Nacirema Short Paper

On the basis of your reading of Horace Miner's "Body Ritual Among the Nacirema" and our class discussion of this classic article, choose some other aspect of Nacirema society that might similarly puzzle future anthropologists or archaeologists.  Then, using Miner's article as a model, analyze that aspect of society in the way you think a future archaeologist, completely unfamiliar with Nacirema culture, might interpret it.  As with Miner, try to combine humor with critical insight, and follow his approach by reversing the spelling of your subject.  Hence, if you are studying the Nacirema's love of cars, refer to them as "racs", TVs as "VTs", sports as "storps", love as "evol", etc. for whatever subject you have chosen.  Include the reversed spelling of your subject in your short paper title.  And, of course, use the term Nacirema to refer to the cultural group you are studying.

I will grade the papers in terms of whether you implicitly demonstrate understanding of what Miner was trying to show in his Nacirema article by poviding a comparable (though shorter)  analysis of a Nacirema practice different from the one he chose.  Like Miner's, your analysis should include both a (etic) description and some sort of interpretation of what the cultural practice you chose tells you about Nacirema society generally. Suggested length of your paper is two pages, although there is not a firm minimum or maximum requirement.

I hope you have fun with this assignment, and that it serves Miner's purpose of getting you to think about something familiar in an unfamiliar way, as well as about the complexities of understanding and describing a culture from the outside.

Please hand in your typed, double-spaced paper at the beginning of class on Thursday, Feb. 12th. This paper constitutes 5% of your total grade and will simply be graded on a 5 point scale: 5 (A), 4.5 (B+), 4.0 (B), 3.5 (C), 3 (D).