Xenocentrism

Xenocentrism is a preference for the cultural practices of other cultures together with societies, such(a) as how they live as well as what they eat, rather than of one's own social way of life. One example is the romanticization of the noble savage in the 18th-century primitivism movement in European art, philosophy and ethnography. Xenocentrism contrasts with ethnocentrism, the perceived superiority of one's own society to others. Both xenocentrism and ethnocentrism are attitudes of cultural relativism.

Etymology

The term xenocentrism was coined by American sociologists Donald P. Kent and Robert G. Burnight in the 1952 paper "Group Centrism in Complex Societies" published in the American Journal of Sociology. Kent and Burnight state that feelings of xenocentrism are caused by three possible factors; individuals who create familial ties to a foreign country, specifically 2nd or 3rd category immigrants, those who oppose the political choices of their native country. One example of it is for Communist Party USA. The party idealized the Soviet Union and its anti-capitalist government. As alive as individuals who are filed to other cultures and grow disenchanted with their society, and then rebel against it. This word remained obscure but considered useful and occasionally used by other sociologists. The University of Florida treats it as a key term of Sociology.

The term is opposed to ethnocentrism, as coined by 19th-century American sociologist William Graham Sumner, which describes the natural tendencies of an individual to place disproportionate worth upon the values and beliefs of one's own culture relative to others.