Culture and Ethnocentrism Essay

Ethnocentrism is defined by our tendency to judge other groups or cultures based upon our own standards establishing

Ethnocentrism is the belief in the superiority of one’s own group. It’s a universal habit that ethnocentric individuals tend to compare and judge other cultural practices to be inferior. Ethnocentrism encourages the solidarity in groups; it creates the feeling of belonging and drives the individuals to build pride in the group. However, ethnocentrism hinders the understanding of the cooperation with other groups. With the sense of superiority, there is little incentive to interact with the inferior groups. While making generalization about the culture and customs of others, ethnocentric individuals aren’t being aware that they tend to make false assumptions regarding the cultural differences. Furthermore, extreme ethnocentrism is likely to

Ethnocentrism is defined as the tendency to judge other people and cultures by the standards of one’s own culture and to believe that the behavior, customs, norms, values and other characteristics of one’s own group are natural, valid, and correct while those of other’s are unnatural, invalid and incorrect. For example, in Funny in Farsi Firoozeh experiences ethnocentrism from citizens here

The findings of E.E. Evans-Pritchard serve as an example of the importance of ethnographic fieldwork and cultural relativism. People have an inherent tendency to drift towards ethnocentrism if they do not keep an open mind about the legitimacy of foreign cultural ideas. Enculturalization occurs from the very beginning of one’s life. When one grows up in a culture that praises traits that are deemed as beneficial and discourages behaviors that are seen as harmful, one tends to develop similar beliefs on these traits and behaviors. Different cultures encourage different outlooks on society. This is the result of the environment a culture exists in. In many tribal societies, one of the primary influences on culture is the physical environment. However, in technologically-advanced societies that worry less about satisfying needs and more about fulfilling desires, social aspects are perhaps more significant. For example, note the difference between American and Japanese culture. American culture promotes individualism and free speech. Many Americans tote the Constitution and the Bill of Rights

Anthropologists have always had their discrepancies with the word culture and its background significance. There have been numerous definitions that have filtered through the field, yet not one that everyone can accept or agree with. Franz Boas, an anthropologist in the early 20th Century, and his students, had a difficult time figuring out the objective of what culture is. Culture is about learning and shared ideas about behaviour. Although Boas and his students had a slightly different idea in mind. They ultimately reached a conclusion, a definition of culture in their view that is a contradiction in terms. Boas sates that, “ culture was expressed through the medium of language but was not reducible to it;

Ethnocentrism is the attitude held by the members of a culture that theirs is the only true, right, and best way to view and act in the world.

Indeed, people consider their traditional beliefs when introduced to Western culture because it allows them to draw valuable lessons from cultural import and enforce their own principles and notions. However, there are instances in which this “cultural imperialism” separates individuals from their traditional beliefs, regardless of their cultural surroundings and efforts to prevent cultural assimilation, because in many situations

Marji first experiences pressure to conform to cultural norms at her elementary school in Tehran. Growing up in one of the most turbulent times in Iran’s

Exploring different cultures as well as your own in order to understand the various ways they do things compared to our own can be enlightening as well as challenging. The main challenge comes from being used to your own culture that it is difficult to view a different culture without any personal bias. Being born and raised in a culture and getting used to those norms of everyday life contributes to the bias that one may show, believing that their own culture is superior to another. This type of thought process is called ethnocentrism. But with the use of an etic and emic approach to analyze your own culture and different cultures will help eliminate ethnocentrism. Using an outsider’s

Ethnocentrism:(late 15th century). Individuals judge other groups relative to their own based on langue behavior customs and religion. When the Spaniards came to the new worlds they saw that the natives were more advanced in agriculture. The natives also had a different customs and languages. Ethnocentrism, or the idea of it, placed natives in forced labor and segregated them based on their customs.

To do the latter, we must investigate the meanings the custom has for those who practice it and the functions it may fulfill in their society. (Section 1.4, “Cultural Differences: Cultural Relativism,” para. 3).

Being enclosed, locked up inside cages and inner universes of stubbornness and inflexibility, hinder ethnocentric individuals from seeing and viewing the world equally and reasonably. Hence, Cultural relativists seek to understand the reason why individuals from another culture dress, speak or eat in particular way. Namely, they suppress judgments in order to understand people by their own norms because for relativists, no culture is better or worse than another culture. With the advance of human rights, adherence to ethnicity is not an imposition and compulsion where it became a matter of choice (C.L. Khatri, 2005). It is important to resume that cultural relativism strives to promote an equal vision and perception of all existing cultures and cultural ideologies.

In today’s society us humans are so distinct with one another, when it comes to our norms, beliefs, representations of our groups, even material goods representing these groups. This in short, is culture “The values, norms and material characteristic of a given group...one of the most distinctive properties of human social association.” As stated in Chapter 2 “Culture and Society” under “Sociology-The Basics”. Now, something else that has shaped society and changed it ultimately is race. That being, “..any group into which humans can be divided according to their shared physical or genetic characteristics” (Cambridge Dictionary). It seems evident to me that Culture is a deep, much more personal, changeable representation of a group or an individual.

We must first understand the two distinct theories regarding perception of outside cultures: Ethnocentrism and Cultural Relativism. Ethnocentrism is judging another culture solely by the values and standards of one's own culture.[1] The ethnocentric individual will judge other groups relative to his or her own particular ethnic group or culture, especially with concern to language, behavior, customs, and religion - these ethnic distinctions and subdivisions serve to define each ethnicity’s unique cultural identity.[2] The logical alternative to ethnocentrism is Cultural relativism, the practice of judging a

Ethnocentrism and cultural relativism are two contrasting terms that are displayed by different people all over the world. Simply put, ethnocentrism is defined as “judging other groups from the perspective of one’s own cultural point of view.” Cultural relativism, on the other hand, is defined as “the view that all beliefs are equally valid and that truth itself is relative, depending on the situation, environment, and individual.” Each of these ideas has found its way into the minds of people worldwide. The difficult part is attempting to understand why an individual portrays one or the other. It is a question that anthropologists have been asking themselves for years.