Background
Miner, Horace Mitchell was born on May 26, 1912 in St. Paul. Son of James Burt and Jessie Leightner (Schulten) Miner.
anthropologist university professor
Miner, Horace Mitchell was born on May 26, 1912 in St. Paul. Son of James Burt and Jessie Leightner (Schulten) Miner.
Bachelor of Arts, Univercity Kentucky, 1933; A.M., University of Chicago, 1935; Doctor of Philosophy, University Chicago, 1937; postgraduate (Yale Institute Human Relations fellow), Colombia, 1941-1942.
During World World War II, he served as a counterintelligence agent in Italy and Japan. In 1955, he earned his doctorate at the University of Chicago, going on to teach there, as well as at other universities in the United States, and on a Fulbright Fellowship at a college in Uganda. He later worked elsewhere in Africa, and in South America.
He published several books, including Culture and Agriculture (1949), and City in Modern Africa (1967).
However, he is equally famous for a satirical essay entitled "Body Ritual among the Nacirema", which not only satirizes American culture from an anthropological perspective and, as the Encyclopedia of Social and Cultural Anthropology states, "..offered incipient cultural critiques of Euro-American arrogance, by showing that magic is not the prerogative of non-Western societies". but also provides "a classic and apt example of how ethnocentrism can color one"s thinking." The work was also featured in American Anthropologist.
(Anthropological Pepers, Museum of Anthropology, Universit...)
Member committee experts on indigenous labor International Labor Office, 1949-1965, conference on indigenous labor, La Paz, 1951, Geneva, 1954, 62. Member divisional committee for social science National Science Foundation, 1962-1967. Served to lieutenant colonel Army of the United States, 1942-1945, North African Theatre of Operations, European Theatre of Operations.
Fellow American Sociological Association, American Anthropological Association. Member American Philosophical Society, International African Institute (governing body 1949-1964), Society Applied Anthropology (president 1954-1955), Phi Beta Kappa, Sigma Xi, Omicron Delta Kappa, Delta Tau Delta.
Married Agnes Genevieve Murphy, June 12, 1936. 1 child, Denise Miner Stanford.