The Nacirema

When first just simply reading Horace Miners short article Body Ritual Among the Nacirema, you get a picture of a remote far distant culture somewhere, which has bizarre rituals such as filling drilled holes in their teeth with magical ingredients, and having holy men “listeners” who listen to your problems and try to magically cure you of them. While this may farfetched at first, when you read slowly and debunk the article you come to realise that the Nacirema are really not all different from us; you can draw similarities they display such as having men fill their teeth (dentists), having magical listeners (therapists) and even boxes filled with magical items to cure all things (a medicine cabinet).

They are in fact so similar that you realise that they are us just seen through a different lens, though with our ethnocentric views we first assumed that they must have been some tribal culture little known by the world, when in fact we were just reading about ourselves. It shows how little we can really think about what we hear and see of other cultures which we think to be so ridiculous and different from our own. While blinded by the veil that is ethnocentrism the world may appear far distant from ourselves and our rules and morals; but in reality we are all human beings who share the same emotions and feelings though we use different and maybe “bizarre” rituals to display or correct them.

 

The Sociological Imagination

I myself am a son of a global village.

I have been a “citizen” of many countries over what seems to be so few years. I have lived in vastly diverse societies half a world apart in geography but a whole universe apart in culture. From the rigid melancholy of immediately post-soviet Russia, to the carefree go-with-the-flow mentality of New Zealand; I have met many people who have all had at least some sort of influence on me and in a way I have had influence on. I wear clothes made in China, play an instrument made in Mexico, watch television shows from Europe and listen to music made in the United States.

All I do goes a little bit towards improving or changing the lives of all those involved in a market place the size of the world, though I may not produce anything I may have somehow impacted someone’s life on the other side of the globe and neither they nor I really know to what extent. While in New Zealand my friend and I planted several seeds from a feijoa fruit tree, and who knows maybe in those 10 years the seeds may have very well sprouted a tree that other kids pick fruit from during the school lunchtime now. In reality every one of the 7 billion people on the planet affects it in a way that resonates across the globe and though the waves get smaller as they get further away they still touch someone else on the opposite side of the world.

 

About Me.

Hi, my name is Denis Krestsov; I am a 2nd year Anthropology student at Kwantlen Polytechnic University. I am doing this blog for my current Sociology 1125 class with Dr. Charles Quist-Adade.

I was born in Bolshoy-Kamen, Russia, a submarine base for the Russian Pacific Fleet across the bay from Vladivostok. When I was 7 my family started moving all around the world including Vancouver, Montreal, and Auckland, New Zealand where I spent a large part of my childhood and learnt English. I moved to Langley in Grade 10 after living in Pitt Meadows, and graduated from R.E. Mountain Secondary.

When I am not in school I spend a lot of time with my wonderful girlfriend Emily, play bass guitar and video games, watch a lot of movies, as well as work 3 days a week at the movie theatre. I am taking Anthropology in Kwantlen with a focus towards Forensic Anthropology and Archaeology because once I have gotten my Bachelors Degree I want to continue on to get a Masters Degree in Forensics and work in the BC Coroners system, the RCMP Crime-lab, or something in the Forensic Anthropology field. I took this course because it counts towards my degree as well as being an interesting topic about human kind which is the main focus of Anthropology and opens up a new field I haven’t yet studied.