Education
Culture shock can be an excellent lesson to relative values and in understanding human differences. The reason culture shock occurs is that we are not prepared for these differences.
Because of the way we are taught our culture, to some degree we are all “ethnocentric”. The term of ethnocentrism is derived from two words, ethno or nation and kentron, or center. Thus it refers to the fact that our outlook or world view is centered on our own way of life.
Ethnocentrism is the belief that one’s own patterns of behavior are the best: the most natural, beautiful, right or important. It is the process of judging another culture using the standards of one’s own culture. Therefore other people, to the extent that they live differently live by standards that the inhuman, irrigational, unnatural, or wrong.
Ethnocentrism leads members do ethnic groups to view their culture as superior, as the one that other cultures should adopt.
Ethnocentrism also leads to prejudice against foreigners, who may be viewed as barbarians, uncultured people or savages.
People will find aspect of another culture distasteful, be it sexual practices, a way of treating friends or relatives, or simply a food that they cannot manage to get down with a smile.
Ethnocentrism creates a strong sense of group solidarity and group superiority, but also discourages intercultural or intergroup understanding.
A good example is seen in nationalism, the sense of identity that arises when one group exalts its own culture over all other groups and organizes politically and socially around this principle.
The nature of Ethnocentrism
- Dani People Of New Guinea
The Dani are well known because of the excitement that accompanied the discovery of their complex culture, terraced gardens, and densely populated communities in the mountainous region previously thought to be uninhibited. Although Europeans has been...
- Cro-magnon Culture: Burying The Dead
More than 100,000 years ago, Neanderthals started burying their dead. At about the same time, Cro-Magnon also appeared. When a Cro-Magnon died the body was not simply abandoned and left to rot in the open. The Cro-Magnons buried their dead in or...
- Kalervo Oberg (1901 -1973)
Kalervo Oberg was a an anthropologist who introduced the term ‘culture shock’. He popularized one concept that would become a powerful influence on the popular imagination and which also strongly conditions the view of culture as contrast. Kalervo...
- Different Society With Different Culture
The idea of a science of society can be said to have emerged in the eighteenth century Enlightenment, a period in European history characterized by intellectual innovations, ranging across the arts, literature, science and engineering. Society refers...
- Cultural Anthropologist: Ralph Linton
Ralph Linton began his career as an archeologist, but later turn to cultural anthropology. His ethnographic fieldwork took him to Polynesia and Madagascar, as well as on archeological expeditions in Latin America and the United States. Ralph Linton was...
Education
The nature of Ethnocentrism
Culture shock can be an excellent lesson to relative values and in understanding human differences. The reason culture shock occurs is that we are not prepared for these differences.
Because of the way we are taught our culture, to some degree we are all “ethnocentric”. The term of ethnocentrism is derived from two words, ethno or nation and kentron, or center. Thus it refers to the fact that our outlook or world view is centered on our own way of life.
Ethnocentrism is the belief that one’s own patterns of behavior are the best: the most natural, beautiful, right or important. It is the process of judging another culture using the standards of one’s own culture. Therefore other people, to the extent that they live differently live by standards that the inhuman, irrigational, unnatural, or wrong.
Ethnocentrism leads members do ethnic groups to view their culture as superior, as the one that other cultures should adopt.
Ethnocentrism also leads to prejudice against foreigners, who may be viewed as barbarians, uncultured people or savages.
People will find aspect of another culture distasteful, be it sexual practices, a way of treating friends or relatives, or simply a food that they cannot manage to get down with a smile.
Ethnocentrism creates a strong sense of group solidarity and group superiority, but also discourages intercultural or intergroup understanding.
A good example is seen in nationalism, the sense of identity that arises when one group exalts its own culture over all other groups and organizes politically and socially around this principle.
The nature of Ethnocentrism
- Dani People Of New Guinea
The Dani are well known because of the excitement that accompanied the discovery of their complex culture, terraced gardens, and densely populated communities in the mountainous region previously thought to be uninhibited. Although Europeans has been...
- Cro-magnon Culture: Burying The Dead
More than 100,000 years ago, Neanderthals started burying their dead. At about the same time, Cro-Magnon also appeared. When a Cro-Magnon died the body was not simply abandoned and left to rot in the open. The Cro-Magnons buried their dead in or...
- Kalervo Oberg (1901 -1973)
Kalervo Oberg was a an anthropologist who introduced the term ‘culture shock’. He popularized one concept that would become a powerful influence on the popular imagination and which also strongly conditions the view of culture as contrast. Kalervo...
- Different Society With Different Culture
The idea of a science of society can be said to have emerged in the eighteenth century Enlightenment, a period in European history characterized by intellectual innovations, ranging across the arts, literature, science and engineering. Society refers...
- Cultural Anthropologist: Ralph Linton
Ralph Linton began his career as an archeologist, but later turn to cultural anthropology. His ethnographic fieldwork took him to Polynesia and Madagascar, as well as on archeological expeditions in Latin America and the United States. Ralph Linton was...