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+# Ethnocentrism and cultural relativism #
+In Ancient Greece, non-Greek speaking peoples were called
+barbarians after their language, which the Greeks could not
+understand, and considered to be just "bar bar bar bar," that is,
+babbling nonsense. Barbarians did not live in a city-state. They had no
+language. In other words, the Greeks thought the barbarians were not
+just a different //ethnos// (nation), but that they lacked things
+which Greek culture possessed, and hence they were inferior
+(Levi-Strauss 1952: 11).
+Like many cultures, Greek culture is highly **ethnocentric**. It
+considers itself to be a standard against which other cultures can be
+judged. Ethnocentrism is a way of thinking about cultural difference
+in which different cultures are ranked on a scale according to how
+closely they approximate the culture of the observer (Eriksen 2001:
+). For generations and still today European society described foreign
+societies based on terms such as primitive, savage, barbarian,
+traditional, civilized, and modern. The way they decided where other
+societies fell was by comparing them to European ways of life,
+[[Pangloss|which they assumed was the best]]. Chinese civilization has
+also developed its own form of ethnocentrism as a way of representing
+national minorities of China and peoples of Asia (Guldin 1994). In
+fact, in many other cultures, large and small, the foreigner is
+conceptualized as the exact opposite of oneself, which is the
+representative of humanity. If one is human, then people from other
+cultures are animal-like and inferior (Levi-Strauss 1952: 12).
+Wherever it has gone anthropology has struggled to shed itself of its
+own ethnocentric roots and develop a new approach to cultural
+differences based on a holistic study of culture on its own terms and
+in its own context. Most explanations of behavior in contemporary
+anthropology are based on **the doctrine of cultural relativism**. This
+simply means that to understand any one pattern of behavior within a
+culture, it must be seen in relation to the other patterns within that
+society, and the system of social institution and cultural values and
+ideas which members of a culture share. The reason for adopting this
+doctrine is that anthropologists generally start from the view that
+the patterns within a community are elements of an integrated system
+and all the parts work to understand the whole. So, for instance, if a
+society has a practice of placing the infant child in a wooden cage
+for sleep, removing it only when it wails hysterically in fear, this
+is not because the mothers lack education or love their children
+less. Anthropologists would argue that this pattern persists because
+of how the pattern fits in relation to a system of child-rearing
+practices. This is also why this pattern makes sense and seems natural
+to the people who do it.
+This is a crucial distinction. Anthropologists do not seek to justify
+any one culture's practice. Nor do they only wish to endorse a belief
+or value of the people in one society. In fact, most people have no
+opinion about the patterns of daily life because they never stop to
+think about them. There is no value judgement implied in what they do,
+because they don't choose to do it. Likewise, a relativist explanation
+is not an endorsement of the value of a cultural practice.
+Anthropologists only seek to understand why a particular pattern is
+maintained. Moreover, they do not seek to explain all behavior is
+through a relativist lens. For instance, deviant behavior is by
+definition not widely practiced and so cannot be explained as a part
+of a system. Similarly many situations are not part of one single or
+one complete system, and so one cannot explain why patterns exist by
+framing them in relativist terms, because in these situations people
+are choosing which patterns to follow.
+## References ##
+Eriksen, Thomas Hylland. 2001. Small Places, Large Issues: An
+Introduction to Social and Cultural Anthropology. 2nd ed. London:
+Pluto Press.
+Guldin, Gregory Eliyu. 1994. The Saga of Anthropology in China: From
+Malinowski to Moscow to Mao. London: Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, Inc.
+Lévi-Strauss, Claude. 1952. Race and History. Paris:
+UNESCO. http://archive.org/details/racehistory00levi.

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