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1. CULTURAL RELATIVISM AND ETHNOCENTRISM

2. Lets Begin

3. Ethnocentrism (My culture is better than yours) When people find cultural practices and values not their own as disturbing and threatening, that can be regarded as ethnocentrism. A literal meaning of ethnocentrism is the regard that one’s culture and society is the center of everything and therefore far more superior than others (Kottak 2012:39; Eriksen 2001:7)

4. Ethnocentrism (My culture is better than yours) It is understandable that people laud and hold importance to the cultural values that were taught them by their parents, elders, and other institutions of their society. The problem is when a person or groups of people regard their own society’s set of cultural values as the only agreeable, acceptable, and highly respectable set of convictions. Such a perspective can harden into “Chauvinism”, a position that everything about the other culture is wrong, unreasonable, detestable, and even wicked. From this perspective, the practices and institutions of people from other societies are regarded as inferior, less intelligent, and even vicious. An ethnocentric attitude can be an obstacle to understanding each other culture and foster tensions within or between societies.

5. Ethnocentrism (My culture is better than yours) Moreover, perhaps everyday statements reflect our attitude that our culture is best. We often use term such as underdeveloped, backward, and primitive to refer to other societies. It is very easy and tempting to evaluate certain practices of other cultures on the basis of our perspectives. William Graham Summer coined one’s culture and way of life are superior to others. An ethnocentric person views his own group as the center of culture and sees all other cultures as deviations from what is “normal”. The factionists note that ethnocentrism serves to maintain a sense pf solidarity to promoting group pride. This type of social attitude and stability is established as the expense of other people.

6. Cultural Relativism (Our culture is different but that’s ok) The concept of cultural relativism underscores the idea that the “culture in every society should be understood and regarded on its own terms”. Societies are qualitatively different from one another, such that each one has its own “unique logic” (Eriksen 2001:14). Cultural traits can only be known and valued in the context of the society by which they emerged and are practiced. Cultural relativism promotes the idea that a society has to be viewed from the inside so that inner logic can be better explained.

7. Cultural Relativism (Our culture is different but that’s ok) Moreover, appreciating and accepting the uniqueness of one society’s cultural trait does not mean that universal human moral traits of right and wrong no longer apply. For instance, cultural traits that promote subjugation of women by hurting or killing them to do not necessarily mean that they are right by virtue of one society’s inner logic. There are underlying patterns of human cultural traits that are common and universally acceptable to humanity. The violent subjugation and elimination of human life or traits are broadly unacceptable to the rest of humanity. Through a relativist approach consciously balanced by a universalist understanding of what is humanely acceptable, the dangers of ethnocentrism can be addressed.

8. Cultural Relativism (Our culture is different but that’s ok) It is necessary to view cultural variations with as assumption that one’s own culture is more “civilized” humans, and more advanced than others. While ethnocentrism evaluates foreign cultures using the familiar culture of the observer as a frame of reference as a standard of correct behavior, cultural relativism views people behavior from the perspective of their own culture. It places a priority on understanding other cultures, rather than dismissing them as “strange”. Unlike ethnocentrism, cultural relativism is the kind of value neutrality.

9. Cultural Relativism (Our culture is different but that’s ok) Cultural relativism stresses that different social contexts give rise of polygamy, bullfighting, cockfighting and kissing of hands of elders are examined in the contexts of cultures in which they are found. While cultural relativism does not suggest that we must unquestionably accept every form of behavior characteristics of a values, beliefs, and customs in the light of distinctive culture of which they are a part.

10. Wrap up Each culture is different. Culture is formed by many factors in a span of many years. Expecting other culture to be the same as yours is unfeasible as every culture is unique. There is beauty in the uniqueness of different cultures Imagine if everyone is the same, what would our world look like?

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