Body Ritual Among the Nacirema (1956) [pdf]

My mother brought a photocopy of this home for me from community college back in ... Probably around 1996 or sixth grade.<p>It was illuminating. I think one of her long-term goals was to inoculate me against advertising. I guess she more or less succeeded.

The Sacred Rac is another bit of great reading along these lines: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.abstractconcreteworks.com&#x2F;essays&#x2F;teaching&#x2F;Composition-111&#x2F;70-c-sacred-rac.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.abstractconcreteworks.com&#x2F;essays&#x2F;teaching&#x2F;Composi...</a>

I always thought of this as an excellent satire of anthropology rather than a criticism of culture.

If you enjoyed this, check out David Macauley&#x27;s &#x27;The Motel of the Mysteries&#x27;. This illustrated book describes the interpretation of a motel as excavated by archaeologists in the year 4022: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;Motel-Mysteries-David-Macaulay&#x2F;dp&#x2F;0395284252" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;Motel-Mysteries-David-Macaulay&#x2F;dp&#x2F;0395...</a>

What I also thought was interesting as I was reading it (surprisingly my first time being exposed to this piece) was how strange the rituals described sounded, even though it was supposed to be a lighthearted parody of ordinary life. For example, &quot;When pregnant, women dress so as to hide their condition.&quot; A quote comes to mind: &quot;The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.&quot;

I remember a social studies teacher reading this to my class in high school, and thinking the language was ostentatious but it all sounded pretty normal (except the stuff about the dentist... and now that I re-read it, I don&#x27;t remember what I thought seemed wrong about it.)

His informant on the secrets of the family shrine is clearly from a perilously lax sect.

This was the first thing we read in freshman World Cultures class in high school -- the context was to make us aware of our own ethnocentric bias when studying &quot;other&quot; cultures.

There was a point in my life when reading something like this, I would have thought, &quot;Silly Americans.&quot; Now I think, &quot;Silly anthropologists.&quot;