This was part of my antepartum reading. I found this very interesting!
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Miner (1956), an anthropologist, published a case study about the Nacirema that takes an outsider's look at the beliefs and practices of this culture. Riordan (1991) further examined the case study:
"Nacirema women deliver their babies in temples - slatipsoh - and the babies are taken to a separate room shortly after birth to be cared for by members of the Gnisrun tribe. She describes the rituals of a tube being pushed through the nose to remove gastric contents. Then babies are given sugar water to fill their stomachs. The breasts of the Nacirema women are consider sexually arousing, so they are kept hidden and bound under cloth until the baby cries to eat."
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Your thoughts?
14 comments:
Sounds so weird when put that way, doesn't it? Clever!
-Kathy
You mean, North Americans? In a hospital?
That is n. america mixed up, isn't it?...oh, and hospitals. Lol.
did you get a chance to read then entire article? It's amazing and really helps to stop ethnocentricity and makes you realize how strange we really are.
interesting and frightening. :)
Link, pretty please? I would really love to read the rest of that!
http://academic.evergreen.edu/g/gerstg/Naciremapg3.htm
Thank you Anonymous. I only had a snippet of the "case study" in another cultural article that I was reading.
Crazy Americans! LOL!!!
Thank you!
Mostly, I'm amused that so many of my fellow readers have missed that the words are only written backwards.
This case study could go further and include the Nacirema treatment of the dying and the bizarre ways that the elderly and disabled are shut away out of their communities...
I remember reading this in college as an example of "defamiliarization" in writing.
I remember reading this in college also and loving it....the original piece is hilarious. Talking about bathrooms as shrines:) Very clever indeed. Good way to describe our own birth culture.
Is this about North Americans or just Americans? I am from Canada and interested in the differences between here and US.
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