Horace Mitchell Miner (May 26, 1912 – November 26, 1993) was an American

anthropologist An anthropologist is a person engaged in the practice of anthropology. Anthropology is the study of aspects of humans within past and present societies. Social anthropology, cultural anthropology and philosophical anthropology study the norms and ...

, particularly interested in those languages of his time that were still closely tied to the earth and agricultural practices. During

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

, he served as a

counterintelligence Counterintelligence is an activity aimed at protecting an agency's intelligence program from an opposition's intelligence service. It includes gathering information and conducting activities to prevent espionage, sabotage, assassinations or ot ...

agent in

Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical re ...

and

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

. In 1955 ays 1937 below he earned his doctorate at the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...

, going on to teach there, as well as at other universities in the United States, and on a

Fulbright Fellowship The Fulbright Program, including the Fulbright–Hays Program, is one of several United States Cultural Exchange Programs with the goal of improving intercultural relations, cultural diplomacy, and intercultural competence between the people of ...

at a college in

Uganda }), is a landlocked country in East Africa East Africa, Eastern Africa, or East of Africa, is the eastern subregion of the African continent. In the United Nations Statistics Division scheme of geographic regions, 10-11-(16*) territor ...

. He later worked elsewhere in

Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area ...

, and in

South America South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere at the northern tip of the continent. It can also be described as the southe ...

. He published several books, including ''Culture and Agriculture'' (1949), and ''City in Modern Africa'' (1967). However, he is equally famous for a

satirical Satire is a genre of the visual, literary, and performing arts, usually in the form of fiction and less frequently non-fiction, in which vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, often with the intent of shaming or e ...

essay An essay is, generally, a piece of writing that gives the author's own argument, but the definition is vague, overlapping with those of a letter, a paper, an article, a pamphlet, and a short story. Essays have been sub-classified as formal a ...

entitled "Body Ritual among the Nacirema", which not only satirizes American culture from an anthropological perspective and, as the ''Encyclopedia of Social and Cultural Anthropology'' states, "...offered incipient cultural critiques of Euro-American arrogance, by showing that magic is not the prerogative of non-Western societies," but also provides "a classic and apt example of how ethnocentrism can color one's thinking." The work was also featured in ''American Anthropologist.''

Awards and Honors

* Decorated

Legion of Merit The Legion of Merit (LOM) is a military award of the United States Armed Forces that is given for exceptionally meritorious conduct in the performance of outstanding services and achievements. The decoration is issued to members of the eight ...

, Bronze Star * Fulbright research award * Society Science Research Council Fellow, 1936–37 * Recipient Social Science Research Council Demobilization award, 1945 * Horace Rackham grant for field research Algeria, 1950 * Ford Foundation grantee, 1956; Rockefeller Foundation grantee, Nigeria, 1957–58 * Election to the

American Philosophical Society The American Philosophical Society (APS), founded in 1743 in Philadelphia, is a scholarly organization that promotes knowledge in the sciences and humanities through research, professional meetings, publications, library resources, and communit ...

, 1966 * National Science Foundation grant for research Nigeria, 1970-71

Education

AB- University Kentucky, (1933) A.M.- University Chicago, (1935) PhD- University Chicago, (1937) Postgrad- (Yale Institute Human Relations fellow), Colombia, (1942)

References

Body Ritual among the Nacirema
from ''American Anthropologist'', June 1956 : 1912 births 1993 deaths Recipients of the Legion of Merit 20th-century American anthropologists American military personnel of World War II University of Chicago alumni Members of the American Philosophical Society {{US-anthropologist-stub