Ethnocentrism versus Cultural Relativity

· A previous point made is that humans adapt to environmental forces and stress.

· Culture organizes social life and depends on social interaction for its expression and continuation (Kottak 2005:278).

· While humans share in general psychological/biological features (ie; nuclear family, marriages etc.), they also develop particular practices that distinguish them from other, we call these particularities.

· It is the particularities that make for human diversity.

Two responses in diversity:

Ethnocentrism	Cultural Relativism
This the tendency to see one’s own culture as better or superior and to apply one’s own cultural values in assessing the beliefs of others.	Is the argument that behaviour in one culture should not be judged by the standards of another culture

Highlighted in Kottak.

What are the limits?

· Human rights ?

Gilbert Herdt’s book Sambia Sexual Culture (Papua New Guinea).

‘Contact between culturally different groups has increased enormously in our time. Long distance travel has become common, safe and relatively inexpensive… the flows of people who move temporarily between countries has grown(business people, aid workers, labour migrants etc) … Many westerners visit ‘exotic‘ places today than generations ago. Eriksen, What is Anthropology? Pg4’.

Globalization -> Cultural fragmentation (Leaving home and culture behind)

Globalization -> Modernist Homogenization (Unifying of cultures)

Acculturation: the exchange of cultural features that results when group come into continuous contact.

Diffusion: borrowing of cultural traits between societies

Assimilation: Adopting the practices and norms of a host culture.

Four faces of globalization

Conclusion:

Local people, as Kottak and others tell us, have to cope with increasingly larger and more complex systems.

People have to cope with more choices, challenges and opportunities.

Our question in Anthropology is how do people cope with these changes, what adaptive strategies do they employ?

· In his book, Ethnicity and Nationalism, Thomas Eriksen argues that immigrant communities living in Europe may adopt the following strategies and identidies.

· Purest (preserve tradition)

· Hyphenated (living in two worlds and juggling betw the two)

· Hybridised /Creolised (Accepting the fact of cultural mixing)