REDUCTION OF ETHNOCENTRISM AND PROMOTION OF CULTURAL RELATIVISM

ETHNOCENTRISM

1. Judging the customs of other cultures by the standards of one’s own culture; considering your own culture to be superior, most moral, efficient, logical, etc.

2. Misinterpreting another culture because you are inappropriately applying the concepts and values of your own culture.

CULTURAL RELATIVISM

Viewing the beliefs and customs of other people within the context of their culture. Suspending judgment and making the effort to understand another culture in its own terms.

Cultural relativism is a method necessary to understand another culture. It is not the same as moral relativism or the position that as individuals we cannot judge right from wrong and can make no evaluations on moral terms. As moral individuals, as citizens and voters, we have the right and responsibility to judge certain matters but should realize that the way we view something is not absolute and is influenced by our own culture, background, experiences, etc.

4 step process when confronting the culturally unfamiliar

1. React emotionally/ethnocentrically (openly if one has the freedom to do so or in thought)

2. Suspend judgment, investigate the situation and try to understand it in a culturally relative way

3. Reach a considered, personal judgment (e.g. you may come to approve of what at first seemed peculiar or wrong, you may be glad that your culture doesn’t follow such a practice but be able to appreciate why the other culture does, you may still not understand but recognize that members of that culture deem it important and you respect that, you may decide that the practice is morally reprehensible to you)

4. Try to look at your own culture’s practices from the standpoint of the culture you have been considering. What would they find strange/

immoral/perplexing?