When reading “The Body Rituals of the Nacirema I think most people would initially be shocked by the archaic rituals and belief in magic. As I thought about it and began to sort out the purposes of the rituals rather than focus on the specific actions, it dawned on me that the act may be different but the reasoning is very much the same as any other culture or religion. We see many of their customs as barbaric simply because they are not OUR customs. It is natural, in our culture, to breast feed however this may seem barbaric to other cultures. “When pregnant, women dress so as to hide the condition. Parturition takes place in secret, without friends or relatives to assist, and the majority of women do not nurse their infants (Minor, 4). The majority of American cultures embrace and celebrate childbirth but this isn’t to say that all cultures do.
The Catholic religion has confession. Priests, in private, listen to the sins of the confessor and require penance to be done so that they can be absolved of their sins. Churches also expect “contributions” from their members. How is this any different than the magical practitioners of the Nacirema with their “impressive set of paraphernalia” (Minor, 2) exorcising evil? We consider ourselves civilized, which may be the biggest obstacle to allowing us to accept that cultural differences are not necessarily a bad thing. The Catholic church has a very pronounced hierarchy, similar to the Nacirema. The higher a person is in the church, or the tribe, the more power, or magic, they yield. Again, different scenarios but very similar results.
Ethnocentrism is the sincere belief that a person’s race or culture is superior to all others. Is this what caused Sarah Baartman to suffer the life that she did? While she was a physical enigma to the average white culture, was she any different when among her own people? What one culture perceives as beautiful, another may see as horrific. Body art and piercings are seen as signs of beauty and wealth in many eastern European cultures but other cultures view them as sinful. Lucille Davie states regarding Baartman “…Baartman’s physical characteristics, not unusual for Khoisan women,…were evidence of this prejudice, and she was treated like a freak exhibit in London.” It was this attitude of superiority that caused her to be enslaved to begin with; a feeling that one race or culture wasn’t worthy of a free life.
“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” (Minor, 1). As noted earlier, exotic is in the eye of the beholder and we should all be open to the customs and cultures of others if only to better understand them and looking at them though an intersectional approach would be a good way to start. Each culture is different and it is the sum of it's people that make it up.
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This point about opposing beliefs between cultures is a great question. But there are moral issues that may be unleashed when you ask these questions. Yes, rituals in the catholic religion are much different from other religions. But say this opposing culture does things that you may see as absurd. Say there's a culture out there that still burns women at the stake for cheating on their husband, or a African tribe sacrifices 10 virgins to the rain god by stoning them to death? Do we sit around and let "murder" like this happen because it is part of their culture? I mean look at it in that light, and we may say that we should "impose" our culture and tell them to stop this nonsense. But when you look at it in a different light, whose to say that we are right?
ReplyDeleteWhere is this dividing line between allowing things to fall by the wayside and let them go out with their rituals, and when do we step in? I mean, lives are being ended right now as we speak because of another culture's beliefs. Do we step in on behalf of mankind? Or do we simply turn our head and pretend like we do not know what is going on? I mean I feel like as human beings we have a moral obligation to protect all human life. But according to this blog post... I should stand aside and let their culture do what they got to do.
You are absolutely right. I thought about the same things as I was posting this but I tried to stay with the specifics that jumped out at me at the time. As I read this piece the rituals of the Catholic and Catholic-related religions came to my mind and that’s what I concentrated on. I completely agree that we have a moral obligation (an attribute of our own culture) to stop inhumane treatment, rites and rituals and I believe there is so much more of this going on than we know. There are countless hidden cultures, many I’m sure even here in the U.S., that still invoke cruel and unusual practices. I took Minors article as being written to show us how we misrepresent cultures through our own ethnocentrism so I didn’t want to get into it too deeply and go off in another direction. I do think, however, there is a fine line between helping to educate people so that they make different choices and imposing the morality of our own culture on them. Many of these rituals are so deeply embedded in their cultures and lifestyles that it would be impossible to penetrate the wall that separates them from us. Ethnocentrism at work!
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