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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.