This blog will explore American culture, humorously nicknamed "Nacireman" culture after Horace Miner's famous article "Body Ritual Among the Nacirema." Miner's article focused an ethnocentric looking glass on American culture, asking the reader to identify with strange cultural pracitices that turn out to describe American body "rituals." Such rituals describe "baking heads" (women sitting under hair dryers) and obsession with seeing "the holy mouth man" (the dentist). The idea is that it's hard for Americans, or for anyone for that matter, to objectvely view their culture.
Read this famous article:
http://oak.cats.ohiou.edu/~thompsoc/Body.html
How do we, as Americans, objectively study our culture? Is is about nationalism, American flags, The Statue of Liberty? The American Dream? What do these concepts, symbols and ideologies have to do with day to day American Life?
Does the famous painting "American Gothic" have as much to do with American culture as the flag?
Let's find out...
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