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Ethnocentrism
From Mosaic, pp. 197-200
1.
Culture shock can be an excellent lesson in 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, we are all
ethnocentric. This term comes from the Greek root ethnos, meaning a people or
group. 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. Therefore, other people, to the
extent that they live differently, live by standards that are inhuman, irrational,
unnatural, or wrong.
2.
Ethnocentrism is the view that one's own culture is better than all others; it is the way
all people feel about themselves as compared to outsiders. There is no one in our
society who is not ethnocentric to some degree, no matter how liberal and openminded he or she might claim to be. People will always find some 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. This is not
something we should be ashamed of, because it is a natural outcome of growing up
in any society. However, as anthropologists who study other cultures, it is something
we should constantly be aware of, so that when we are tempted to make value
judgments about another way of life, we can look at the situation objectively and take
our bias into account.
3.
Ethnocentrism can be seen in many aspects of culture-myths, folktales, food, and
even language. In many languages, especially those of non-Western societies, the
word used to refer to one's own tribe or ethnic group literally means "mankind" or
"human." This implies that members of other groups are less than human. For
example, the term Eskimo, used to refer to groups that inhabit the arctic and
subarctic regions, is an Indian word used by neighbors of the Eskimos who observed
their strange way of life but did not share it. The term means "eaters of raw flesh,"
and as such is an ethnocentric observation about cultural practices that were normal
to one group and repulsive to another. On the other hand, if we look at one subgroup
among the Alaskan natives we find them calling themselves “Inuit,” which means
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"real people" (they obviously did not think eating raw flesh was anything out of the
ordinary). Here, then, is a contrast between one's own group, which is real, and the
rest of the world, which is not so "real." Both terms, Eskimo and Inuit, are equally
ethnocentric--one as an observation about differences, the other as a self-evaluation.
4.
Another example of ethnocentrism in language can be found in the origin of the
English term barbarian. Originally a Greek word, it was used to refer to the tribes that
lived around the edge of ancient Greek society. The Greeks referred to these people
as "barbars" because they could not understand their speech. "Bar-bar" was the
Greek word for the sound a dog makes, like our word "bow-wow." The Greeks, in a
classic example of ethnocentrism, considered those whose speech they could not
understand to be on the same level as dogs, which also could not be understood.
They did not grant such people the status of human being, much as the word Eskimo
gives those people subhuman status.
5.
Shifting from language to myths and folktales, we find a good example of
ethnocentrism in the creation myth of the Cherokee Indians. According to this story,
the Creator made three clay images of a man and baked them in an oven. In his
haste to admire his handiwork, he took the first image out of the oven before it was
fully baked and found that it was too pale. He waited a while and then removed the
second image; it was just right, a full reddish brown hue. He was so pleased with his
work that he sat there and admired it, completely forgetting about the third image.
Finally he smelled it burning, but by the time he could rescue it from the oven it had
already been burnt, and it came out completely black!
6.
Food preferences are perhaps the most familiar aspect of ethnocentrism. Every
culture has developed preferences for certain kinds of food and drink, and equally
strong negative attitudes towards others. It is interesting to note that much of this
ethnocentrism is in our heads and not in our tongues, for something can taste
delicious until we are told what it is. We have all heard stories about people being fed
a meal of snake or horse meat or something equally repugnant in American culture
and commenting on how tasty it was--until they were told what they had just eaten;
as a result, they turned green and hurriedly asked to be excused from the table.
7.
Certain food preferences seem natural to us. We usually do not recognize that they
are natural only because we have grown up with them; they are quite likely to be
unnatural to someone from a different culture. In southeast Asia, for example, the
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majority of adults do not drink milk. To many Americans it is inconceivable that
people in other parts of the world do not drink milk, since to us it is a "natural" food. In
China, dog meat is a delicacy; but the thought of eating a dog is enough to make
most Americans feel sick. Yet we can see how this is part of a cultural pattern.
Americans keep dogs as pets and tend to think of them as almost human. Therefore,
we would not dream of eating dog meat. Horses, too, sometimes become pets, and
horse meat is also rejected by most Americans, although not because of its taste.
You may have eaten it without even knowing it, and you probably would not
recognize it if someone didn't tell you what you were eating. On the other hand, we
generally do not feel affection for cows or pigs, and we eat their meat without any
feeling of regret. In India a cow receives the kind of care that a horse or even a dog
receives in our country, and the attitude of Indians towards eating beef is similar to
our feeling about eating dog meat. On the other hand, in China dogs are not treated
as kindly as they are in the United States. Since they are not pets, the attitude of
Chinese people towards dogs is similar to our attitude towards cows.
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