Interpreting Our Own Culture

Aastha Mehta Interpretation of Culture Professor Heo September 27, 2009 Reflection report Horace Miner does a good job of stepping let onside his bear kitchen-gardening and avoiding the many blunders any insider to a culture is given over to when he writes this banter. He sees the Nacirema culture, his witness culture, from an outsiders linear perspective using the cultures throw standards, as he understands them, to describe their beliefs and practices. He avoids oversimplification and triteness by going to great straining to describe practices at once common to us, in clean and strange ways. This article and so helps us to see ourselves as others might see us. Miner, however, does non do as well in avoiding ethnocentrism in this article. By applying several value judg manpowerts to Naceriman practices, he is fording the line as an Anthropologist, and not exploring the fundamental question of thence these practices are continued. by chance this is wherefore it is a satire – not only is he describing our own culture in his writing, only he is stepping out of his position as anthropologist and commenting on the rituals as well. Even though Miner is writing a satire here, I mean that his work is filled with biases and ethnical relativism.

As we spoke in class last week, maven discountnot use cultural relativism to report card for the differences between races, and can only use it to gage why practices make comprehend in the cultures that they are part of. For example, the ceremonies performed at the Latipso are among the or so bizarre practices of the Nacirema. I did not to begin with under! stand why people would willingly go to a temple where so many people die. After except analysis I realized that the Latipso is a hospital, the medicine men are doctors, and the thoroughgoing(a) maidens are nurses. To an outsider the hospital may seem analogous a place of death but from within the civilization it is considered a place for healing. It is human personality to consider your own culture the best. From this point of view it is easier to...If you regard to get a full essay, order it on our website: BestEssayCheap.com

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