Anthropology Study Writing Assignment Two
Ethnocentrism is the "Belief that the way of one's own cultures are the only proper way" (Haviland et al. 4). In detail, it is often a set of attitude when people act prejudice or do not trust those who are outside of their own group. With ethnocentrism, people would become miss understanding of one another leading them to never to not be able to communicate with those different culture. Furthermore, it is also the belief that one's ethic or group is the center of all importance which could also lead to passing of judgments about the other "inferior" group of cultures. Some of these judgments could be related to ethnic's language, behavior, traditional custom, and what that ethnic believes in. with this in mind, it would also lead to division of smaller groups within a culture because of such distinction between the groups.
Cultural Relativism believed that there is no single views to a culture perception of life that can be apply to every other culture (Haviland et al.
English: Map showing range of non-human primates.
Franz Boas established modern American anthropolog...
English: Franz Boas posing for figure in USNM (Nat...41). It is subjective to view that one's own culture would be the total definition of every other culture. Therefore, cultural relativism believes that there is no such right or wrong to whether a group has a way of living. With this in mind, there are not set universal standards that would allow people of different group to pass judgment upon another group's customs. Furthermore, cultural relativism supposes that any action is neither view as correct nor incorrect depended on the culture and as long as that specific culture believe so.
The idea of cultural relativism and ethnocentrism are simply opposite ideas in the same study of anthropologist. In order to understand the idea of studying culture we must understand the two terms by realizing that...