Week 1: Culture Descriptions- The Nacerima

Part A: 
The 5 words I would use to describe the Nacerima population are ritualistic, sadistic, occult, superstitious and private.

Ritualistic: The Nacerima spend an abundance of their time daily devoted to certain rituals. They also have specific rituals for men, women and children. Children are to do a special mouth cleanse ritual which is said to help with moral fiber. The Nacerima have shrine rooms of charm-boxes that are displayed on walls where daily, each family member must do a ritual inside.

Sadistic: It is said that the Nacerima enjoy watching when the holy-mouth-man perform pain inflicted rituals on others. The daily routine of men involves cutting their face; as the women, although just 4 different times, bake their heads in ovens. It seems from watching pain, the Nacerima enjoy inflicting pain on themselves as well, as they believe it will improve the human body.

Occult: The Nacerima are extremely into magical potions, powders, & materials. Magical potions are believed to keep one alive and are kept in the charm-boxes in shrine rooms. They go to the holy-mouth-man once or twice a year so he can put magical materials in holes of teeth, which are sometimes made, in order to gain friends.

Superstitious: The Nacerima have many rituals designated for the mouth in belief that it helps with social relationships. They also will not dispose their charms given from medicine men in belief that it will help them, although they may not remember why it was even given to them.

Private: The Nacerima do their shrine rituals private, they are not family oriented, however they do share the same shrine room. Bathing and restroom use is only done during their daily body rituals in the shrine rooms. The Nacerima hide their bodies and never expose it; some couples do not see each others' bodies until ceremonies they go to where everyone must fully undress and do a variety of rituals. Women also, when pregnant, wear clothes that can hide their pregnancy and give birth alone, in private.


Part B: 
1. As an American, I can say that all of my descriptive words do still describe us, although may not to such an extreme. Ritualistic and occult can work when talking about our own cultures, and even religions. We all know plenty of superstitions: if your palm itches, you will get money; don't open an umbrella inside; breaking a mirror is back luck; and the list goes on. We are also private, certain things we do not show, or share with others. Sadistic is a more trickier word, as we would like to think we couldn't be; but from being on social networks, I have found that people will re-post/share a video or photo of something bad more than they will of a good picture. Also we have all types of surgeries to help improve one's appearance that inflict a lot of pain on ourselves.

2. I can say all of my words exhibit ethnocentrism as I am making my own assumptions on The Nacerima based off of my own limited experiences. To the Nacerima everything they are doing is perfectly normal, in fact they could hear about us, Americans, and have 5 descriptive words that would be bias based off of what they do. One word I could say may be less ethnocentric is occult, since they do believe in magic potions and powders. I would consider private to be unbiased since Miner does explain how they do stuff in private, away from others. The other 3 words: ritualistic, sadistic, & superstitious all are biased because I am basing it off of my own culture and what we don't do, as oppose to accepting what they do in their culture.

3.  Instead of ritualistic and/or superstitious, I could have said traditional since they are just following their Nacerima traditions by performing these different rituals daily. Experimental or fearless could have been used instead of sadistic because the things that they are doing that's causing the pain are pretty gutsy and scary to try to do.

4. I think it is extremely important to avoid ethnocentric judgments when talking about other cultures as it is not completely thinking like an anthropologist and it is talking negative on another culture based off of what you don't have any experience in. In a way, I do think it can be impossible to not think ethnocentric because one has not experienced everything but must form some opinion. I think once understanding the ethnocentrism, you can easily notice and stop yourself from those judgement. You must always remember that you are not the only person (or culture) in the world, and there are others who may not be familiar with how you things also.