ANT 2410 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: American Morning, Nacirema, Cultural Anthropology
17 Jan 2017
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Ceremonies and rituals are an important part of any culture. Nacirema is american spelled backwards, and horace miner explains american morning rituals in a way that sounds foreign and strange. It focuses on americans as people who worship the mouth: exorcises mouth demons = brushing your teeth, visiti(cid:374)g the (cid:862)magi(cid:272)al mouth ma(cid:374)(cid:863) visiting the dentist. English anthropologist edward b. tylor: 1832 1917, considered to be the founder of cultural anthropology, he defined anthropology as the study of culture. All people have culture: everything that people have. Material possessions: everything that people think. Ideas, values, and: everything that people do. Culture and civilizations: civilizations are cultures that have developed cities. All civilizations are cultures, but not all cultures are civilizations: many scholars today avoid using the term civilization as a stand-alone term. For something to be cultural, it must have a meaning shared by most people in a society: when people share a culture, they can predict how others will behave.
