
body-rites. Psychological shock results from the fact that body secrecy is
suddenly lost upon entry into the latipso. A man, whose own wife has never
seen him in an excretory act, suddenly finds himself naked and assisted by a
vestal maiden while he performs his natural functions into a sacred vessel.
This sort of ceremonial treatment is necessitated by the fact that the excreta
are used by a diviner to ascertain the course and nature of the client's
sickness. Female clients, on the other hand, find their naked bodies are
subjected to the scrutiny, manipulation and prodding of the medicine men.

Few supplicants in the temple are well enough to do anything but lie on their
hard beds. The daily ceremonies, like the rites of the holy-mouth-men, involve
discomfort and torture. With ritual precision, the vestals awaken their
miserable charges each dawn and roll them about on their beds of pain while
performing ablutions, in the formal movements of which the maidens are highly
trained. At other times they insert magic wands in the supplicant's mouth or
force him to eat substances which are supposed to be healing. From time to
time the medicine men come to their clients and jab magically treated needles
into their flesh. The fact that these temple ceremonies may not cure, and may
even kill the neophyte, in no way decreases the people's faith in the medicine
men.

There remains one other kind of practitioner, known as a "listener." This
witchdoctor has the power to exorcise the devils that lodge in the heads of
people who have been bewitched. The Nacirema believe that parents bewitch
their own children. Mothers are particularly suspected of putting a curse on
children while teaching them the secret body rituals. The counter-magic of the
witchdoctor is unusual in its lack of ritual. The patient simply tells the
"listener" all his troubles and fears, beginning with the earliest
difficulties he can remember. The memory displayed by the Nacirema in these
exorcism sessions is truly remarkable. It is not uncommon for the patient to
bemoan the rejection he felt upon being weaned as a babe, and a few
individuals even see their troubles going back to the traumatic effects of
their own birth.

In conclusion, mention must be made of certain practices which have their base
in native esthetics but which depend upon the pervasive aversion to the
natural body and its functions. There are ritual fasts to make fat people thin
and ceremonial feasts to make thin people fat. Still other rites are used to
make women's breasts larger if they are small, and smaller if they are large.
General dissatisfaction with breast shape is symbolized in the fact that the
ideal form is virtually outside the range of human variation. A few women
afflicted with almost inhuman hyper-mammary development are so idolized that
they make a handsome living by simply going from village to village and
permitting the natives to stare at them for a fee.

Reference has already been made to the fact that 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 by the use of magical
materials or by limiting intercourse to certain phases of the moon. Conception
is actually very infrequent. When pregnant, women dress so as to hide their
condition. Parturition takes place in secret, without friends or relatives to
assist, and the majority of women do not nurse their infants.

Our review of the ritual life of the Nacirema has certainly shown them to be a
magic-ridden people. It is hard to understand how they have managed to exist
so long under the burdens which they have imposed upon themselves. But even
such exotic customs as these take on real meaning when they are viewed with
the insight provided by Malinowski [9] when he wrote:

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.[10]




1 From "Body Ritual among the Nacirema," American Anthropologist 58 (1956):
503-507. All footnotes were added by Dowell.

2 George Peter Murdock (1897-1996 [?]), famous ethnographer.

3 Ralph Linton (1893-1953), best known for studies of enculturation (maintaining
that all culture is learned rather than inherited; the process by which a
society's culture is transmitted from one generation to the next), claiming
culture is humanity's "social heredity."

4 A washing or cleansing of the body or a part of the body. From the Latin
abluere, to wash away.

5 Marked by precise observance of the finer points of etiquette and formal
conduct.

6 It is worthy of note that since Prof. Miner's original research was conducted,
the Nacirema have almost universally abandoned the natural bristles of their
private mouth-rite in favor of oil-based polymerized synthetics. Additionally,
the powders associated with this ritual have generally been semi-liquefied.
Other updates to the Nacirema culture shall be eschewed in this document for the
sake of parsimony.

7 Tending to religious or other important functions.

8 A miracle-worker.

9 Bronislaw Malinowski (1884-1942), famous cultural anthropologist best known
for his argument that people everywhere share common biological and
psychological needs and that the function of all cultural institutions is to
fulfill such needs; the nature of the institution is determined by its function.

10 Did you get it?


Big Al
Location: Western PA

"jesu, der simcha fun der man's farlangen."
-bachophile
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