Please comment on today's discussion regarding the satirical ethnographic text!
This is what Valentin wrote originally:
First I want to say, Im raging। I just have kopied almost the hole Handappart Map, (because there are really interessting articels in it!!) but, I failed to check if the machine does the thing I want too. In short words: It did not! Damit,anyway I read the articel one time, and thats my first impressions about it.
I Body Ritual among the Nacirema
These people (the Naciremian) have a very strange way of doing their rituals. (But! they have some in comperhention to us). Anyway it is a very sadistic and masochistic way of carring for their own healthy.
For example: when the medicine man stabs his patients with needls or the holy mouth man "jabs an awl into an exposed nerve". As I read the following sentence I could not belive it." As part of this ceremony, women bake their heads in a small ovens for about an our." Can you imagine this?Nevertheless I think its kind of interessting to see, that here are people who have recognised that pain is a central part of life.
Wednesday, 31 October 2007
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9 comments:
Valentin you made me laugh with your technology story! Now down to business: The homework is to add a comment to the filp clip post, please do so too.
I really enjoyed your comment on the ethnographic paper and it will be our start for the next task next week!
i can't agree totally on what you said vali, i mean the text deals with "ethnocentrism", strong belief and scientists (and that's what we are about to become altough i hate beeing called one) should never ever base their view on these themes on prejudice like "it is a very sadistic and masochistic way of carring for their own healthy." at this point i think about our society and death-penalty or lifelong-imprisonment - can these penalties in any way be justified? locking the bad away, isn't it also "a very sadistic and masochistic way of carring for their own healthy."?
on the other hand looking back in the course of history and you'll find culture in general is a child of its time: the aztecs killed their people because killing was a present for god and necessary to keep the world order constant.
what's your point of view?
Was it good what the aztecs did? Is it good what the nacerimians do?
Is it good what the katholics did in the past (Burning whiches etc).
This is a question of values.
I did not wanted to value what the nacerimians do in the frist point.
I just copied the words from the text.
And I dont think that these medicine man really are good docotrs if the stab their paients with needls to death (in the worst case).
Yeah, but that is because I come from a culture with different values than these people have. I would not say, these people are much worser than we in the western world are. That was not my (Absicht; sorry for that)
after today's class i have to admit, i didn't get the main idea of the text until then. who of you was smarter than me at first reading =)?
My English colleague Prof Nod Miller (University East London) used this paper for her Research classes, around 50% of the MA students found out that it was a satire text. even though I was assisting Nod with her teaching I must admit I didn't at first. I troubled me a bit because I wanted to be good in research and teaching... It still was a great learning experience for myself: again I learned to think twice! Or: To look very very exact at topics and situations...
When I first read the text I was a little bit confused also and I thougt I need a "listener" because I got nearly crackbrained (i love this word *g* i got it from dict.leo.org *hehe*), but i had the idea to contact andREA and she called me and we had a small discussion about it. She told me that this article is satiric and THEN i googled the word "nacirema" and www.wikipedia.de says: this was the title of an article which was part of the magazine American Anthropologist of Horace Miner 1956. He elucidated the american society in a way as normally a ethician does, when he describes ethnology. Horace Miner wanted to to criticise the type of observation, which doesn't fit with the reality at all times.
I also found the original article on the web and another article which is called "The Mysterious Fall of the Nacirema". If you want to read it, look at wikipedia.de and follow the link below.
And Sol I agree to your statement. It is very important to look twice on something. I find it very difficult sometimes to question something again and "look behind the scenes". So this article is very good to practise that..
It first caught my attention when the author wrote where the Nacirema live: "between the Canadian tree, the Yaqui and Tarahumare of Mexico and the Carib and Arawak of the Antilles". Also the next sentence "little is known of their origin, although tradition states that they came from the east", but I misunderstood east. I thought it'd be what we, so I think, normally understand by the term east, Asia. Anyway now I know it's not that east *laughs*.
It's easy to say I knew it from first reading but no it got me.
But through all reading it always remembered me of our society especially with all the beauty surgery. Most of all the sentence on page 79 "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." caught my eye because it said so much about the beliefs of some people nowadays, and remember this was written in the 50ies. It's awkward that if we see such behaviour in a different ethnic group or a "behind society" we think that is unnatural but we're none the better.
The point in looking twice at a "thing" is easy to say and it should be something we always should remember but sometimes I'm not sure if we are made for that but to be the happy pessimist as I'm called sometimes I think we can and have to learn it.
Oh, a satire text, great. I didn't recognize this before.
I asked myself if the nacirema people are still exist. I think they do.
Hi all!
I have to admit – first i also didn´t recognize that this text is a satiric text.
I saw a film with a similar background. (I really can´t remember the name – please help me if you can!!): An African came to Bavaria (Bayern) and documented how the people live there. He also visited a “bayrisches Volksfest” and it was very amusing to see his reaction to their “normal” acts and to hear his documents about these, because the way of life which is normal for us wasn´t normal for him.
It is interesting because we have a lot of documents about Africans or other people (their life and their culture) and may be some of these documents are just like the text “Body Ritual – Among the Nacirema” or the film i´ve seen. So – be careful!! (I wasn´t and so i misunderstood the text!)
LG Michi
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