Nacirema ("American" spelled backwards) is a term used in
anthropology
Anthropology is the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human behavior, human biology, cultures, society, societies, and linguistics, in both the present and past, including archaic humans. Social anthropology studies patterns of behav ...
and
sociology
Sociology is the scientific study of human society that focuses on society, human social behavior, patterns of Interpersonal ties, social relationships, social interaction, and aspects of culture associated with everyday life. The term sociol ...
in relation to aspects of the behavior and society of citizens of the
United States
The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...
. The
neologism
In linguistics, a neologism (; also known as a coinage) is any newly formed word, term, or phrase that has achieved popular or institutional recognition and is becoming accepted into mainstream language. Most definitively, a word can be considered ...
attempts to create a deliberate sense of self-distancing in order that American anthropologists might look at their own culture more objectively, thus comparing
emic and etic
In anthropology, folkloristics, linguistics, and the social and behavioral sciences, ''emic'' () and ''etic'' () refer to two kinds of field research done and viewpoints obtained.
The ''emic'' approach is an insider's perspective, which loo ...
views of it.
"Body Ritual among the Nacirema"
The original use of the term in a social science context was in "Body Ritual among the Nacirema", which
satirizes
Satire is a genre of the visual, literary, and performing arts, usually in the form of fiction and less frequently non-fiction, in which vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, often with the intent of exposing or ...
anthropological
Anthropology is the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human behavior, human biology, cultures, societies, and linguistics, in both the present and past, including archaic humans. Social anthropology studies patterns of behaviour, wh ...
papers on "other" cultures, and the
culture of the United States
The culture of the United States encompasses various social behaviors, institutions, and Social norm, norms, including forms of Languages of the United States, speech, American literature, literature, Music of the United States, music, Visual a ...
.
Horace Mitchell Miner
Horace Mitchell Miner (May 26, 1912 – November 26, 1993) was an American anthropologist, particularly interested in those languages of his time that were still closely tied to the earth and agricultural practices.
In 1937, he earned his doctorat ...
wrote the paper and originally published it in the June 1956 edition of ''
American Anthropologist
''American Anthropologist'' is the flagship journal of the American Anthropological Association
The American Anthropological Association (AAA) is an American organization of scholars and practitioners in the field of anthropology. With 10,000 m ...
''.
In the paper, Miner describes the Nacirema, a little-known tribe living in
North America
North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere, Northern and Western Hemisphere, Western hemispheres. North America is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South Ameri ...
. The way in which he writes about the curious practices that this group performs distances readers from the fact that the North American group described actually corresponds to modern-day Americans of the mid-1950s.
Miner presents the Nacirema as a group living in the territory between the Canadian
Cree
The Cree, or nehinaw (, ), are a Indigenous peoples of the Americas, North American Indigenous people, numbering more than 350,000 in Canada, where they form one of the country's largest First Nations in Canada, First Nations. They live prim ...
, the
Yaqui
The Yaqui, Hiaki, or Yoeme, are an Indigenous people of Mexico and Native Americans in the United States, Native American tribe, who speak the Yaqui language, a Uto-Aztecan language.
Their primary homelands are in Río Yaqui valley in the no ...
Arawak
The Arawak are a group of Indigenous peoples of northern South America and of the Caribbean. The term "Arawak" has been applied at various times to different Indigenous groups, from the Lokono of South America to the Taíno (Island Arawaks), w ...
of the
Antilles
The Antilles is an archipelago bordered by the Caribbean Sea to the south and west, the Gulf of Mexico to the northwest, and the Atlantic Ocean to the north and east.
The Antillean islands are divided into two smaller groupings: the Greater An ...
. The paper describes the typical Western ideal for oral cleanliness, as well as providing an outside view on hospital care and on
psychiatry
Psychiatry is the medical specialty devoted to the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of deleterious mental disorder, mental conditions. These include matters related to cognition, perceptions, Mood (psychology), mood, emotion, and behavior.
...
. The Nacirema are described as having a highly developed
market economy
A market economy is an economic system in which the decisions regarding investment, production, and distribution to the consumers are guided by the price signals created by the forces of supply and demand. The major characteristic of a mark ...
that has evolved within a rich natural habitat.
Miner's article became a popular work, reprinted in many introductory textbooks and used as an example of
process analysis
Process analysis is a form of technical writing and expository writing
The rhetorical modes (also known as modes of discourse) are a broad traditional classification of the major kinds of formal and academic writing (including speech-writing ...
in the literature text ''
The Bedford Reader
''The Bedford Reader'' is a college composition textbook published by the Bedford/St. Martin's publishing company. It is edited by X. J. Kennedy,medicine men and women (doctors, psychiatrists, and pharmacists), a charm-box (medicine cabinet), the mouth-rite ritual ( brushing teeth), and a cultural hero known as Notgnihsaw (
Washington
Washington most commonly refers to:
* George Washington (1732–1799), the first president of the United States
* Washington (state), a state in the Pacific Northwest of the United States
* Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States
** A ...
spelled backwards). These
ritual purification
Ritual purification is a ritual prescribed by a religion through which a person is considered to be freed of ''uncleanliness'', especially prior to the worship of a deity, and ritual purity is a state of ritual cleanliness. Ritual purification ...
practices are prescribed as how humans should comport themselves in the presence of sacred things. These sacred aspects are the rituals that the Nacirema partake in throughout their lives.
"The mysterious fall of the Nacirema"
In 1972, Neil B. Thompson revisited the Nacirema after the fall of their civilization. Thompson's paper, unlike Miner's, primarily offered a
social commentary
Social commentary is the act of using rhetorical means to provide commentary on social, cultural, political, or economic issues in a society. This is often done with the idea of implementing or promoting change by informing the general populace ab ...
focused on
environmental issue
Environmental issues are disruptions in the usual function of ecosystems. Further, these issues can be caused by humans (human impact on the environment) or they can be natural. These issues are considered serious when the ecosystem cannot recov ...
s. Thompson paid special attention to the Elibomotua (
automobile
A car, or an automobile, is a motor vehicle with wheels. Most definitions of cars state that they run primarily on roads, Car seat, seat one to eight people, have four wheels, and mainly transport private transport#Personal transport, peopl ...
backwards) cult and its efforts to modify the environment.
This article is reprinted and appears as the final chapter in an anthology, ''Nacirema: Readings on American Culture''. The volume contains an array of scholarly investigations into American social anthropology as well as one more article in the Nacirema series, by Willard Walker of Wesleyan University: "The Retention of Folk Linguistic Concepts and the ti'ycir (teacher) Caste in Contemporary Nacireman Culture" which laments the corrosive and subjugating ritual of attending ''sguwlz'' (schools). On
phonology
Phonology (formerly also phonemics or phonematics: "phonemics ''n.'' 'obsolescent''1. Any procedure for identifying the phonemes of a language from a corpus of data. 2. (formerly also phonematics) A former synonym for phonology, often pre ...
, the anthropologist notes:
This refers to the traditional enumeration of the 5
vowel letters
A vowel is a speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract, forming the nucleus of a syllable. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness a ...
in the English alphabet (A, E, I, O, and U), which is in contrast to the much larger number (varying between accents) of distinct
vowel sounds
A vowel is a speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract, forming the nucleus of a syllable. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness a ...
Gerry Philipsen
Gerry Philipsen (born 1944), Professor Emeritus of Communication at the University of Washington is an American academic and ethnographer of communication. Philipsen's research treats communicative acts as occurring within cultural, social and smal ...
(1992) studies what he terms "
speech code
A speech code is any rule or regulation that limits, restricts, or bans speech beyond the strict legal limitations upon freedom of speech or press found in the legal definitions of harassment, slander, libel, and fighting words. Such codes are ...
s" among the Nacirema, which he contrasts with the speech codes of another semi-fictionalized group of Americans, the inhabitants of Teamsterville culture. His Nacirema comprises primarily middle-class west-coast Americans.
See also
* , with a character named after the anagram of "America"
* , another portrayal of America through a lens of etic distance
* ''Motel of the Mysteries'' (1979), an illustrated book by
David Macaulay
David Macaulay (born 2 December 1946) is a British-born American illustrator and writer. His works include ''Cathedral'' (1973), ''The Way Things Work'' (1988), and its updated revisions ''The New Way Things Work'' (1998) and ''The Way Thin ...
depicting burial customs of the "Yanks of East Usa"
References
Additional bibliography
*
*
*
*{{cite book , last=Philipsen , first=Gerry , year=1992 , title=Speaking Culturally: Explorations in Social Communication , publisher=SUNY Press , isbn=0-7914-1164-8 , url=https://archive.org/details/speakingcultural00phil , url-access=registration
Wikisource
Wikisource is an online wiki-based digital library of free-content source text, textual sources operated by the Wikimedia Foundation. Wikisource is the name of the project as a whole; it is also the name for each instance of that project, one f ...
Natural History
Natural history is a domain of inquiry involving organisms, including animals, fungi, and plants, in their natural environment, leaning more towards observational than experimental methods of study. A person who studies natural history is cal ...