The Nacerima Way of Life

  Part A

Spiritual

The fundamental belief of the Nacerima is to use ritual and ceremony to counteract the belief that the human body is inherently ugly.  Their spirituality is seen in the multiple shrines in each household devoted to this fundamental belief.  Also, the Nacerima keep many charms and potions in their shrines, with which they believe they can't live without.

Fascination

The Nacerima have an unlikely fascination of the human mouth.  This fascination with the mouth can be seen by the fact that the mouth has a supernatural influence on the social life of the Nacerima people. Without these rituals for the mouth, they believe their mouths would become infected with diseases and misfortune. This fixation of the mouth can be further seen when the Nacerima seek the holy-mouth-man once a year, and continue to believe even though their teeth continue to decay.

Ritualization

The latipso, an imposing temple of the Nacerima medicine men, is where elaborate ceremonies to treat the sick are performed. Little children speak of the latipso as the place "where you go to die." This place of ritual seems slightly counter intuitive, a place of healing the sick that many fear they will die. This is because many of the rituals performed in the temple are very harsh to the human body. For example, discomfort, torture, manipulation, and mutilation of female patients occurs at the temple during rituals. Still, these harsh rituals do not decrease the faith of the Nacerima in their medicine men.

Illogical

The Nacerima people's thought can be seen as illogical. They follow certain rituals for certain aspects of their life, but not others. This can be seen in the role of the "listeners." They believe that parents, especially the mothers, bewitch their children's minds. "The counter-magic of the witch-doctor is unusual in its lack of ritual" as compared to the other rituals they perform in their lives, such as in their shrine boxes, mouth fascination, and the temple rituals.

Extraordinary

The Nacerima people's mind show some incredible characteristics when studied. For example, the Nacerima can retain huge amounts of information in memory during their exorcism rituals, even things from their birth. In addition, it is extraordinary how the Nacerima have continued to leave for such a long time while imposing such harsh conditions on their health and bodies throughout their everyday lives.

Part B

As an American, I feel confident in the way I described my culture except for the descriptive word, illogical.  By using illogical, I feel I showed some cultural bias in using this word to describe the Nacerima people. I feel that the other four words I choose are a great way of describing our culture as well as many other cultures. These descriptive words give a sense of the way Americans live and how they act.


I feel that two of the words I used to describe the Nacerima show ethnocentrism.  The words fascination and illogical show a cultural bias I have towards the description of the Nacerima people.The word fascination shows bias because I am not accustomed to seeing people who are fixated on the human mouth. Since I have not understood why they have this fascination and I have not talked to someone who acts this way, I can't judge the way that the Nacerima feel about their rituals. In additon, the word illogical is biased because I don't fully understand the reason that the Nacerima perform certain rituals that are different to me. Some of these rituals could be understood better if I looked at the meaning and the adaptive function of the act. On the other hand, I feel the words spiritual, ritualization, and extraordinary are not culturally biased. I think these words are mostly universal to cultures because of their special rituals and acts.


A word that can replace illogical to create a description free from bias is unique. By using the word unique, I feel this accurately describes the actions of the Nacerima fairly without showing culture bias.  Since I have not studied or understood their culture, I should not use illogical to describe their cultural actions. Also, a word to replace fascination is commitment. The Nacerima may have adaptive or function based reasons to why they fixate towards certain items that are different from what I believe in.


I believe it is very important to avoid ethnocentrism when studying and describing foreign cultures. It is important to describe these foreign cultures free from cultural bias because we do not understand their culture if we have not fully experienced it first hand. If we don;t understand their culture, then we are assuming something that is not proven to be true. I don't think it is possible to completely avoid ethnocentrism because our mind shows unconscious bias that we don not even know exists. But, I think we can avoid it enough where we give a fair understanding of the culture to a point that correctly describes the culture.