is it coincidence that "Nacirema" is "American" spelled backwards?
No, it's intentional.
Nacirema
31–40 of 48 posts
Re: Nacirema
#32I've often wondered how Americans see the world. I have a lot of family and friends from there, and something about meeting them is striking. The rest of the world gets an enormous amount of information from America. I've never lived in the US, but I know all the states. I couldn't write out all the counties in the UK. I know more US supreme court justices than combined from all other countries. I know the presidents…
I solo backpacked Europe in the mid 2000s and found that telling people you were American was decidedly uncool. I’m sure the dislike of W Bush abroad had something do with it, but it was also partly because of what you are describing. Everyone already knew a lot about America. It wasn’t interesting to then. I remember staying at a hostel in Croatia with a diverse group. At breakfast we went around the room saying our…
It depends. I got in the habit of just saying I’m from New York instead of the US. Seems like everyone wants a friend in NYC to fulfill their goal of going there someday for a trip and having a cool local connection.
Re: Nacirema
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
As an American, I've actually already experienced this, sort of. I grew up in the Midwestern US, on a farm, miles from the closest town and miles more from the closest city, the name of which would probably only register with people in a 2-5 State radius. When I moved to New York City after college, I realized I could already name more streets and places in NYC than I could from my childhood. I knew the museums and t…
It is definitely true that NYC and LA are over-represented in American media. Marx and Lenin wrote about the "idiocy of rural life" but there is an urban idiocy to go with it. Frequently you meet urban people who have no idea where wealth comes from, any more than you'd get an understanding of ecology from looking at a fish tank. In New York it is a running gag that downstate black politicians are opposed to marijuan…
> "idiocy of rural life"
I think it's important for all free people to ask questions of themselves such as, "If organizations and government weren't there to provide me $service, what would I do to stay alive?"
($service being personal security against threats, healthcare, emergency care, power, fuel, water, food, and so on.)
It is my opinion that everyone should have a rough game plan for each of the above.
The answers to these questions might explain the perceived "idiocy" of rural life to many people.
Re: Nacirema
#34> The neologism attempts to create a deliberate sense of self-distancing in order that American anthropologists might look at their own culture more objectively.
I feel as though there should be a way to apply this depersonalization technique when attempting to de-escalate political and cultural discussions which have seized up due to tribalism.
Re: Nacirema
#35https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Body_Ritual_among_the_Nacirem...
> There remains one other kind of practitioner, known as a "listener." This witchdoctor has the power to exorcise the devils that lodge in the heads of people who have been bewitched. The Nacirema believe that parents bewitch their own children. Mothers are particularly suspected of putting a curse on children while teaching them the secret body rituals. The counter-magic of the witchdoctor is unusual in its lack of ritual. The patient simply tells the "listener" all his troubles and fears, beginning with the earliest difficulties he can remember. The memory displayed by the Nacirema in these exorcism sessions is truly remarkable. It is not uncommon for the patient to bemoan the rejection he felt upon being weaned as a babe, and a few individuals even see their troubles going back to the traumatic effects of their own birth.
It's interesting how poorly this has aged.
Re: Nacirema
#36I've often wondered how Americans see the world. I have a lot of family and friends from there, and something about meeting them is striking. The rest of the world gets an enormous amount of information from America. I've never lived in the US, but I know all the states. I couldn't write out all the counties in the UK. I know more US supreme court justices than combined from all other countries. I know the presidents…
I solo backpacked Europe in the mid 2000s and found that telling people you were American was decidedly uncool. I’m sure the dislike of W Bush abroad had something do with it, but it was also partly because of what you are describing. Everyone already knew a lot about America. It wasn’t interesting to then. I remember staying at a hostel in Croatia with a diverse group. At breakfast we went around the room saying our…
I've had the opposite experience living in Brooklyn and traveling to Europe. Saying I was from New York was boring but—Brooklyn being in vogue at the time—I quickly learned to be more specific and found lots of fast friends wanting to know about what it was like living there.
Re: Nacirema
#37The article sets out to explain the use of the term to allow more objective introspection but then only gives satirical examples. That's a bit disappointing. You'd think reframing your own country's/culture's actions, behavior, politics or religion in intentionally alienated language (i.e. renaming key figures and concepts) would have some more practical examples. The idea reminds me of the solution to fair sharing o…
I think the whole point of the original article is that those are not satirical examples, they are examples were the same anthropological practices used to describe "foreign" cultures were used to describe US American culture. The idea is that if you want to dismiss this examples as satirical, then you will also need to dismiss a huge chunk of all anthropological body of knowledge ever written as satirical. It is a t…
They literally are described as satire, though? The problem with using satire in this way is that you need a solid understanding of something to satirize it effectively, but having that understanding in the first place causes the problem the satire pokes at!
As a result, it comes off as insincere and hard to take seriously, in a "It's obvious what has been done here, and it's really not that clever, and the author doggone well knows it" kind of way. Transparent lexical tricks are not sufficient to create the kind of mental distance or suspension of disbelief necessary.
Re: Nacirema
#38I've often wondered how Americans see the world. I have a lot of family and friends from there, and something about meeting them is striking. The rest of the world gets an enormous amount of information from America. I've never lived in the US, but I know all the states. I couldn't write out all the counties in the UK. I know more US supreme court justices than combined from all other countries. I know the presidents…
I have personally found that the western european countries are not surprised and tend to talk like you're on the same base line. I suppose it comes off as "you know a lot about my country like everyone else from my country."
The exception is anywhere east of Poland. Then they're shocked I know anything at all.
Re: Nacirema
#39> The neologism attempts to create a deliberate sense of self-distancing in order that American anthropologists might look at their own culture more objectively. I feel as though there should be a way to apply this depersonalization technique when attempting to de-escalate political and cultural discussions which have seized up due to tribalism.
There very well may be, but like many other things someone may have to attempt to discover it, and I see no initiatives underway, or even substantial discussion of the idea. It's very weird that known problems that people complain about constantly do not generate initiatives to improve the situation, perhaps because the problem is not materialistic we have no intuition to try to solve it?
Re: Nacirema
#40I've often wondered how Americans see the world. I have a lot of family and friends from there, and something about meeting them is striking. The rest of the world gets an enormous amount of information from America. I've never lived in the US, but I know all the states. I couldn't write out all the counties in the UK. I know more US supreme court justices than combined from all other countries. I know the presidents…
It's definitely odd. I find, though, that the average European overestimates their knowledge and understanding of America. There are so many misconceptions I hear whenever I talk to a European about the US that it's literally impossible to correct them all; most of them seem to be stereotypes from TV or news. It leads to a lot of unnecessary confusion, and the particularly frustrating part is that they are often unwilling to accept that their preconceptions about America are wrong when corrected on them.