Do Now: How do you typically react when you learn about people from a different culture or
group? Are you more likely to find their ways of living “weird” or “interesting”? Give some
examples.
Activity 1 – a. Explain the concept of ethnocentrism.
Ethnocentrism is the belief that one's own ethnic group, nation, or culture is superior
(ethno = a group of people who share the same race or culture + centric = centered or near the
center)
Ethnocentrism = the tendency to evaluate the values, beliefs and behaviors of your own culture as being
more positive, logical or natural than those of other cultures.
Ethnocentrism is the tendency to believe that one's ethnic or cultural group is centrally important,
and that all other groups are measured in relation to one's own. The ethnocentric individual will
judge other groups relative to his or her own particular ethnic group or culture, especially with
concern to language, behavior, customs, and religion. These ethnic distinctions and sub-divisions
serve to define each ethnicity's unique cultural identity.[1]
The term ethnocentrism was coined by William G. Sumner, upon observing the tendency for people
to differentiate between the in-group and others. He described it as often leading to pride, vanity,
beliefs of one's own group's superiority, and contempt of outsiders.[2]
http://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Ethnocentrism.html
b. Share examples of ethnocentrism:
Option: Tell a story of your reactions to a time you experienced a new culture. Perhaps you first
found the difference to be weird or strange or “just wrong.” Maybe later you realized the
difference was interesting.
Example – From my experience as an exchange student to Sweden.
I discovered they eat with their fork upside down in their left hand and cut with the knife in their
right hand. The fork stays upside down in their left hand, even as they place the food in their mouth.
(I physically model the two methods for students and share how I first thought this new way of
eating was strange and just wrong.) This way of eating went against all the “rules” for good
manners that my mom had taught me, but I decided to try it for myself. Although it felt awkward at
first, eventually I became proficient at this new method and it started to feel like a “normal” way for
me to eat.
Option: Share examples from a text your class has recently read.
Example from “Little Altar on the Roadside” in the Elements of Literature, Course 1, p. 539 –
In my culture, my husband & I chose each other and decided when to get married. But in this story,
it was the mother who decided when the son should marry and it was a hired “go-between” or
matchmaker who found the potential wife. Some people reading this story may think this is a
“wrong” way to approach marriage. They may think that marriage should be all about whom you
love. Other cultures believe there are other, more important reasons to marry than for “love”–
economic stability, social status, maintaining their cultural ways, etc.
Option: Share an example from history. To find examples of ethnocentrism in world politics and
literature: http://examples.yourdictionary.com/examples-of-ethnocentrism.html