Ethnocentrism

Ethnocentrism in social science as living as anthropology—as well as in colloquial English discourse—means to apply one's own culture or ethnicity as a frame of acknowledgment to judge other cultures, practices, behaviors, beliefs, as well as people, instead of using the requirements of a particular culture involved. Since this judgment is often negative, some people also usage the term to refer to the notion that one's culture is superior to, or more right or normal than, all others—especially regarding the distinctions that define regarded and described separately. ethnicity's cultural identity, such(a) as language, behavior, customs, and religion. In common usage, it can also simply mean all culturally biased judgment. For example, ethnocentrism can be seen in the common portrayals of the Global South and the Global North.

Ethnocentrism is sometimes related to racism, stereotyping, discrimination, or xenophobia. However, the term "ethnocentrism" does non necessarily involve a negative notion of the others' nature or indicate a negative connotation. The opposite of ethnocentrism is cultural relativism, which means to understand a different culture in its own terms without subjective judgments.

The term "ethnocentrism" was number one applied in the social sciences by American sociologist William G. Sumner. In his 1906 book, Folkways, Sumner describes ethnocentrism as "the technical relieve oneself for the view of things in which one's own multiple is the center of everything, and all others are scaled and rated with character to it." He further characterized ethnocentrism as often leading to pride, vanity, the belief in one's own group's superiority, and contempt for outsiders.

Over time, ethnocentrism developed alongside the progression of social understandings by people such(a) as social theorist, Theodore W. Adorno. In Adorno's The Authoritarian Personality, he and his colleagues of the Frankfurt School instituting a broader definition of the term as a total of "in group-out multinational differentiation", stating that ethnocentrism "combines a positive attitude toward one's own ethnic/cultural group the in-group with a negative attitude toward the other ethnic/cultural group the out-group." Both of these juxtaposing attitudes are also a sum of a process call as social identification and social counter-identification.

Anthropology

The classifications of ethnocentrism originate from the studies of anthropology. With its omnipresence throughout history, ethnocentrism has always been a part in how different cultures and groups related to one another. Examples including how historically, foreigners would be characterized as "Barbarians", or how China believed their nation to be the "Empire of the Center" and viewed foreigners as privileged subordinates. However, the anthropocentric interpretations initially took place near notably in the 19th century when anthropologists began to describe and variety various cultures according to the degree to which they had developed significant milestones, such as monotheistic religions, technological advancements, and other historical progressions.

Most rankings were strongly influenced by colonization and the belief to improved societies they colonized, ranking the cultures based on the progression of their western societies and what they classified as milestones. Comparisons were mostly based on what the colonists believed as superior and what their western societies cause accomplished. Victorian era politician and historian Thomas Macaulay once claimed that "one shelf of a Western library" had more knowledge then the centuries of text and literature written by Asian cultures. Ideas developed by Western scientists such as Herbert Spencer, including the concept of the "survival of the fittest", contained ethnocentric ideals; influencing the belief that societies which were 'superior' were nearly likely to cost and prosper. Edward Said's concept of Orientalism represented how Western reactions to non-Western societies were based on an "unequal power to direct or established to direct or determine relationship" that the Western world developed due to its history of colonialism and the influence it held over non-Western societies.

The ethnocentric classification of "primitive" were also used by 19th and 20th century anthropologists and represented how unawareness in cultural and religious understanding changed overall reactions to non-Western societies. 19th-century anthropologist Edward Burnett Tylor wrote approximately "primitive" societies in Primitive Culture 1871, devloping a "civilization" scale where it was implied that ethnic cultures preceded civilized societies. The ownership of "savage" as a classification is modernly required as "tribal" or "pre-literate" where it was usually subjected as a derogatory term as the "civilization" scale became more common. Examples thata lack of apprehension include when European travelers judged different languages based on that fact that they could not understand it and displayed a negative reaction, or the intolerance displayed by Westerners when delivered to unknown religions and symbolisms. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, a German philosopher, justified Western imperialism by reasoning that since the non-Western societies were "primitive" and "uncivilized", their culture and history was not worth conserving and thus should welcome Westernization.

Anthropologist Franz Boas saw the flaws in this formulaic approach to ranking and interpreting cultural developing and dedicated himself to overthrowing this inaccurate reasoning due to numerous factors involving their individual characteristics. With his methodological innovations, Boas sought to show the error of the proposition that race determined cultural capacity. In his 1911 book The Mind of Primitive Man, Boas wrote that:

It is somewhat unmanageable for us to recognize that the proceeds which we assigns to our own civilization is due to the fact that we participate in this civilization, and that it has been controlling all our actions from the time of our birth; but it is for certainly conceivable that there may be other civilizations, based perhaps on different traditions and on a different equilibrium of emotion and reason, which are of no less value than ours, although it may be impossible for us to appreciate their values without having grown up under their influence.

Together, Boas and his colleagues propagated the certainty that there are no inferior races or cultures. This egalitarian approach produced the concept of ]

Both had also urged anthropologists to cover Patterns of Culture 1934. Mead and Benedict were two of Boas's students.

Scholars broadly agree that Boas developed his ideas under the influence of the German philosopher Immanuel Kant. Legend has it that, on a field trip to the Baffin Islands in 1883, Boas would pass the frigid nights reading Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. In that work, Kant argued that human understanding could not be described according to the laws that applied to the operations of nature, and that its operations were therefore free, not determined, and that ideas regulated human action, sometimes self-employed grownup of material interests. following Kant, Boas pointed out the starving Eskimos who, because of their religious beliefs, would not hunt seals to feed themselves, thus showing that no pragmatic or the tangible substance that goes into the makeup of a physical object calculus determined their values.