Student: Pratiksh Patel

Instructor: Diane Segroves

Class: Rel100
The Body Ritual of the Nacirema:
READING GUIDE
1. How is the anthropologist studying this particular group
what does he do, who does he talk to, how long, etc.
The anthropologist is studying the ritual life of the Nacirema people do
in order to understand their culture. The anthropologist has made
detailed descriptions for each ritual describing them in great details.
The anthropologist uses terms such as rituals activity, shrines, magical
beliefs, extreme behaviors, ceremony, charms, magical potions, body
rituals and other vague terms to describe the complexity which he
doesnt understand.
2. What kinds of rituals does he describe?

Daily body ritual performed by everyone which includes a mouth

rite which consists of inserting small bundle of hog hair into the
mouth along with magical powders and then moving the hog
hairs in a series of gestures.
Daily shrine ritual by each family members, where they use
charm boxes, and holy water.
Seeking out the holy mouth man once or twice a year to rectify
decayed teeth
Medicine men to treat sick patients which takes place in a
temple, in order to enter the temple their clothes are stripped
and then then treating them to daily ceremonies such as forcing
substances into the supplicants mouth in order to provide
healing.
Going to the witch doctor in order to exorcist the devils that
lodge in the heads of people, the patients tell the witch doctor all
their feelings, troubles and childhood fears.
Ritual fasts to make fat people thin and ceremonial feasts to
make thin people fat.
Additional rites to make womens breasts larger if they are small
and smaller if they are large.

3. What is his attitude toward this tribe? Positive or negative?

Note particular examples of the language he uses.
The anthropologist states in the first paragraph that he is interested in
studying the magical beliefs and practices of the Nacirema and also
states that the Nacirema people have unusual aspects that it seems

Student: Pratiksh Patel

Instructor: Diane Segroves
Class: Rel100
desirable to describe them as an example of the extremes to which
human behavior can go. From these two quotes I believe that the
attitude of the anthropologist consists of fascination & positivity
instead of negative, I believe the anthropologist finds the Nacirema
people interested that is why he wants to learn more about them.
4. Is he an insider or outsider in relation to this tribe? Why and
how?
The anthropologist is clearly and outsider. Outsiders always describe
cultures that they dont understand as something complex simply
because they dont understand it due to it being different from their
culture. The anthropologist uses terms such as rituals activity, shrines,
magical beliefs, extreme behaviors, ceremony, charms, magical
potions, body rituals and other vague terms to describe the complexity
which he doesnt understand. Furthermore this entire article is about
the anthropologist studying the culture and describing their practices
so the tone of the entire article is that of an outsider.
5. Does his method of study and his report have any
limitations? That is, are we getting a complete picture of this
tribe: why or why not? How would we ever know what a
complete picture would be?
One of the limitation that this report has is the authors poor usage of
words to describe rituals. The anthropologist is very vague in his
description at times and uses a lot of filler words which dont describe
anything and add to making the report difficult to read. I dont know if
we are getting a complete picture of the tribe, the author the
anthropologist doesnt state how many years he has been studying the
Nacirema people and have a very small reference at the end of the
report. Lastly as far as getting a complete picture I believe that we can
never get a complete picture unless we ask of the Nacirema people to
make a list of life aspects such as marriage, relationships, food,
appearance etc. and ask them to explicitly make a chart indicating
insider and outsider perspective because instead of always studying
the Nacirema people its good to be able to get their opinion as well so
that you arent fooled into making assumptions which are incorrect
based on your experience without understanding what is going on, its
always good to get both the outsiders and insiders opinion when trying
to understand a new culture.