6 ms·

Nacirema

140 points by polm23 5y ago

hnbad 5y ago
The article sets out to explain the use of the term to allow more objective introspection but then only gives satirical examples. That's a bit disappointing. You'd think reframing your own country's/culture's actions, behavior, politics or religion in intentionally alienated language (i.e. renaming key figures and concepts) would have some more practical examples. The idea reminds me of the solution to fair sharing of a cake: have the person selected to cut it up go last when taking slices so they're incentivized to make all slices the same size. By being unable to benefit from any bias in the result (and in effect, potentially only being harmed by it) the person is forced to distance their immediate desire to have more cake from the act of dividing up the cake. Masking the country or cultural identity likewise (ideally) allows analyzing aspects of it without introducing in-group bias. Of course I'm not sure simply spelling everything backwards is sufficient, but the article doesn't elaborate beyond this rather obvious use in satire.
- stevage 5y ago
  Are you disappointed by the original paper, or the Wikipedia article about it?
  - hnbad 5y ago
    The Wikipedia indicates that the original paper is satirical.
- unfocussed_mike 5y ago
  > The article sets out to explain the use of the term to allow more objective introspection but then only gives satirical examples. That's a bit disappointing. The quotes in the article don't strike me as inherently satirical. They are an attempt to write in a completely distant fashion, applying the same anthropological rules to US culture from outside as they would any other strange culture. It's just that modern media has so many examples of satirically exploring our own culture in this way that they inevitably read that way. For example, in Bones, though Bones herself does not usually do it satirically, she does it earnestly; the satire emerges from the disconnect between her and her colleagues. It may not be possible to do this sort of thing without evoking satire, but there are many attempts lately to encourage US readers to consider how, for example, the Trump era would have been described by US foreign correspondents if it was happening in another nation. But then, almost anything reads like satire if you choose to read it as satire. Food packaging for example. "Serving suggestion"
- SkeuomorphicBee 5y ago
  I think the whole point of the original article is that those are not satirical examples, they are examples were the same anthropological practices used to describe "foreign" cultures were used to describe US American culture. The idea is that if you want to dismiss this examples as satirical, then you will also need to dismiss a huge chunk of all anthropological body of knowledge ever written as satirical. It is a tool for anthropologists to clearly visualize their bias, a more objective introspection, and hopefully start working to minimize the impact of said bias in their work.
  - Karunamon 5y ago
    They literally are described as satire, though? The problem with using satire in this way is that you need a solid understanding of something to satirize it effectively, but having that understanding in the first place causes the problem the satire pokes at! As a result, it comes off as insincere and hard to take seriously, in a "It's obvious what has been done here, and it's really not that clever, and the author doggone well knows it" kind of way. Transparent lexical tricks are not sufficient to create the kind of mental distance or suspension of disbelief necessary.
jayyhu 5y ago
In the same vein: The Sacred Rac https://laulima.hawaii.edu/access/content/user/millerg/ANTH_200/A200Unit1/Sacredrac.html https://laulima.hawaii.edu/access/content/user/millerg/ANTH_...
- Tade0 5y ago
  > Unfortunately the rac breed is not very healthy and usually does not live more than five to seven years. That's a gross misunderstanding of the topic! A Rac's natural lifespan is easily in the twenties, it's just that they're a display of status and virility, so those 5-7 years are actually the time after the original owner sells of the Rac to the less fortunate. It's quite the irony. An animal held at such high esteem, but only as long as its young and fit, even though its ability to serve its purpose does not diminish significantly after the aforementioned time. EDIT: regarding lifespan: I have a Japanese Crowned Rac which fell seriously ill at the age of 15 - mostly due to the first owner's mishandling. I can't bring myself to euthanise it though, as in its time it has been a loyal steed.
  - taneq 5y ago
    In fact you can, somewhat gruesomely, keep a rac alive long after it would normally perish by grafting body parts from other deceased racs onto it. There are even stories of necromancy whereby a rac thought long dead and buried could be exhumed and revived by feeding it fresh yrettab and cleaning its nostrils with a squirt of the potent restorative, 04dw.
- selimthegrim 5y ago
  This becomes funnier when you consider the brethren of the Asu must be the Asurs because they specialize in forging.
lordnacho 5y ago
I've often wondered how Americans see the world. I have a lot of family and friends from there, and something about meeting them is striking. The rest of the world gets an enormous amount of information from America. I've never lived in the US, but I know all the states. I couldn't write out all the counties in the UK. I know more US supreme court justices than combined from all other countries. I know the presidents going back 100 years, which I can't say I know even for the countries I've lived in for decades. I know some names of people who play the local sports there, the ones that aren't played in Europe. I even know brand names of businesses that don't have a European presence. This is all stuff outside of celebrity culture, where of course you get a huge number of US singers and actors. What happens when you go to Europe and everybody knows a bunch of stuff about your home country? Does it surprise you? Do you ever run into people expecting you to know how the economy of Sweden was doing in the 90s? Or what the Departements of France are?
- surajs 5y ago
- k2xl 5y ago
  There is somewhat of an unconscious assumption from us Americans that the rest of the world is aware of the events of our country… Language, current events, or even geography. For example, when I visit Europeans, it always throws me off a little when someone doesn’t know where my home state is. “Georgia? Is that near New York? Or is it near California?” There is never the reverse expectation. I have never felt that a European was surprised that I didn’t know a particular state, political party, or news event going on. In fact, I have seen them impressed when I happen to know anything about their home country.
- saalweachter 5y ago
  As an American, I've actually already experienced this, sort of. I grew up in the Midwestern US, on a farm, miles from the closest town and miles more from the closest city, the name of which would probably only register with people in a 2-5 State radius. When I moved to New York City after college, I realized I could already name more streets and places in NYC than I could from my childhood. I knew the museums and the bridges, the boroughs, the landmarks; Battery Park and Castle Clinton were right out of Deus Ex. My "home town" didn't have a mayor; I couldn't name one of the nearby city, but I knew LaGuardia and Giuliani. I'm not actually sure if NYC and LA are overrepresented in American media -- the NYC metro area is something like 8% of the US population, after all -- but because a half dozen cities are the backdrop of so much of American culture even the people who live in one have all the rest, thousands of miles away, to develop that distant familiarity with. (On the topic of brands, the biggest question New Yorkers had for me, coming from the Midwest, was whether Long John Silver's really existed; the ads saturated New York advertising despite not having any locations within a state or three. Likewise, I'd never encountered a Dunkin Donuts prior to moving to the coast.)
taneq 5y ago
Reminds me of BabaKiueria: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0166032/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0166032/ (Ignore the current user-submitted 'storyline' entry which doesn't represent the film fairly.)
ChrisKnott 5y ago
Reminds me of Twitter user @gathara who adopted a Western style of talking about African politics during the US election. Stuff like - "observers from the African Union urged calm amid worries existing ethnic tensions could break into violence in the oil-rich North American nation. Speaking from the coastal capital of Washington DC, incumbent President Trump said today..."
ri0t 5y ago
In 1996 some crazy folks produced a very dark, yet extremely funny, satirical mockumentary about Austria's culture in the style of western documentaries about Africa, from the perspective of a rather serious all-african documentation movie crew: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0109689/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1 https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0109689/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1 As a european, i found that one hillarious! They reversed all the cliché things, and express a lot of wonder about bizarrely presented austrian culture.
- hdevarajan 5y ago
  https://youtu.be/6C72u3v-Y-Y https://youtu.be/6C72u3v-Y-Y (No English subtitles unfortunately!)
- ri0t 5y ago
  Also, this nugget: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCb49OOCGqA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCb49OOCGqA
knl 5y ago
cjcenizal 5y ago
Reminds me of “Motel of the Mysteries” by David Macaulay [1], who also wrote “The Way Things Work.” It tells the story of a future archeologist who unearths a motel and goes about completely misidentifying the purposes of various motel artifacts, such as claiming the toilet seat cover was a ceremonial headdress. Cracked me up as a kid, and the art is beautiful! Great gift for anyone who has young kids. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Macaulay https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Macaulay
rjdp9736 5y ago
is it coincidence that "Nacirema" is "American" spelled backwards?
- npteljes 5y ago
  No, it's intentional.
rectang 5y ago
> The neologism attempts to create a deliberate sense of self-distancing in order that American anthropologists might look at their own culture more objectively. I feel as though there should be a way to apply this depersonalization technique when attempting to de-escalate political and cultural discussions which have seized up due to tribalism.
- mistermann 5y ago
  There very well may be, but like many other things someone may have to attempt to discover it, and I see no initiatives underway, or even substantial discussion of the idea. It's very weird that known problems that people complain about constantly do not generate initiatives to improve the situation, perhaps because the problem is not materialistic we have no intuition to try to solve it?
msla 5y ago
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Body_Ritual_among_the_Nacirema https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Body_Ritual_among_the_Nacirem... > There remains one other kind of practitioner, known as a "listener." This witchdoctor has the power to exorcise the devils that lodge in the heads of people who have been bewitched. The Nacirema believe that parents bewitch their own children. Mothers are particularly suspected of putting a curse on children while teaching them the secret body rituals. The counter-magic of the witchdoctor is unusual in its lack of ritual. The patient simply tells the "listener" all his troubles and fears, beginning with the earliest difficulties he can remember. The memory displayed by the Nacirema in these exorcism sessions is truly remarkable. It is not uncommon for the patient to bemoan the rejection he felt upon being weaned as a babe, and a few individuals even see their troubles going back to the traumatic effects of their own birth. It's interesting how poorly this has aged.

140 points by polm23 5y ago

The article sets out to explain the use of the term to allow more objective introspection but then only gives satirical examples. That's a bit disappointing. You'd think reframing your own country's/culture's actions, behavior, politics or religion in intentionally alienated language (i.e. renaming key figures and concepts) would have some more practical examples. The idea reminds me of the solution to fair sharing of a cake: have the person selected to cut it up go last when taking slices so they're incentivized to make all slices the same size. By being unable to benefit from any bias in the result (and in effect, potentially only being harmed by it) the person is forced to distance their immediate desire to have more cake from the act of dividing up the cake. Masking the country or cultural identity likewise (ideally) allows analyzing aspects of it without introducing in-group bias. Of course I'm not sure simply spelling everything backwards is sufficient, but the article doesn't elaborate beyond this rather obvious use in satire.

stevage 5y ago
Are you disappointed by the original paper, or the Wikipedia article about it?
- hnbad 5y ago
  The Wikipedia indicates that the original paper is satirical.
unfocussed_mike 5y ago
> The article sets out to explain the use of the term to allow more objective introspection but then only gives satirical examples. That's a bit disappointing. The quotes in the article don't strike me as inherently satirical. They are an attempt to write in a completely distant fashion, applying the same anthropological rules to US culture from outside as they would any other strange culture. It's just that modern media has so many examples of satirically exploring our own culture in this way that they inevitably read that way. For example, in Bones, though Bones herself does not usually do it satirically, she does it earnestly; the satire emerges from the disconnect between her and her colleagues. It may not be possible to do this sort of thing without evoking satire, but there are many attempts lately to encourage US readers to consider how, for example, the Trump era would have been described by US foreign correspondents if it was happening in another nation. But then, almost anything reads like satire if you choose to read it as satire. Food packaging for example. "Serving suggestion"
SkeuomorphicBee 5y ago
I think the whole point of the original article is that those are not satirical examples, they are examples were the same anthropological practices used to describe "foreign" cultures were used to describe US American culture. The idea is that if you want to dismiss this examples as satirical, then you will also need to dismiss a huge chunk of all anthropological body of knowledge ever written as satirical. It is a tool for anthropologists to clearly visualize their bias, a more objective introspection, and hopefully start working to minimize the impact of said bias in their work.
- Karunamon 5y ago
  They literally are described as satire, though? The problem with using satire in this way is that you need a solid understanding of something to satirize it effectively, but having that understanding in the first place causes the problem the satire pokes at! As a result, it comes off as insincere and hard to take seriously, in a "It's obvious what has been done here, and it's really not that clever, and the author doggone well knows it" kind of way. Transparent lexical tricks are not sufficient to create the kind of mental distance or suspension of disbelief necessary.

jayyhu 5y ago

In the same vein: The Sacred Rac https://laulima.hawaii.edu/access/content/user/millerg/ANTH_200/A200Unit1/Sacredrac.html https://laulima.hawaii.edu/access/content/user/millerg/ANTH_...

Tade0 5y ago
> Unfortunately the rac breed is not very healthy and usually does not live more than five to seven years. That's a gross misunderstanding of the topic! A Rac's natural lifespan is easily in the twenties, it's just that they're a display of status and virility, so those 5-7 years are actually the time after the original owner sells of the Rac to the less fortunate. It's quite the irony. An animal held at such high esteem, but only as long as its young and fit, even though its ability to serve its purpose does not diminish significantly after the aforementioned time. EDIT: regarding lifespan: I have a Japanese Crowned Rac which fell seriously ill at the age of 15 - mostly due to the first owner's mishandling. I can't bring myself to euthanise it though, as in its time it has been a loyal steed.
- taneq 5y ago
  In fact you can, somewhat gruesomely, keep a rac alive long after it would normally perish by grafting body parts from other deceased racs onto it. There are even stories of necromancy whereby a rac thought long dead and buried could be exhumed and revived by feeding it fresh yrettab and cleaning its nostrils with a squirt of the potent restorative, 04dw.
selimthegrim 5y ago
This becomes funnier when you consider the brethren of the Asu must be the Asurs because they specialize in forging.

lordnacho 5y ago

I've often wondered how Americans see the world. I have a lot of family and friends from there, and something about meeting them is striking. The rest of the world gets an enormous amount of information from America. I've never lived in the US, but I know all the states. I couldn't write out all the counties in the UK. I know more US supreme court justices than combined from all other countries. I know the presidents going back 100 years, which I can't say I know even for the countries I've lived in for decades. I know some names of people who play the local sports there, the ones that aren't played in Europe. I even know brand names of businesses that don't have a European presence. This is all stuff outside of celebrity culture, where of course you get a huge number of US singers and actors. What happens when you go to Europe and everybody knows a bunch of stuff about your home country? Does it surprise you? Do you ever run into people expecting you to know how the economy of Sweden was doing in the 90s? Or what the Departements of France are?

surajs 5y ago
k2xl 5y ago
There is somewhat of an unconscious assumption from us Americans that the rest of the world is aware of the events of our country… Language, current events, or even geography. For example, when I visit Europeans, it always throws me off a little when someone doesn’t know where my home state is. “Georgia? Is that near New York? Or is it near California?” There is never the reverse expectation. I have never felt that a European was surprised that I didn’t know a particular state, political party, or news event going on. In fact, I have seen them impressed when I happen to know anything about their home country.
saalweachter 5y ago
As an American, I've actually already experienced this, sort of. I grew up in the Midwestern US, on a farm, miles from the closest town and miles more from the closest city, the name of which would probably only register with people in a 2-5 State radius. When I moved to New York City after college, I realized I could already name more streets and places in NYC than I could from my childhood. I knew the museums and the bridges, the boroughs, the landmarks; Battery Park and Castle Clinton were right out of Deus Ex. My "home town" didn't have a mayor; I couldn't name one of the nearby city, but I knew LaGuardia and Giuliani. I'm not actually sure if NYC and LA are overrepresented in American media -- the NYC metro area is something like 8% of the US population, after all -- but because a half dozen cities are the backdrop of so much of American culture even the people who live in one have all the rest, thousands of miles away, to develop that distant familiarity with. (On the topic of brands, the biggest question New Yorkers had for me, coming from the Midwest, was whether Long John Silver's really existed; the ads saturated New York advertising despite not having any locations within a state or three. Likewise, I'd never encountered a Dunkin Donuts prior to moving to the coast.)

taneq 5y ago

Reminds me of BabaKiueria: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0166032/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0166032/ (Ignore the current user-submitted 'storyline' entry which doesn't represent the film fairly.)

ChrisKnott 5y ago

Reminds me of Twitter user @gathara who adopted a Western style of talking about African politics during the US election. Stuff like - "observers from the African Union urged calm amid worries existing ethnic tensions could break into violence in the oil-rich North American nation. Speaking from the coastal capital of Washington DC, incumbent President Trump said today..."

ri0t 5y ago

In 1996 some crazy folks produced a very dark, yet extremely funny, satirical mockumentary about Austria's culture in the style of western documentaries about Africa, from the perspective of a rather serious all-african documentation movie crew: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0109689/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1 https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0109689/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1 As a european, i found that one hillarious! They reversed all the cliché things, and express a lot of wonder about bizarrely presented austrian culture.

hdevarajan 5y ago
https://youtu.be/6C72u3v-Y-Y https://youtu.be/6C72u3v-Y-Y (No English subtitles unfortunately!)
ri0t 5y ago
Also, this nugget: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCb49OOCGqA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCb49OOCGqA

knl 5y ago

cjcenizal 5y ago

Reminds me of “Motel of the Mysteries” by David Macaulay [1], who also wrote “The Way Things Work.” It tells the story of a future archeologist who unearths a motel and goes about completely misidentifying the purposes of various motel artifacts, such as claiming the toilet seat cover was a ceremonial headdress. Cracked me up as a kid, and the art is beautiful! Great gift for anyone who has young kids. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Macaulay https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Macaulay

rjdp9736 5y ago

is it coincidence that "Nacirema" is "American" spelled backwards?

npteljes 5y ago
No, it's intentional.

rectang 5y ago

> The neologism attempts to create a deliberate sense of self-distancing in order that American anthropologists might look at their own culture more objectively. I feel as though there should be a way to apply this depersonalization technique when attempting to de-escalate political and cultural discussions which have seized up due to tribalism.

mistermann 5y ago
There very well may be, but like many other things someone may have to attempt to discover it, and I see no initiatives underway, or even substantial discussion of the idea. It's very weird that known problems that people complain about constantly do not generate initiatives to improve the situation, perhaps because the problem is not materialistic we have no intuition to try to solve it?

msla 5y ago

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Body_Ritual_among_the_Nacirema https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Body_Ritual_among_the_Nacirem... > There remains one other kind of practitioner, known as a "listener." This witchdoctor has the power to exorcise the devils that lodge in the heads of people who have been bewitched. The Nacirema believe that parents bewitch their own children. Mothers are particularly suspected of putting a curse on children while teaching them the secret body rituals. The counter-magic of the witchdoctor is unusual in its lack of ritual. The patient simply tells the "listener" all his troubles and fears, beginning with the earliest difficulties he can remember. The memory displayed by the Nacirema in these exorcism sessions is truly remarkable. It is not uncommon for the patient to bemoan the rejection he felt upon being weaned as a babe, and a few individuals even see their troubles going back to the traumatic effects of their own birth. It's interesting how poorly this has aged.