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    Cultural Relativism and Ethnocentrism

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    Li Sallador
    Cultural relativism is the view that social and ethical standards are shaped by the culture they are established in. Ethnocentrism is the tendency to view one's own culture as superior to others. For example, some view eating insects as disgusting because it is not part of their own culture. Cultural relativism has advantages like preserving cultures and creating equality, but can also promote a lack of diversity and allow morally questionable behavior. Ethnocentrism can enhance social solidarity but also leads to selfishness and societal polarization as people only seek to prove their own superiority.

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    Cultural Relativism and Ethnocentrism

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    Li Sallador
    75 views1 page
    Cultural relativism is the view that social and ethical standards are shaped by the culture they are established in. Ethnocentrism is the tendency to view one's own culture as superior to others. For example, some view eating insects as disgusting because it is not part of their own culture. Cultural relativism has advantages like preserving cultures and creating equality, but can also promote a lack of diversity and allow morally questionable behavior. Ethnocentrism can enhance social solidarity but also leads to selfishness and societal polarization as people only seek to prove their own superiority.

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    Cultural relativism is the view that social and ethical standards are shaped by the culture they are established in. Ethnocentrism is the tendency to view one's own culture as superior to others. For example, some view eating insects as disgusting because it is not part of their own culture. Cultural relativism has advantages like preserving cultures and creating equality, but can also promote a lack of diversity and allow morally questionable behavior. Ethnocentrism can enhance social solidarity but also leads to selfishness and societal polarization as people only seek to prove their own superiority.

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    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    75 views1 page

    Cultural Relativism and Ethnocentrism

    Uploaded by

    Li Sallador
    Cultural relativism is the view that social and ethical standards are shaped by the culture they are established in. Ethnocentrism is the tendency to view one's own culture as superior to others. For example, some view eating insects as disgusting because it is not part of their own culture. Cultural relativism has advantages like preserving cultures and creating equality, but can also promote a lack of diversity and allow morally questionable behavior. Ethnocentrism can enhance social solidarity but also leads to selfishness and societal polarization as people only seek to prove their own superiority.

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
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    Cultural Relativism and Ethnocentrism

    Cultural Relativism is a concept that leads to the idea that people's lifestyles differ all
    over the world. There are practices that are accepted in one part of the world but are not
    acceptable in another. It is the view that social and ethical standards are shaped by the culture
    in which they are established. For example, Muslims don’t eat pork as part of their religious
    belief, Filipino gestures “pagmamano” as sign of respect to elders, celebration of Christmas as
    part of religious belief, and foot binding of women in China wherein they considered it as sign
    of beauty and Chinese men preferred women with tied feet as brides.
    Ethnocentrism is the tendency to view the world predominantly through the perspective
    of one's own culture. It is the belief that one’s own race, ethnic, is the most important and
    superior to those of other groups. Some people will simply call it cultural ignorance. For
    example, expecting others to speak English and looking down on them for not being bilingual,
    when we judge the taste of the Chinese in eating insects, as ‘disgusting’ simply because we are
    not used to eating insects, we are automatically implying that, the food choices or practices of
    our own culture are more normal than theirs and that it is better and not ‘disgusting." We also
    judge consumers who believe that purchasing foreign goods is unpatriotic as it does not
    support the domestic economy but helps foreign economies instead.
    Cultural relativism has advantages such as preserving human culture, wherein it is not
    an option to set aside beliefs, ideas, and practices, and it creates a society where equality is
    possible, wherein it allows everyone to define their moral code without comparing the moral
    code of others. It creates equality because each person can set their own meaning of success.
    And as for disadvantages, it could promote a lack of diversity because it promotes an
    individualistic point of view, so although it seems to promote diversity, it actually removes it
    from a society. We cannot create diversity when the emphasis of a society is on individualistic
    gain that can come at the expense of others. And it would create chaos wherein people could
    follow their own moral code because there is no ‘wrong’ or ‘right" and they would be allowed
    to pursue any life they preferred. If they want to commit such a crime, then they can do it as
    long as they follow themselves.
    In ethnocentrism, there are advantages such as: it can enhance solidarity in society
    wherein the majority of people in the society think and feel the same way about ethics and
    morality; it creates less conflict in the general public; and it can create an attitude of
    independence wherein people who maintain an ethnocentric view in life will not be bothered
    that much about other societies and cultures in the world. And as for disadvantages, it can lead
    them to selfishness, wherein people become blinded by their own perspectives to the extent
    where it becomes the right choice for them to enforce their concept on other people. And it
    can cause societal polarization wherein ethnocentrism is an embrace of negativity because the
    only goal is to prove individualized superiority. It makes us feel good to think that the decisions
    we make in life are better than the others.

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