The Slums of Nattahnam

Horace Miner's "Body Ritual Among the Nacirema."

The Nacirema culture has been the subject of attention of many researchers in the last several decades. Horace Miner’s famous ethnography, “Body Ritual Among the Nacirema,”¹ is the seminal work on this strange group. It examines the population’s obsessive and often masochistic adherence to their healing and hygienic rites, and the fear with which they regard natural bodily functions. “Body Ritual Among the Nacirema” has become an integral title in the anthropological canon. However, despite his legendary achievement in demystifying the magical rites of this group, Miner fails to convey the sheer size of their territory. He describes the space that they inhabit as “the territory between the Canadian Cree, the Yaqui and Tarahumare of Mexico, and the Carib and Arawak of the Antilles.”² What is unclear from this statement, however, is that the territory Miner is referring to spans 3.8 million square miles.

“Nacirema” is actually a conglomerate of dozens of much smaller tribes, all of which share certain characteristics, such as their body rituals and the compulsive exchange of an economic token known as the “rallod.” Despite their shared Nacirema identity, each of these tribes have their own distinct culture, and often exhibit prejudice against people belonging to other tribes. The most apparent of these feuds seems to be between the large, densely populated urban tribes and the more spread-out rural tribes, but there is also a great deal of in-fighting amongst groups about their choice of tribal leaders, a divide which is most perplexing because these leaders seem concern themselves very little with the well-being of the lower members of their tribe. A great percentage of the Nacirema population seem blind to this lack of concern, and use their chosen allegiance (symbolized by the colors “red” and “blue”) as a signal to other tribesmen of their morality and intelligence. These differences aside, there is a great deal of pride associated with the tribe that one belongs to.