1.3 Methods of Anthropological Research 1.3 Methods of Anthropological Research As a discipline, anthropology has its own distinctive research methods. These involve fieldwork and the comparative method. In cultural anthropology, these methods take the form of participant observation and cross-cultural comparison. The essential method of anthropological research that is shared by anthropologists regardless of their specialization is fieldwork—study that involves firsthand observation in the natural setting of whatever is being studied. Biological anthropologists may spend time in search of fossil remains of human ancestors or observing primates like chimpanzees or baboons in the wild to learn about the behavior of species closely related to our own. Archaeologists spend time in the field examining and excavating sites once occupied by human beings or even cataloging trash in a city garbage dump. Linguistic anthropologists work with native speakers of diverse languages to gather data firsthand about these languages and how they are used in real-life situations. Ethnographers spend prolonged periods living in isolated non-Western societies, in developing countries, or in a variety of settings such as rural villages, religious communes, prisons, central city slums, or even middle-class communities in Western societies to gather data about the life and customs of those they observe. Direct observation in natural settings is the common factor in data collection by all kinds of anthropologists. This feature contrasts with the work of other social and behavioral scientists, who have traditionally collected their data in laboratory settings, in structured interviews, or indirectly with printed questionnaires. Participant Observation Most anthropological research is also carried out using what is called participant observation, whereby the anthropologist lives with, participates in, and observes the daily life of the people being studied. The anthropologist lives with the subjects in the field for a long enough period to earn the trust that people require in order to behave in the ways they usually do when strangers, tourists, or "outsiders" are not present. Ideally, the cultural anthropologist becomes skilled enough at following local customs to be accepted as a functioning member of the Ethnographic Research  Participant observation group, while maintaining 1.3 Methods of Anthropological Research sufficient objectivity about the way of life to be able to describe and analyze it fairly and impartially. In practice, complete acceptance as a member of the community being studied is rare. The experience of working in a culture that is different from one's own native culture and attempting to learn the system of a new culture in a give-and-take way with the people of that culture forces anthropological fieldworkers to confront their own ethnocentrism—the belief that one's own group or culture is superior to another group or culture. This confrontation requires fieldworkers to ask themselves how their own preconceived ways of thinking and feeling may be influencing how they understand (or misunderstand) what they are trying to learn as they interact with those around them. This self-reflexive process leads fieldworkers to a deeper understanding of their own cultural assumptions as well as of the culture they are exploring. This process of selfreflexivity is part of the broader concept of reflexivity, the idea that the fieldworker is not an objective outside observer, but is both influenced by and an influence on those with whom she or he is interacting. Anthropologists expect to learn the native language of the people they study, as it is a kind of record and model of its speakers' understanding of themselves and their environment. It also facilitates the direct questioning of a people about their customs and the meanings of those customs. Along with simple observation, direct questioning is an important part of participant observation. Anthropologists carry out their questioning in ways that are systematic enough to uncover implicit but not normally discussed aspects of ways of life that might otherwise remain unknown. Systematic questioning requires asking the same questions of many different informants. This is done partly to verify the accuracy of what the researcher is told—after all, anthropologists are outsiders, and they may be considered fair game to informants who may resent their presence or simply enjoy the humor of deceiving them. Asking the same questions of many informants also ensures that the information obtained is typical of the ideas expressed in the community at large. Participant observation has limitations as well as strengths. One problem is that the time and energy it requires make it impossible for anthropologists to sample more than a fraction of the many lifestyles that exist at any time, and each anthropologist is only able to spend time in a limited number of communities within any one society. Choices Eye Ubiquitous/SuperStock such as which society to study, which Participant observation involves communities within that society, and which anthropologists interacting with and members of the community to spend time participating in the culture they are studying. with are influenced by many factors that cannot be called objectively scientific. For instance, financial limitations may determine the choice of where to do the research; national politics in the society may influence which communities are visited; and the chance meeting of a community member who belongs to a particular political, religious, or economic faction may determine who will 1.3 Methods of Anthropological Research shun or be willing to work with the anthropologist. Another problem in the fieldwork approach is the fact that the anthropologist's very presence can significantly alter a way of life she or he is studying. For instance, Jean Briggs (1986) noted that the hosts must also rearrange their lives, at some cost to themselves, to include the anthropologist and to solve the problems created by the latter's presence. The disruption may be more or less severe, depending on the nature of the role that the anthropologist adopts (or is assigned) in the society. (p. 20) The Fieldwork Experience: A Case Study After three years of graduate training, I prepared for my first experience in anthropological fieldwork: the study of the Shoshone language and its probability of becoming extinct. I remember one piece of advice my mentor gave me as we drove for the first time to the reservation that he had selected for my work: Don't ask directly about how many people or families live on the reservation because such questions would raise the suspicion that I was really gathering information for the government for some nefarious purpose. I followed this advice even though it slowed considerably my building of a clear picture of the makeup of the reservation. At first it seemed that I could not have been more fortunate in a fieldwork location. The Tribal Council had graciously offered me a rent-free ranch house that seemed luxurious. It was supplied with propane lighting, a stove, running cold water, and a propane refrigerator. It was furnished with a couch, desk, and bed. Most important of all, it actually had an indoor toilet! My first crisis was the discovery that although the house had a mechanically perfect toilet, it was unusable. It seems a child had flushed a rubber ball down the drain. Ordinarily this might have been fixed, but the drainpipe narrowed, somewhere in the front yard, to a size smaller than the ball. Thus, my prized possession was as unfunctional as a furlined teacup. Studying Azande Studying Azande From Title: Sir Edward Evans-Pritchard: Strange Beliefs (https://fod.infobase.com/PortalPlaylists.aspx?wID=100753&xtid=2546)    0:00 / 1:42 © Infobase. All Rights Reserved.  1x  Length: 01:42 Anthropologist Evans-Pritchard studies the Azande. The biggest initial 1.3 Methods of Anthropological Research adjustment to life in the field was loneliness. Residents of the reservation had their own work to do and lives to live. Most people were cattle ranchers, and their work kept them busy. They did not just drop everything because a young anthropologist had arrived. At first, I was at a loss to know how to go about meeting people. Residences were dispersed over the reservation. There were no stores to form a place of congregation. However, there was a third-class post office, a small two-room frame structure where mail arrived and departed only weekly and where I figured people would drop by occasionally. The reservation had no telephones, there was no television reception in the valley, and only a few houses had self-generated electricity to power even a radio, so I assumed that the mail would be an important source of information about the outside world. I stopped by the post office the next time I found it open. Mail was brought out to the reservation once a week by an automobile referred to as "the stage." People did come by to mail a letter or pick up their own deliveries, but few ever stayed long enough for me to get to know them. The one exception, of course, was the postmaster, Billy Mike, who became my first acquaintance. He expressed friendly interest in why I had come to the reservation, and spent many hours helping me learn the Shoshone dialect that was spoken locally. Eventually he introduced me to other, older members of the community. My main task was to develop an accurate description of the roles of Shoshone and English on the reservation. I wanted to discover the rules that governed which language was likely to be spoken by which persons under various circumstances. Thus, I was interested in whether speakers' choice of language in a given conversation could be predicted by combinations of such things as the age or sex of each speaker, the topic being discussed, or the specific vocabulary items that were necessary for that topic. In essence, I was trying to characterize the degree to which English was displacing Shoshone as the language of choice in conversations, as well as the ways in which the displacement was happening. The single most difficult barrier that I was forced to grapple with was my own lack of fluency in the Shoshone language. I had been fortunate in having been able to study the language for 2 years before starting my fieldwork, but what I had learned was only "Shoshone," and once I was on my own on the reservation, it quickly became clear to me that I lacked the conversational abilities that would be needed to follow the important but subtle nuances of day-to-day speech among native Shoshone speakers. Shoshone is a fascinating language in which verbs are particularly problematic for a native English speaker who is accustomed to the need for remembering only a few variations on the past, present, and future tenses. Shoshone, by contrast, has some sixteen basic tenses that differ not only according to when in time the process is placed but also in the style or quality of the action. For instance, there are two simple past tenses that differ only in whether the activity was completed gradually or suddenly. Thus, the English sentence, "She died," requires in Shoshone a choice of tense that would depend on whether the cause of death was a lingering illness or a broken neck. A third past tense in Shoshone is used for activities that were completed only in a location different from where the speaker currently is. It is true, of course, that these distinctions can be made by adding 1.3 Methods of Anthropological Research the right words and phrases to the basic English sentence, but unfortunately for the native English speaker, these differences in meaning are grammatically obligatory in Shoshone and—even worse—they are accomplished with suffixes that are appended to the basic verb. Consider the three Shoshone sentences, Nə təkka-nu (I ate [a leisurely meal]), Nə təkka-hkwa (I ate [quickly]), and Nə təkka-hkooni (I ate [while I was over there]). Present tenses are equally elaborate. There is one suffix for an activity that has just recently begun, another for a process that has been going on for a specific period of time, and a third for one that is happening now but has no definite time of onset. For some time, I despaired of being able to follow the sense of even the simplest conversations. I had discovered that distinctions that a student could readily notice in a neatly typed text did not linger nearly long enough in the air when spoken. For a long time, I contented myself with collecting single words, preferably nouns. Still, some facts about language use became apparent quite soon after my arrival. For instance, although almost everyone on the reservation whom I met spoke both Shoshone and English, there was tremendous variation in proficiency in both languages from one speaker to another. This was especially noticeable when persons of different age were compared. The oldest resident was a woman who was said to have reached her 100th birthday and who claimed to speak no English at all. Others who ranged in age from about 60 to 80 were fluent Shoshone speakers who typically spoke English as well but with a clear Shoshone accent and an occasional difficulty with English vocabulary. Middleaged speakers usually had nearly equal proficiency in both languages, while many of those under 40 appeared to be more at home with English than with Shoshone. Even before I could follow what was being said, I noticed that conversations in Shoshone were interspersed with English loan words regardless of the age of the speakers. When the topic dealt with technological issues, such as the repair of a water pump, English words such as pliers, hammer, or wire were common. Many words for recently adopted foods such as coffee, grapes, and oranges were also borrowed from English. Shoshone has no native obscenities, so when the Shoshone adopted the use of obscenities along with many other aspects of U.S. culture, English words and phrases were simply borrowed and used within Shoshone sentences. Here the pattern was noticeably agerelated. Situations and topics controlled language choice as well. Several families on the reservation were members of the Mormon religion, which is a major Christian denomination throughout many of the Great Basin states. Each week a non-Indian representative of this church came to the reservation to hold worship services. In this setting, the English language predominated even in conversations before and after the meeting among Shoshones who attended. During my work with the Shoshone, I would typically tape-record the examples of speech that I intended to analyze later. Simultaneously, I made handwritten notes in an abbreviated style about what was happening. They contained comments on such things as the context of conversations, the persons involved, and the topics being discussed, as well as any spontaneous insights into linguistic or cultural aspects of the conversations that I felt might help my later analysis. At other times (for instance, when I was systematically eliciting ways of saying various things), these notes became careful 1.3 Methods of Anthropological Research transcriptions of the complete responses. Each evening at home, I would type my notes to produce a separate, neater collection of field notes. The storylines of the material I had recorded raised cultural as well as linguistic questions that also had to be answered. Why, for instance, was the weasel the animal of choice for preparing both gambling and love magic? Or when the medicines prepared for these purposes were spoken to, did it imply a hearing spirit within the supernatural materials or was the speaking merely a way of manipulating the materials by invoking inanimate and unthinking supernatural forces? I made notes on such questions so that I could follow up on them. As my work progressed, I began recording conversations and folktales that were part of the oral tradition. At the same time, I was able to crosscheck the accuracy of what I had learned. Such practice enabled me eventually to follow the sense of conversations that occurred spontaneously in my presence. So I began to examine the interplay of Shoshone and English in the natural speech that was happening around me. I started recording not just when and where one of the languages seemed to be preferred over the other and how the words of one language were adopted into the other, but also how speakers might switch from one language to another as topics of their discussion changed. At the same time, as I developed an increasing facility with the native language, I started to learn things about reservation life that had not been clear through English alone. For instance, I began to learn that adults, who previously had been careful to avoid suggesting that they accepted the traditional Shoshone religious beliefs, openly discussed such matters as native curing ceremonies and native mythology when speaking Shoshone in my presence. I began to learn something of the contemporary Shoshone ideology, a worldview that incorporates both traditional Shoshone ideas and those of the U.S. mainstream. The reservation on which I lived was one of the few places throughout the Great Basin homeland of the Shoshone that was fortunate enough to have a practicing Indian doctor, a religious curer called a pohakantə. Willie Blackeye was highly respected and held traditional curing ceremonies about once a month for patients who came to him from throughout Nevada. He claimed that he did not speak English, but I am still not sure whether this was so or if his fostering of this belief was a means of maintaining a certain distance from what those on the reservation called Anglo culture. But whether it was intended or not, the contrast between the predominant use of English in the setting of Mormon worship services and the dominant role of Shoshone in Willie Blackeye's curing ceremonies clearly marked the contrast between nontraditional and traditional aspects of Shoshone religious ideology. Thus, as the Indians shared with me the traditional religious lore of Coyote and the other supernatural animals that populate Shoshone mythology, words borrowed from English occurred only rarely. Stories about more recent history contained many examples of borrowed words. Finally, English was most commonly used in gossip and in tales of recent events. My exploration of language choice among contemporary Shoshone exemplifies the holistic and integrative nature of cultural anthropology. Although the central concern of my research was a linguistic topic, I was not primarily interested in the Shoshone language as a closed system. Instead I sought to uncover the cultural rules that governed 1.3 Methods of Anthropological Research when and where one language would more likely be used than another. This forced me to examine how the Shoshone discussed their environment, their artifacts, and their economic activities. I also had to examine the social facts of Shoshone life, as their patterns of language use differed so dramatically by age. Ideology also could not be ignored because English had not been uniformly adopted for communicating about all the various aspects of Shoshone symbolic life. Although my personal goal was an academic one—completing the requirements for a degree in anthropology—participant observation research is not a process of detached data gathering and analysis. I could only obtain information about the use of language in real life by living with my subjects and interacting with them in their own settings. As a matter of fact, many of the important insights into the dynamics of a society come as a result of the interplay between the fieldworker and the native participants as the researcher struggles to understand the culture. It is the give and take of participant research that is particularly central to the anthropologist's ability to translate another culture into the idiom and metaphor of his or her own way of life. I too found that I was drawn into the life of the reservation in ways that fulfilled my own goals and, at the same time, served the values of the people I had come to study. In fact, I am fortunate to be able to still maintain some contact with those people who touched my life in meaningful ways and broadened my understanding of both the range of diversity within the human condition and the underlying similarities that make us all one human family. Cross-Cultural Comparison Anthropological fieldworkers are especially skilled at providing insights into the relationship of a custom to its broader social context. Their in-depth exposure to a particular way of life allows them to notice in detail how one part of a culture influences another. Yet, to develop truly useful generalizations about the ways in which Eye Ubiquitous/SuperStock culture functions, it is necessary to Anthropologists look across cultures to answer demonstrate that relationships that appear to questions regarding human diversity. How be valid in one culture will hold true for does this Nigerian wedding appear to differ others under like circumstances. Cross-cultural from typical weddings in the United States? comparison—examination of the varied ways a certain aspect of human life is treated in many different cultures—is the typical strategy that anthropologists use for this purpose. By comparing a sufficient number of historically unrelated cultures from different parts of the world, it is possible to determine, for instance, whether warfare is more likely in societies in which there are large differences in wealth between families than in societies in which all families have about the same level of wealth. Or anthropologists can also determine whether sexual inequality is more likely in societies where warfare occurs between neighboring peoples who belong to the same culture than in societies where warfare occurs between members of very different cultures. Currently, the most sophisticated collection of data on many different societies is one 1.3 Methods of Anthropological Research that was begun in 1937 by George Peter Murdock and several colleagues. His collection of cross-cultural data has been greatly expanded and is now known as the Human Relations Area Files (HRAF). HRAF, Inc., is a nonprofit organization based in New Haven, Connecticut, that maintains over three quarters of a million pages of information on 335 major societal groups, each of which has been coded for the presence or absence of characteristics on a standard list of over 700 cultural and environmental traits. Use of data from the HRAF has made it possible for researchers to determine what cultural traits or environmental factors are the best predictors of the presence or absence of various customs, thereby testing their ideas about the effects of one part of a cultural system on another. Ethics in Anthropological Research Because the subjects of anthropological research are human beings, there are important ethical considerations in doing fieldwork. It is generally agreed that the first loyalties of an anthropological fieldworker must lie with the people being studied. Our work must be carried out and reported in ways that cannot be used to harm the people whose lives we are investigating. When an anthropologist lives for extended periods with a people to thoroughly absorb the details of their lives and customs, it is almost inevitable that the researcher will become privy to information that might be harmful to the welfare and dignity of the host people were it to become public knowledge. Such knowledge is expected to be held in confidence, and anthropological research is reported only in ways that ensure the anonymity of individual informants and the welfare of the communities studied. Where harm may exist, those persons with whom anthropologists interact should be informed of any potential risks, and, of course, the use of any information gained during such research should not harm the people who were studied. Today, the research of both advanced scholars and students training in cultural anthropology are routinely examined by the Institutional Review Board (IRB) of their college or university to ensure confidentiality and avoidance of potential harm to subjects of the study. Because anthropological research carried out among living peoples is a matter of skilled observation and inquiry, anthropologists generally have no qualms about informing their subjects about the purposes of their research. There are, of course, situations in which the gathering of specific information about people's behavior would be made more difficult by an explicit admission of what the anthropologist is seeking, either because the informants' knowledge would make them self-conscious—thereby causing them to alter their normal behavior—or because informants may sometimes say what they think the investigator would like to hear. For instance, it would probably be self-defeating to announce one's intention to count how often people violate their own rules of public etiquette, as this would warn them to be on their best behavior whenever they see you coming! Thus, anthropologists may be open about their general topic of interest without compromising their ability to observe the specific behaviors that are relevant to learning about that topic. The real issue here is that anthropologists endeavor not to deceive their subjects or carry out research that serves interests that differ from the community's own. Clandestine or secret research is frowned on by most anthropologists. One way of avoiding conflicts of interest over allegiance to the people studied and to others with differing political aims is to avoid accepting research assignments that the funding agency 1.3 Methods of Anthropological Research requires be carried out in secrecy. The anthropologist's second allegiance is to the expansion of a scientifically respectable body of knowledge about the human condition. Thus, anthropologists seek to do everything in their power to collect accurate information and to make it openly available to others in a form that does not violate their informants' rights or compromise their dignity. It is common practice for anthropologists to provide copies of their research reports and publications to the communities they are studying. This ensures integrity in the research process and loyalty to the values of the subjects, and it also makes it possible for the fruits of anthropological research to be used by the subjects for their own benefit. "Body Ritual among the Nacirema" Horace Miner [1 - footnotes are at the end of this document] © Reprinted by permission of the American Anthropological Association from American Anthropologist 58:3, June 1956. Not for sale or further reproduction. NOTE TO EDUCATORS & OTHERS: Feel free to link to this page! Tell me if you would like a link back to a URL, as these scholars have. Last updated: 1.2.12. Most cultures exhibit a particular configuration or style. A single value or pattern of perceiving the world often leaves its stamp on several institutions in the society. Examples are "machismo" in Spanishinfluenced cultures, "face" in Japanese culture, and "pollution by females" in some highland New Guinea cultures. Here Horace Miner demonstrates that "attitudes about the body" have a pervasive influence on many institutions in Nacirema society. 1151 words, not including notes [503 begins ->] ¶1 The anthropologist has become so familiar with the diversity of ways in which different people behave in similar situations that he is not apt to be surprised by even the most exotic customs. In fact, if all of the logically possible combinations of behavior have not been found somewhere in the world, he is apt to suspect that they must be present in some yet undescribed tribe. The point has, in fact, been expressed with respect to clan organization by Murdock (1949: 71).[2] In this light, the magical beliefs and practices of the Nacirema present such unusual aspects that it seems desirable to describe them as an example of the extremes to which human behavior can go. Professor Linton [3] first brought the ritual of the Nacirema to the attention of anthropologists twenty years ago (1936: 326), but the culture of this people is still very poorly understood. They are a North American group ¶2 living in the territory between the Canadian Cree, the Yaqui and Tarahumare of Mexico, and the Carib and Arawak of the Antilles. Little is known of their origin, although tradition states that they came from the east.... [4] Nacirema culture is characterized by a highly developed market economy which has evolved in a rich natural habitat. While much of the people's time is devoted to economic pursuits, a large part of the fruits of these labors and a considerable portion of the day are spent in ritual activity. The focus of this activity is the human body, the appearance and health of which loom as a dominant concern in the ethos of the people. While such a concern is certainly not unusual, its ceremonial aspects and associated philosophy are unique. ¶3 The fundamental belief underlying the whole system appears to be that the human body is ugly and that its natural tendency is to debility and disease. Incarcerated in such a body, man's only hope is to avert these characteristics through the use of ritual and ceremony. Every household has one or more shrines devoted to this purpose. The more powerful individuals in the society have several shrines in their houses and, in fact, the opulence of a house is often referred to in terms of the number of such ritual centers it possesses. Most houses are of wattle and daub construction, but the shrine rooms of the more wealthy are walled with stone. Poorer families imitate the rich by applying pottery plaques to their shrine walls. ¶4 While each family has at least one such shrine, the rituals associated with it are not family ceremonies but are private and secret. The rites are normally only discussed with children, and then only during the period when they are being initiated into these mysteries. I was able, however, to establish sufficient [504 begins ->] rapport with the natives to examine these shrines and to have the rituals described to me. ¶5 The focal point of the shrine is a box or chest which is built into the wall. In this chest are kept the many charms and magical potions without which no native believes he could live. These preparations are secured from a variety of specialized practitioners. The most powerful of these are the medicine men, whose assistance must be rewarded with substantial gifts. However, the medicine men do not provide the curative potions for their clients, but decide what the ingredients should be and then write them down in an ancient and secret language. This writing is understood only by the medicine men and by the herbalists who, for another gift, provide the required charm. ¶6 The charm is not disposed of after it has served its purpose, but is placed in the charmbox of the household shrine. As these magical materials are specific for certain ills, and the real or imagined maladies of the people are many, the charm-box is usually full to overflowing. The magical packets are so numerous that people forget what their purposes were and fear to use them again. While the natives are very vague on this point, we can only assume that the idea in retaining all the old magical materials is that ¶7 their presence in the charm-box, before which the body rituals are conducted, will in some way protect the worshiper. Beneath the charm-box is a small font. Each day every member of the family, in succession, enters the shrine room, bows his head before the charm-box, mingles different sorts of holy water in the font, and proceeds with a brief rite of ablution.[5] The holy waters are secured from the Water Temple of the community, where the priests conduct elaborate ceremonies to make the liquid ritually pure. ¶8 In the hierarchy of magical practitioners, and below the medicine men in prestige, are specialists whose designation is best translated as "holymouth-men." The Nacirema have an almost pathological horror of and fascination with the mouth, the condition of which is believed to have a supernatural influence on all social relationships. Were it not for the rituals of the mouth, they believe that their teeth would fall out, their gums bleed, their jaws shrink, their friends desert them, and their lovers reject them. They also believe that a strong relationship exists between oral and moral characteristics. For example, there is a ritual ablution of the mouth for children which is supposed to improve their moral fiber. ¶9 The daily body ritual performed by everyone includes a mouth-rite. Despite the fact that these people are so punctilious [6] about care of the mouth, this rite involves a practice which strikes the uninitiated stranger as revolting. It was reported to me that the ritual consists of inserting a small bundle of hog hairs into the mouth, along with certain magical powders, and then moving the bundle in a highly formalized series of gestures.[7] ¶ 10 In addition to the private mouth-rite, the people seek out a holy-mouth-man once or twice a year. These practitioners have an impressive set of paraphernalia, consisting of a variety of augers, awls, probes, and prods. The use of [505 begins ->] these objects in the exorcism of the evils of the mouth involves almost unbelievable ritual torture of the client. The holymouth-man opens the client's mouth and, using the above mentioned tools, enlarges any holes which decay may have created in the teeth. Magical materials are put into these holes. If there are no naturally occurring holes in the teeth, large sections of one or more teeth are gouged out so that the supernatural substance can be applied. In the client's view, the purpose of these ministrations [8] is to arrest decay and to draw friends. The extremely sacred and traditional character of the rite is evident in the fact that the natives return to the holy-mouth-men year after year, despite the fact that their teeth continue to decay. ¶ 11 It is to be hoped that, when a thorough study of the Nacirema is made, there will be careful inquiry into the personality structure of these people. One has but to watch the gleam in the eye of a holy-mouth-man, as he jabs an awl into an exposed nerve, to suspect that a certain amount of sadism is involved. If this can be established, a very interesting pattern emerges, for most of the population shows definite masochistic tendencies. It was to these that Professor Linton referred in discussing a ¶ 12 distinctive part of the daily body ritual which is performed only by men. This part of the rite includes scraping and lacerating the surface of the face with a sharp instrument. Special women's rites are performed only four times during each lunar month, but what they lack in frequency is made up in barbarity. As part of this ceremony, women bake their heads in small ovens for about an hour. The theoretically interesting point is that what seems to be a preponderantly masochistic people have developed sadistic specialists. The medicine men have an imposing temple, or latipso, in every community of any size. The more elaborate ceremonies required to treat very sick patients can only be performed at this temple. These ceremonies involve not only the thaumaturge [9] but a permanent group of vestal maidens who move sedately about the temple chambers in distinctive costume and headdress. ¶ 13 The latipso ceremonies are so harsh that it is phenomenal that a fair proportion of the really sick natives who enter the temple ever recover. Small children whose indoctrination is still incomplete have been known to resist attempts to take them to the temple because "that is where you go to die." Despite this fact, sick adults are not only willing but eager to undergo the protracted ritual purification, if they can afford to do so. No matter how ill the supplicant or how grave the emergency, the guardians of many temples will not admit a client if he cannot give a rich gift to the custodian. Even after one has gained and survived the ceremonies, the guardians will not permit the neophyte to leave until he makes still another gift. ¶ 14 The supplicant entering the temple is first stripped of all his or her clothes. In everyday life the Nacirema avoids exposure of his body and its natural functions. Bathing and excretory acts are performed only in the secrecy of the household shrine, where they are ritualized as part of the body-rites. Psychological shock results from the fact that body secrecy is suddenly lost upon entry into the latipso. A man, whose own wife has never seen him in an excre- [506 begins ->] tory act, suddenly finds himself naked and assisted by a vestal maiden while he performs his natural functions into a sacred vessel. This sort of ceremonial treatment is necessitated by the fact that the excreta are used by a diviner to ascertain the course and nature of the client's sickness. Female clients, on the other hand, find their naked bodies are subjected to the scrutiny, manipulation and prodding of the medicine men. ¶ 15 Few supplicants in the temple are well enough to do anything but lie on their hard beds. The daily ceremonies, like the rites of the holy-mouthmen, involve discomfort and torture. With ritual precision, the vestals awaken their miserable charges each dawn and roll them about on their beds of pain while performing ablutions, in the formal movements of which the maidens are highly trained. At other times they insert magic wands in the supplicant's mouth or force him to eat substances which are supposed to be healing. From time to time the medicine men come to their clients and jab magically treated needles into their flesh. The fact that these ¶ 16 temple ceremonies may not cure, and may even kill the neophyte, in no way decreases the people's faith in the medicine men. There remains one other kind of practitioner, known as a "listener." This witch-doctor 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 countermagic of the witch-doctor 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. ¶ 17 In conclusion, mention must be made of certain practices which have their base in native esthetics but which depend upon the pervasive aversion to the natural body and its functions. There are ritual fasts to make fat people thin and ceremonial feasts to make thin people fat. Still other rites are used to make women's breasts larger if they are small, and smaller if they are large. General dissatisfaction with breast shape is symbolized in the fact that the ideal form is virtually outside the range of human variation. A few women afflicted with almost inhuman hypermammary development are so idolized that they make a handsome living by simply going from village to village and permitting the natives to stare at them for a fee. ¶ 18 Reference has already been made to the fact that excretory functions are ritualized, routinized, and relegated to secrecy. Natural reproductive functions are similarly distorted. Intercourse is taboo as a topic and scheduled as an act. Efforts are made to avoid pregnancy by the use of magical materials or by limiting intercourse to certain phases of the moon. Conception is actually very infrequent. When pregnant, women dress so as to hide their condition. Parturi- [507 begins ->] tion takes place in secret, without friends or relatives to assist, and the majority of women do not nurse their infants. ¶ 19 Our review of the ritual life of the Nacirema has certainly shown them to be a magic-ridden people. It is hard to understand how they have managed to exist so long under the burdens which they have imposed upon themselves. But even such exotic customs as these take on real meaning when they are viewed with the insight provided by Malinowski [10] when he wrote (1948: 70): ¶ 20 Looking from far and above, from our high places of safety in the developed civilization, it is easy to see all the crudity and irrelevance of magic. But without its power and guidance early man could not have mastered his practical difficulties as he has done, nor could man have advanced to the higher stages of civilization.[11] ¶ 21 REFERENCES CITED Linton, Ralph 1936 The Study of Man. New York, D. Appleton-Century Co. Malinowsli, Bronislaw 1948 Magic, Science, and Religion. Glencoe, The Free Press. Murdock, George P. 1949 Social Structure. New York, The Macmillan Co. 1 From "Body Ritual among the Nacirema," American Anthropologist 58 (1956): 503-507. [Sourcetext as PDF: .] Footnotes were added by Dowell. [BACK] 2 George Peter Murdock (1897-1985), famous ethnographer. [BACK] 3 Ralph Linton (1893-1953), best known for studies of enculturation (maintaining that all culture is learned rather than inherited; the process by which a society's culture is transmitted from one generation to the next), claiming culture is humanity's "social heredity." [BACK] 4 Missing text as follows: According to Nacirema mythology, their nation was originated by a culture hero, Notgnihsaw, who is otherwise known for two great feats of strength - the throwing of a piece of wampum across the river PaTo-Mac and the chopping down of a cherry tree in which the Spirit of Truth resided. [BACK] 5 A washing or cleansing of the body or a part of the body. From the Latin abluere, to wash away. [BACK] 6 Marked by precise observance of the finer points of etiquette and formal conduct. [BACK] 7 It is worthy of note that since Prof. Miner's original research was conducted, the Nacirema have almost universally abandoned the natural bristles of their private mouth-rite in favor of oilbased polymerized synthetics. Additionally, the powders associated with this ritual have generally been semi-liquefied. Other updates to the Nacirema culture shall be eschewed in this document for the sake of parsimony. [BACK] 8 Tending to religious or other important functions. [BACK] 9 A miracle-worker. [BACK] 10 Bronislaw Malinowski (1884-1942), famous cultural anthropologist best known for his argument that people everywhere share common biological and psychological needs and that the function of all cultural institutions is to fulfill such needs; the nature of the institution is determined by its function. [BACK] 11 Did you get it? In any case, try analyzing Malinowski's statement in the context of what has come to be known as [Aurthur C.] "Clarke's Third Law": "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." [BACK] Note: each link opens a new page.... • To Prof. John A. Dowell's Nacirema assignment. • To Prof. Angi Caster's "Microbial Coordinated Study" page. • To Prof. Rob Gargett's "The Subversive Archaeologist" blog. • To Prof. Giles Harrison-Conwill's Cultural Crash Course page. • Julie Peggar's Gaze Ethnographic Consulting: Stores from the World. • To Prof. Werner Hammerstingl's splash page in Swinburne University, Austrailia. • To Mr. Bob Stepno's Other Journalism Weblog. • To Prof. Arnold Perey's website, A New Perspective. • To Prof. Will Barratt's Homepage. • To the U of Pittsburgh's "Minority Health & Health Equity Archive" page. • To Prof. Phil Bartle's Home Page for Sociology at Camosun. • To California State Polytechnic U's Interdisciplinary General Education page. • To Cyberbrook's ThinkLinks page. • To Martijn de Koning Research Pages / Onderzoekspaginas • To ClassroomTools.com. • To Prof. P. Kerim Friedman's shared blog, "Anthro Classics Online," from National Dong Hwa University in Hualian, Taiwan. • To Christina Brooks' Introduction to Archaeology page. [BACK TO TOP] http://www.msu.edu/user/jdowell/miner.html Week Three Assignment Worksheet 1) Select one aspect of culture from the list. Once you've made your selection, please delete all other options. Gender 2) Select a source to use for Part I of the paper. You will be using your textbook and the article by Miner for this part of the paper, but for this worksheet, include the source you found through your own research. Review the tutorial on Evaluating sources and enter your reference in the space below. Reference entry in APA format: Kaufman, J. C., & Sumerson, J. B. (2015). Editors’ introduction to the 2015 Special Issue, Gender Stereotypes in the Media. Psychology Of Popular Media Culture, 4(1), 1. doi:10.1037/ppm0000071 3) Include the reference for Part II that corresponds to the topic you’ve chosen. Copy and paste the reference entry from the table (e.g., if you chose Education, you would use the article by Jonsson for Part II). Hoodfar, H. (1993). The veil in their minds and on our heads: The persistence of colonial images of Muslim women. Resources for Feminist Researchers, 22, 5-18. Retrieved from http://www.umass.edu/wost/syllabi/spring06/hoodfar.pdf Becker. A. E. (2004). Television, disordered eating, and young women in Fiji: Negotiating body image and identity during rapid social change. Culture, Medicine & Psychiatry, 28(4), 533-559. Retrieved from the EBSCOhost database 4) Summarize the main points from each of your sources. See this guide for help with summarizing your sources. Summary of your source for Part I (include one to two paragraphs, totaling at least 300 words). Enter your summary in the space below. In this assignment what exactly that I will go over that is covered within the article named “Gender Stereotypes in the Media” Kaufman & Sumerson (2015) examination of the portrayal of the female species on how they are predicted in a negative way into today’s media ways. One will realize through most of ones studies and research, the results produced were not found to be in favor of women. Today’s media is really good at only trying to be focused on nothing but the negative aspects pf the female gender. But in turn will have a blind eye to anything positive that women makes daily in the entertainment arena. Page 1 of 2 Week Three Assignment Worksheet Summary of your source for Part II (include one to two paragraphs, totaling at least 300 words). Enter your summary in the space below. In his literary research “The veil in their minds and on our heads: The persistence of colonial images of Muslim women” Hoodfar, H. (1993). Hoodfar discussed the struggles faced by Muslim women across the nation. The author ties at first educate his readers on the factual definition of the veil and its purpose. By choosing to wear the veil Muslim women are sometimes seen as inferior, uneducated and totally dependent on her husband. This belief has led to the ill treatment and many different forms of discrimination veil wearing women faced in the past and present day. Much of the uproar, movements and different groups who seek to de- veil the Muslim women, does so because of the misinterpretation and the perception that veiling equates to oppression. 5) Write a working thesis statement based on your sources. See this example. Working Thesis Statement: In this research paper I define the huge impact of society’s treatment, portrayal standards and standards towards the female species. With that said, to take you down that path, I will go over the article, Hoodfar, H. (1993). “The veil in their minds and on our heads” and Kaufman, J. C., & Sumerson, J. B. (2015). “Gender Stereotypes in the Media”. Page 2 of 2
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