The Concept of Ethnocentrism - Essay Example

Ethnocentrism Ethnocentrism is a term applied to the cultural bias in which a person views the world from the perspective of his or her own group and considers all other cultures to be inferior. It is caused by the inability of a person to adequately understand other cultures that are different from his own culture and value judgments that encourage superiority of own culture. Itis thus associated with the various forms of chauvinism and prejudice including nationalism, tribalism, racism, disability based discrimination and gender bias among others. Ethnocentrism prevails in the society today in a number of ways where people either consciously or unconsciouslyundermine believes of people who belong to a different culture.Several nations and their cultures have placed themselves at the top of an imagined hierarchy of cultures and nations and therefore they have assigned other cultures lower ranks than theirs.This has led to the incorporation of the belief that one nation, its culture is superior, and that it will always be ahead of the rest hence making people to believe this form of deception naturally.This form of belief has resulted to a few nations becoming the center of admirations making all other nations to strive to emulate the nations at the center in order to move higher in the imaginary rank.Forexample, the United States of America has always thought of itself as more powerful, more economically positioned, and as generally better in all spheres than other nations. This has been evidenced by the country's dabbling in the matters of other nations without much regard to the right formality that should be followed. A good illustration of this dabbling is the country's current involvement in affairs of MiddleEast, which is mainly castigated by the perceived belief that it is a super power.This has led to the country spending a lot on affairs of other countries, which are not necessarily in its control, rather than focusing on funding development in needy developing countries. Cultural ethnocentrism continues to prevail in majority of the African communities where the communities believe that there cultures are better than the rest and they in particular tend to be unreceptive to the western culture.They normally feel that their cultural order is threatened by the arrival of new groups and they thus strive to resist what they term as invaders in their communities. This evidenced by the disagreements in cultural markers of identity such as clothing and other visible elements which the people try by all means possible to uphold them despite the foreign influence. Economic ethnocentrism which is closely tied to the belief that othergroups are economic competitors and should thus be limited in their capacity as economic actors continues to prevail today in most of the countries especially the European ones.These countries tend to believe that they are better off economically than other countries and they thus do not fully allow the foreign economic actors to participatefreelyin their economic prospects.They express discrimination in places such as the labor market where they prefer the workers from their home country since they tend to believe that the foreign ones are not good enough (Arts & Halman,2014). The few workers from the different cultures who manage to secure employment opportunities end up receiving unfair treatment especially in remuneration mainly because of their background. Furthermore, the people in their involvement in various consumer actions clearly express a preference for goods and services that are associated with their own culture thus shy off from the goods associated with different cultures. Religiocentrism, which is a form of ethnocentrism that is characterized by religiously based sentiments of exclusiveness, continues to prevail in many places today.It entails beliefs that encourage members of a particular religion to marry within their own religion, work with members of their religion and generally prefer members of their own religion in all decisions made. The three great monotheistic religions; Christianity, Judaism and Islam which are the dominant faiths of over half of total human populationexpress some degree of religiocentrism They have a very strong conviction that their own religion is the one and only the one hence regard all other system of beliefs as being completely wrong(Jaknovich, 2013).These acts of religious ethnocentrism usually lead to intolerance among people of a different religion and hence often result to religious wars. The wars originate from intolerance, which breeds injustice that consequently lead to rebellion and injustice ultimately causing unending wars since it becomes very difficult to stop such wars when started.For example in the religious war that has prevailed for a long time in Palestine between Christians and Muslims, it has been verydifficult to reconcile the two groups.In Afghanistan, several extreme radical fundamentalist Muslim terrorist groups have caused a war with their non-Muslimcounterpart, which has prevailed for a very long time (Bracher, 2013). All these wars are because of ethnocentrism where one group feels that their way of life is superiorto the rest and thus refuse to accept all the people who express different ideologies. Ethnocentrism practices have continued to prevail in the education system and in various sports across the world.Prejudice in the education system is expressed by ideologies that portray a given group of people as being more intellectually gifted and thus superior than other groups. As a result people tend to believe that members of the group that is portrayed as being superior should be given jobs that demand more of mental work and less of physical work whereas the other people since they are perceived to be intellectually inferior are associated with the physical jobs.This trend is evident in most communities especially among the western countries that tend to believe that professionals like doctors, lawyers, pilots among others should belong to their cultural identity. People from these communities often express some degree of lack of satisfaction when they receive such services from people belonging to other communities since they unconsciously believe that they are not competent enough.On the other hand ethnocentrism is expressed in various ways in sports with the common one being the perception that African players are better suited for games that requirea lot of speed and agility because they have a natural ability.Incontrast, the whites are viewed as possessing better decision-making skills and thus often given responsibilities that demand good decision-making capability (Johnston, 2014). Ethnocentrism continues to prevail in the society in various ways, most of which are negative and thus detrimental to the universal cohesion of all people.Furthermore, most of the people who engage in the ethnocentric practices are usually unconscious of their behaviors since it is inherent.There is thus a need to come up with programs of enlightening people about the negative consequences of this trend in order to reduce its prevalence in the society. References Arts, W. A., & Halman, L. (2014). Value contrasts and consensus in present-day Europe: Painting Europe's moral landscapes as a threat. Boston : Brill. Bracher, M. (2013). Educating for cosmopolitanism: lessons from cognitive science and literature. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Jaknovich, Jack. (2013). The Big Picture: Humans, Their Minds, and the Universe. Bloomington, Indiana: Iuniverse Inc. Johnston, L. M. (2014). Sports, peacebuilding and ethics.New Jersey : Transaction Publishers Read More