At its most extreme, cultural relativism leaves no room for criticism of other cultures, even if certain cultural practices are horrific or harmful. Many practices have drawn criticism over the years. In Madagascar, for example, the famahidana funeral tradition includes bringing bodies out from tombs once every seven years, wrapping them in cloth, and dancing with them.
Some people view this practice disrespectful to the body of the deceased person. Today, a debate rages about the ritual cutting of genitals of girls in several Middle Eastern and African cultures.
To a lesser extent, this same debate arises around the circumcision of baby boys in Western hospitals. When considering harmful cultural traditions, it can be patronizing to use cultural relativism as an excuse for avoiding debate. To assume that people from other cultures are neither mature enough nor responsible enough to consider criticism from the outside is demeaning. People with different backgrounds can help each other see possibilities that they never thought were there because of limitations, or cultural proscriptions, posed by their own traditions.
It results from judging other cultures by your own cultural ideals. Ethnocentrism is linked to cultural blind spots. Blind spots occur when we fail to attribute differences between our behaviours and beliefs and those of others to differences in cultural schemas. Cultural schemas are mental frameworks for interpreting the world that are shared by members of a cultural group.
There is great variation among the cultural schemas of different social groups, but when we do not appreciate the diversity of cultural schemas, we are limited to interpreting the world narrowly through our own cultural filter—our natural cultural code defines our reality and determines what is true and right for us.
Any variations are deemed bizarre, wrong, or inferior. The opposite of ethnocentrism is cultural relativism: the judging of cultural elements relative to their cultural context.
Groups of people develop distinct patterns of thoughts, emotions, and behaviours as they respond to the survival challenges of their shared environment. Culture is flexible and has helped human beings adapt and survive in nearly every socioecological environment on the planet.
Recognising the adaptive nature of culture supports cultural relativism. Every culture has succeeded as a system for human survival. No culture can be judged as evolutionary superior to another and cultural features can only be understood in terms of their role in the complete system.
Ethnocentrism is a belief in the superiority of your own culture. Ethnocentrism is linked to cultural blind spots. Blind spots occur when we fail to attribute differences between our behaviours and beliefs and those of others to differences in cultural schemas.
Defining and Avoiding Ethnocentrism It is a natural attitude inherent in all cultures. Ethnocentrism causes us to judge others by our own values. We expect others to act as we would, and the expect us to behave as they would. This does not always work out so well and can usually result in misunderstandings.
Ethnocentrism is believed to be a learned behavior embedded into a variety of beliefs and values of an individual or group. Due to enculturation, individuals in in-groups have a deeper sense of loyalty and are more likely to following the norms and develop relationships with associated members.
Ethnocentrism is a term applied to the cultural or ethnic bias—whether conscious or unconscious—in which an individual views the world from the perspective of his or her own group, establishing the in-group as archetypal and rating all other groups with reference to this ideal.
What if someone told you their culture was the internet? Given this, someone could very well say that they are influenced by internet culture, rather than an ethnicity or a society! Culture could be based on shared ethnicity, gender, customs, values, or even objects. Ethnocentrism results when members of one group view members of another group as undifferentiated and interchangeable top image.
The current study supports the idea that ethnocentric behavior is not inevitable, but is affected by structural conditions within a society, including overall levels of mobility. Japan was chosen because of its dissimilarity with the United States, its homogeneous population, and its reputation for being ethnocentric Condon, The problem with individual moral relativism is that it lacks a concept of guiding principles of right or wrong.
Internet culture, or cyberculture, is a culture that describes the many manifestations of the use of computer networks for communication, entertainment, and business, and recreation. That is, whether an action is right or wrong depends on the moral norms of the society in which it is practiced.
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