Nacirema

If you have any interest in anthropology and you haven't read about the Nacirema yet, I highly recommend it. My take is below the fold, so you can have a fresh, unprejudiced view first if you like. Here's the classic initial study: it is an old study but with some minor updates holds up remarkably well as still very accurate and insightful. (Apparently this remains the #1 most popular article of the entire open collection maintained by the American Anthropological Association [source].)

Body Ritual among the Nacirema - Miner, Horace (1956)

Here's another piece, however, in my opinion it's overdone and belabors the points it makes.

The Mysterious Fall of the Nacirema - Thompson, Neil B. (1972)

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So what's the point and does this have anything to do with Kaua'i?

To start this new chapter I wanted to do something different, and stretch the boundaries of this blog as well as push myself to tackle tougher subjects, go out on a limb. (I welcome feedback in comments, especially if this is a turn for the worse.) Also, I found it wonderfully hilarious while at the same time in places painful to read.

In my time on Kaua'i I have learned quite a bit (though I am just a beginner) about Hawaiian culture. Many people there hold the traditional culture in very high respect and subtly incorporate it into daily life in ways big and small. That the old culture persists in Hawaii is well-known to even the most casual tourist (though they may have a very limited surface understanding of what that culture is). To me this is a striking contrast to the mainland - where there is an absence of interest in past culture.

I am writing from the mainland, from within the bounds of time and space of the Nacirema, yet the culture described by Miner comes across as quite foreign despite being fairly accurately portrayed. While the article is dated, I remember as a child the era of the time of the writing, and know it to be quite accurate at the time. Yes, it generalizes behaviors that in fact individually vary considerably, but then all anthropology makes sweeping generalizations for the sake of brevity as well as to capture broadly applicable insights. While in fifty-some years there have been some changes, those changes have been quite subtle, in fact, surprisingly little has changed compared to our subjective sense of how much the world has changed over the last fifty years.

Yet if you go back another fifty years, the body ritual practices of the same peoples and place would be quite different: a lot less privacy, less regularity, and far simpler and cruder. That is, these core rituals have at most a tenuous tie to older generations and are largely newly synthesized in our lifetimes. Notably, today we have little interest in the past practices of those people. Looking back we would surely find their infrequent and minimal hygienic practices backward and of no relevance to ourselves. In other words, we have neither respect nor interest in the body rituals of our ancestors despite that fact as Miner accurately points out that today such rituals are considered extremely important by any proper member of society.

Yes, there are many obvious differences between the two localities; body ritual is just one facet of a complex culture to focus on; nonetheless, I believe that the contrasts are instructive. Big generalizations:

• Hawaiian culture (despite suppression and much loss) has continuity over time unlike Nacireman.
• Modern people in the islands hold the older culture in high respect and seek to continue it.
• Older culture is woven into modern life in Hawaii, the two existing harmoniously side by side. 
• Nacirema radically evolves ritual while deeply embedding it in current culture while ignoring if not completely ignoring most remnants of formers ways.
• Nacirema cultural continuity with the past is minimal; Hawaiians seek to maintain past culture.

Absolutely, the Nacirema body ritual article is parody in the sense that the author was obviously part of the culture from childhood and personally perfectly familiar with the practices described (claims of managing to get subjects of the study to reveal information are clearly made up for effect). Yet had a "Martian anthropologist"actually written the piece, it may well have turned much the same, and what it says (for the time it was written) is reasonably accurate if light on details.

Yet the palpable cognitive dissidence of reading such familiar practices expressed in such a foreign (at times bizarre-sounding) way is Miner's point. Which brings me to my second point: studying Nacirema suggests some differently nuanced ways of interpreting learnings about Hawaiian culture.

• Never underestimate the fact that as outsiders observing another culture, we don't have full context and hence easily describe what are to the people themselves very sensible practices in an unnatural way, falsely making them appear quite strange (when arguably they are not really so at all).
• When our own peculiar practices are objectively laid out for inspection our instinctive response is, "yes, but, you see, our [ritual] really works!" So if the ancient Hawaiians were still here, that probably would be their response as well.
• Looking at ourselves through the lens of anthropology perhaps best teaches us a little humility and provides excellent perspective as to how well this academic study really captures the essence of any culture it may study. It's a great reminder not to overestimate the accuracy of our knowledge of things we in fact know fleetingly little about.

Finally, that so many people do treasure the traditional culture of Hawaii and in whatever way they can keep it alive today is essential to making it accessible and understandable, and by living it they wear off much of the strangeness of simply being different, which in turn enables us all to experience it in a genuine way not otherwise possible. Mahalo, Hawaii.