Nacirema ("American" spelled backwards) is a term used in

anthropology Anthropology is the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human behavior, human biology, cultures, societies, and linguistics, in both the present and past, including past human species. Social anthropology studies patterns of behavi ...

and

sociology Sociology is a social science that focuses on society, human social behavior, patterns of Interpersonal ties, social relationships, social interaction, and aspects of culture associated with everyday life. It uses various methods of Empirical ...

in relation to aspects of the behavior and society of citizens of the

United States of America The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territo ...

. The

neologism A neologism Greek νέο- ''néo''(="new") and λόγος /''lógos'' meaning "speech, utterance"] is a relatively recent or isolated term, word, or phrase that may be in the process of entering common use, but that has not been fully accepted int ...

attempts to create a deliberate sense of self-distancing in order that American anthropologists might look at their own culture more objectively.

"Body Ritual among the Nacirema"

The original use of the term in a social science context was in "Body Ritual among the Nacirema", which satire, satirizes

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 past human species. Social anthropology studies patterns of behavi ...

papers on "other" cultures, and the

culture of the United States The culture of the United States of America is primarily of Western, and European origin, yet its influences includes the cultures of Asian American, African American, Latin American, and Native American peoples and their cultures. The Un ...

. Horace Mitchell Miner 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 (AAA), published quarterly by Wiley. The "New Series" began in 1899 under an editorial board that included Franz Boas, Daniel G. Brinton, and John W ...

''. In the paper, Miner describes the Nacirema, a little-known tribe living in

North America North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and the Car ...

. 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 ( cr, néhinaw, script=Latn, , etc.; french: link=no, Cri) are a Indigenous peoples of the Americas, North American Indigenous people. They live primarily in Canada, where they form one of the country's largest First Nations in Canada ...

, the

Yaqui The Yaqui, Hiaki, or Yoeme, are a Native American people of the southwest, who speak a Uto-Aztecan language. Their homelands include the Río Yaqui valley in Sonora, Mexico, and the area below the Gila River in Arizona, Southwestern United Stat ...

and Tarahumare of Mexico, and the Carib and

Arawak The Arawak are a group of indigenous peoples of northern South America and of the Caribbean. Specifically, the term "Arawak" has been applied at various times to the Lokono of South America and the Taíno, who historically lived in the Greater ...

of the

Antilles The Antilles (; gcf, label=Antillean Creole, Antiy; es, Antillas; french: Antilles; nl, Antillen; ht, Antiy; pap, Antias; Jamaican Patois: ''Antiliiz'') is an archipelago bordered by the Caribbean Sea to the south and west, the Gulf of Mex ...

. 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, prevention, and treatment of mental disorders. These include various maladaptations related to mood, behaviour, cognition, and perceptions. See glossary of psychiatry. Initial psych ...

. 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, where all suppliers and consumers ...

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 "designed to convey to the reader how a change takes place through a series of stages". While the traditional process analysis and a set of instructions are both organized chr ...

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, Dorothy M. Kennedy, and Jane E. Aaron. It is widely used in freshman composition courses at college ...

''. The article received the most reprint permission requests of any article in ''American Anthropologist''. Some of the popular aspects of Nacirema culture include: 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 commonly refers to: * Washington (state), United States * Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States ** A metonym for the federal government of the United States ** Washington metropolitan area, the metropolitan area centered on ...

spelled backwards). These

ritual purification Ritual purification is the ritual prescribed by a religion by which a person is considered to be free of ''uncleanliness'', especially prior to the worship of a deity, and ritual purity is a state of ritual cleanliness. Ritual purification may ...

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 effects of human activity on the biophysical environment, most often of which are harmful effects that cause environmental degradation. Environmental protection is the practice of protecting the natural environment on th ...

s. Thompson paid special attention to the Elibomotua (

automobile A car or automobile is a motor vehicle with Wheel, wheels. Most definitions of ''cars'' say that they run primarily on roads, Car seat, seat one to eight people, have four wheels, and mainly transport private transport#Personal transport, pe ...

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 Caste in Contemporary Nacireman Culture" which laments the corrosive and subjugating ritual of attending ''sguwlz''. On

phonology Phonology is the branch of linguistics that studies how languages or dialects systematically organize their sounds or, for sign languages, their constituent parts of signs. The term can also refer specifically to the sound or sign system of a ...

, the anthropologist notes: This refers to the conceptualization of the English vowel system based on orthography (with ''5'' vowels), which is in stark contrast to the actual system (with nine vowels and several

diphthong A diphthong ( ; , ), also known as a gliding vowel, is a combination of two adjacent vowel sounds within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: that is, the tongue (and/or other parts of the speech o ...

s).

Nacirema vs. Teamsterville

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 small ...

(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 c ...

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.

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

External links

''Body Ritual among the Nacirema'' (PDF)
from ''American Anthropologist'', June 1956 * ''Body Ritual among the Nacirema'' in

Wikisource Wikisource is an online digital library of free-content textual sources on a wiki, operated by the Wikimedia Foundation. Wikisource is the name of the project as a whole and the name for each instance of that project (each instance usually rep ...

format.
The Mysterious Fall of the Nacirema
from '' Natural History'', December 1972 (Internet Archive Aug 07, 2004 version)
"Battle RItual among the Nacirema"
by Finn Johannson at Ethnography.com (2015)
''Who are the Nacirema''
from ''Living Anthropologically'', (2013, revised 2018) American culture Society of the United States Cultural anthropology Social anthropology Ethnographic literature Humorous hoaxes in science Satire 1950s neologisms