Ethnocentrism and Ethnorelativism民族优越感和民族相对主义

Ethnocentrism and Ethnorelativism

1 If we accept the belief that our past influences our view of reality and the corresponding tenet (n.信条) that each of us may have similar but not identical personal histories, then it should follow that another person’s picture of the universe will not be exactly like ours. Yet most of us act as if our way of perceiving things is the correct and only way.

2 In our daily activities these differences in perception appear between different groups. Various generations, minorities, occupations, and cultures have conflicting values and goals that will influence their orientation and interpretation of reality.

3 Our culture is a major factor in perceptual discrepancies. Culture helps supply us with our perspective of reality. For example, if our cultures admires thin women, then we would tend to have negative reactions (at least concerning appearance) to cultures that venerate (v. 尊敬) the stout female. Undoubtedly, we evaluate them by our group’s cultural standards. Our culture tells us, in a variety of ways, how to judge others and what to use as criteria for those judgments. The danger of such evaluations is that they are often false, misleading, and arbitrary. It is truly a na?ve view of the world to believe and behave as if we and our culture have discovered the true and only set of norms.

4 When our perceptions and subsequent communication behavior are characterized by this narrow and rigid orientation, we are guilty of ethnocentrism, that is, negatively judging aspects of another culture by the standards of one’s own culture. The word “ethnocentrism” is derived from two Greek words: ethnos, or “nation”; and kentron, or “center.” It is the technical name for the view of things in which one’s own group is the center of everything, and all others are scaled and rated with reference to it. This suggests that ethnocentrism occurs when our nation is seen as the center of the world and the beliefs, values, norms, and practices of our own culture are taken as superior to those of others.

5 In other words, ethnocentrism refers to our tendency to identify with our in-group (e.g. ethnic or racial group, culture) and to evaluate out-groups and their members according to its standard. Because of ethnocentrism, we tend to view our own cultural values and ways of doing things as more real, or as the “right” and natural values and ways of doing things. The major consequence of the view is our in-group’s values and ways of doing things are seen as superior to the out-groups’ values and ways of doing things.

6 The above should not be taken to suggest ethnocentrism is always deliberate. Often the expression of ethnocentrism is a function of how we are socialized. People born and raised in the United States, for example, are taught many subtle cues suggesting the United States is the center of the world. Consider the major league baseball championship series played between the winners of the two leagues. Is it called the United States Series? No, obviously not; it is called the World Series, implying that no other nation has baseball teams (granted there are now Canadian teams in the World Series, but no Japanese, Korean, or Mexican teams). Another example of the tendency for people in the United States to view their country as the center of the world is in the use of the term “American.” We must remember that citizens of the other countries from North, Central, and South America are also “Americans.” (some other examples: China-Middle Kingdom)

7 Ethnocentrism can all too easily lead to “us” versus “them” thought and language. It seems as people create a category called “us,” another category of “not-us” or “them” is created. The collective pronouns “us,” and “them” become powerful influences on perception. The names given to “them” can be used to justify their suppression(镇压) and even their extermination（根除）. （For example, Jews: bacilli（病菌）, parasite（寄生虫）, disease, demon（恶魔）, plague（瘟疫）; Native Americans: savage; “Lao Wai”.）

8 By contrast, ethnorelativism maintains that cultures can only be understood relative to another; there is no absolute standard of rightness or goodness that can be applied to cultural behavior; cultural differences is neither good nor bad; it is just different. Each culture has its unique way of judging and comparing cultural dissonance(不一致). In other words, ethonorelarivism involves the view that all cultures are of equal value and the values and behavior of a culture can only be judged using that cultures as a frame of reference.

9 Ethnorelativism suggests that the only way we can understand the behavior of others is in the context of their culture. Evaluations must be relative to the cultural background out of which they raise. No one cultural trait is “right” or “wrong”; it is merely “different” from alternative cultural traits. This is not to say we must never make value judgments of people in other cultures. Making them is often necessary. But it does call for us to suspend judgment when dealing with people of a culture different from our own. We should think twice before applying the norms of our culture to other cultures. Adequate information about the nature of the cultural differences between peoples, their roots and their consequences, should precede judgment and action.

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