3 ms·

I read (an excerpt of) this in middle school, but my recollection was that the teacher didn't do a great job of communicating what the point was. It felt more l

by djur 5y ago

I read (an excerpt of) this in middle school, but my recollection was that the teacher didn't do a great job of communicating what the point was. It felt more like a "ha, gotcha, it was America all along!" moment. I remember being annoyed by some of the outdated elements (hog-bristle toothbrushes) which made it seem "unfair". As an adult, of course, the underlying factual inaccuracies just strengthen the point.

jaqalopes 5y ago
Sorry to hear that. For a different perspective, my grade nine world civilizations teacher delivered this perfectly to us as an in class reading exercise where we first critiqued the society of the Nacirema before the big reveal. I'll never forget how surprised I was to realize that my own country was something that could be criticized.
- djur 5y ago
  That's pretty much what my teacher was going for, but it came across more as "imagine how strange people from other countries might think we are" as opposed to "imagine how often you've uncritically received this kind of description of another culture".
- duskwuff 5y ago
  Another point my teacher made when she presented this article was the power of words like "ritual" and "ceremony" to dismiss a foreign society's customs as "religious rites", detaching them from any functional purpose or cultural context. (In modern terminology, one might refer to this as a form of "othering".)
prvc 5y ago
To be fair, "the point" is not clear. It seems to be some critique of some aspect of past anthropology, but what that is exactly is opaque.
- djur 5y ago
  It's a mostly accurate physical description of the (contemporary) American lifestyle described in a lurid way that distorts motivations using language typically applied to "uncivilized peoples". Realizing that and reacting "wait, we do that stuff, but that's not why we do it" is a good lesson on how to read similar texts that were written in earnest.

by djur 5y ago

jaqalopes 5y ago

Sorry to hear that. For a different perspective, my grade nine world civilizations teacher delivered this perfectly to us as an in class reading exercise where we first critiqued the society of the Nacirema before the big reveal. I'll never forget how surprised I was to realize that my own country was something that could be criticized.

djur 5y ago
That's pretty much what my teacher was going for, but it came across more as "imagine how strange people from other countries might think we are" as opposed to "imagine how often you've uncritically received this kind of description of another culture".
duskwuff 5y ago
Another point my teacher made when she presented this article was the power of words like "ritual" and "ceremony" to dismiss a foreign society's customs as "religious rites", detaching them from any functional purpose or cultural context. (In modern terminology, one might refer to this as a form of "othering".)

prvc 5y ago

To be fair, "the point" is not clear. It seems to be some critique of some aspect of past anthropology, but what that is exactly is opaque.

djur 5y ago
It's a mostly accurate physical description of the (contemporary) American lifestyle described in a lurid way that distorts motivations using language typically applied to "uncivilized peoples". Realizing that and reacting "wait, we do that stuff, but that's not why we do it" is a good lesson on how to read similar texts that were written in earnest.