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ethnocentrism

(ĕth'nō-sĕn'trĭz'əm) pronunciation

Belief in the superiority of one's own ethnic group.
Overriding concern with race.

ethnocentric eth'no·cen'tric (-trĭk) adj.
ethnocentrically eth'no·cen'tri·cal·ly adv.
ethnocentricity eth'no·cen·tric'i·ty (-sĕn-trĭs'ĭ-tē) n.

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Encyclopedia of Public Health: Ethnocentrism

Any policy, research, and action on the part of individuals or institutions that promote (intentionally or unintentionally) the believed superiority of one group, profession, or set of ideals over another can be considered ethnocentric. The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) defines ethnocentrism as "regarding one's own race or ethnic group as of supreme importance" (1989, p. 424). The dictionary records the first use of the term to be in 1900 when W. G. McGee, in the Annals and Reports of American Ethnology, referred to ethnocentrism as a characteristic of primitive cultures. McGee couldn't imagine his own European culture as having ethnocentric biases. Ethnocentrism, as it is understood in the twenty-first century, was first defined in 1951. Noted anthropologist E. E. Evans-Pritchard, in the publication Social Anthropology, saw ethnocentrism as claiming or believing that one group has superiority over others and urged that "this ethnocentric attitude has to be abandoned if we are to appreciate the rich variety of human culture and social life" (OED 1989, p. 424). It is apparent that a broader use of the term has entered common usage.

Success in the field of public health requires cultural and social sensitivity. Recognizing the limiting effects of ethnocentrism and heeding the call of Evans-Pritchard is essential. Public health workers and the programs they design must recognize the distinctive features and characteristics of the populations they serve. S. Van der Geest notes that ethnocentrism encourages narrowmindedness. It prevents one from entertaining different worldviews, and one becomes less inclined to challenge or question how different groups of people learn or to understand what they are interested in learning. The appreciation of different forms of knowledge and values are at the core of ethical practice, policy, and research in public health.

Understanding ethnocentrism and its relation to race in public health research is particularly important in the United States because of its history of using race in classifying and judging different groups. M. T. Fullilove notes that race is an arbitrary system of visual classification that has no scientific relevance in public health research. R. Bhopal and L. Donaldson suggest the use of nonracialized terms in public health research and caution that the use of racial categories in scientific research can be interpreted as an endorsement of racial determinism. The historical use of racial categorization was founded on the ethnocentric belief that the so-called white race was superior to the so-called black, red, and yellow races and promoted an attitude that there was no need for equality in entitlement to public goods and services. The most often cited example of racist and ethnocentric conduct in U.S. public health history is the forty-year Tuskegee syphilis study, where African-American men with syphilis were recruited to participate in a study and told they were being treated, only to be left untreated even though an effective cure was available.

In twenty-first-century America, there is concern over persistent disparities in health status between those of European or Caucasian descent and other groups—a distinction often based on racial or minority status. The disparity has persisted in part because of ethnocentric attitudes and beliefs on the part of health care providers, researchers, and health-policymakers over the most effective methods for addressing health promotion and disease prevention on the one hand, and for providing the most efficient health care services on the other. Effectiveness and efficiency are dependent on social and cultural characteristics and skills. It has been demonstrated that ethnic and cultural values and beliefs influence the way individuals and groups view health and disease and determine what practices are followed when illness occurs. Ethnocentric points of view can prevent attempts to acknowledge ethnic differences and cultural values in making health decisions that better address the health concerns of U.S. minorities. To challenge ethnocentrism is to recognize and value differences and qualities that exist in diverse groups. Such differences can include eating practices, spiritual values, body shape and size, and preventive and curative beliefs, to name but a few.

Public health often focuses too much on risk factors and not enough on protective cultural and cognitive factors in the same individuals. Public health does focus on these in attempting to promote positive health practices, attitudes, beliefs, values, and living conditions. All groups have both risk (negative) and protective (positive) factors that can determine health-related behavior and skills. The positive aspects of a group's beliefs and practices as they relate to health need to be recognized and promoted. When negative aspects of a minority group's beliefs and values must be changed, it does not follow that the strategy and approach for such change needs to conform with the strategy and approach for changing negative beliefs and values in the majority group. Failure to understand differences in the way various groups address their preventive and curative health needs often leads to ethnocentrism in public health. To eliminate the disparity in the health status of ethnic minorities in the United States, public health professionals must encourage diversity in approaches to health promotion and disease prevention and eliminate ethnocentrism in public health.

Bibliography

Airhihenbuwa, C. O. (1999). "Of Culture and Multiverse: Renouncing the 'Universal Truth' in Health." Journal of Health Education 30:267–273.

Bhopal, R., and Donaldson, L. (1998). "White, European, Western, Caucasian, or What? Inappropriate Labeling in Research on Race, Ethnicity, and Health." American Journal of Public Health 88(9):1303–1307.

Fullilove, M. T. (1998). "Comment: Abandoning 'Race' as a Variable in Public Health Research—An Idea whose Time Has Come." American Journal of Public Health 88(9):1297–1298.

Jones, J. H. (1995). Bad Blood: The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment. New York: Free Press.

Judd, C. M.; Park, B.; Ryan, C. S.; Brauer, M.; and Kraus, S. (1995). "Stereotypes and Ethnocentrism: Diverging Interethnic Perceptions of African American and White American Youth." Journal of Personal and Social Psychology 69(3):460–481.

Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition (1989). Oxford, England: Clarendon Press.

Van der Geest, S. (1995). "Overcoming Ethnocentrism: How Social Science and Medicine Relate and Should Relate to One Another." Social Science and Medicine 40(7):869–872.

— COLLINS O. AIRHIHENBUWA; MICHAEL LUDWIG

Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: ethnocentrism

Tendency to interpret or evaluate other cultures in terms of one's own. Generally considered a human universal, it is evident in the widespread practice of labeling outsiders as "savages" or "barbarians" simply because their societies differ from those of the dominant culture. Early anthropologists often reflected this tendency, as did Sir John Lubbock, who characterized all nonliterate peoples as being without religion, and Lucien Lévy-Bruhl, who found them to have a "prelogical mentality" because their worldview was unlike that of western Europe. The opposite of ethnocentrism is cultural relativism, the understanding of cultural phenomena within the context in which they occur.

For more information on ethnocentrism, visit Britannica.com.

Archaeology Dictionary: ethnocentrism

[Ge]

1. The belief that one's own values and views held true in all times and places.

2. The tendency to look at other cultures through the eyes of one's own culture, believing that one's own culture is morally superior, and thereby misrepresenting others.

Sports Science and Medicine: ethnocentrism

The tendency of members of one social group to mistrust individuals belonging to another social group. It involves the belief that one's own social group is culturally superior to another group. It also involves the inability to understand that cultural differences do not imply the inferiority of those groups, which are distinct from one's own.

Columbia Encyclopedia: ethnocentrism,

the feeling that one's group has a mode of living, values, and patterns of adaptation that are superior to those of other groups. It is coupled with a generalized contempt for members of other groups. Ethnocentrism may manifest itself in attitudes of superiority or sometimes hostility. Violence, discrimination, proselytizing, and verbal aggressiveness are other means whereby ethnocentrism may be expressed.

Science Dictionary: ethnocentrism

(eth-noh-sen-triz-uhm)

The belief that one's own culture is superior to all others and is the standard by which all other cultures should be measured.

Early social scientists in the nineteenth century operated from an ethnocentric point of view. So-called primitive tribes, for example, were studied by anthropologists to illustrate how human civilization had progressed from “savage” customs toward the accomplishments of Western industrial society.

Wikipedia: ethnocentrism

Ethnocentrism is the tendency to look at the world primarily from the perspective of one's own culture. It is defined as the viewpoint that “one’s own group is the center of everything,” against which all other groups are judged. Ethnocentrism often entails the belief that one's own race or ethnic group is the most important and/or that some or all aspects of its culture are superior to those of other groups. Within this ideology, individuals will judge other groups in relation to their own particular ethnic group or culture, especially with concern to language, behaviour, customs, and religion. These ethnic distinctions and sub-divisions serve to define each ethnicity's unique cultural identity.

Anthropologists such as Franz Boas and Bronislaw Malinowski argued that any human science had to transcend the ethnocentrism of the scientist. Both urged anthropologists to conduct ethnographic fieldwork in order to overcome their ethnocentrism. Boas developed the principle of cultural relativism and Malinowski developed the theory of functionalism as tools for developing non-ethnocentric studies of different societies. The books The Sexual Life of Savages, by Malinowski, Patterns of Culture by Ruth Benedict and Coming of Age in Samoa by Margaret Mead (two of Boas's students) are classic examples of anti-ethnocentric anthropology.

Usage

In political relations, not only have academics used the concept to explain nationalism, but activists and politicians have used labels like ethnocentric and ethnocentrism to criticize national and ethnic groups as being unbearably selfish — or at best, culturally biased (see cultural bias).

Nearly every religion, "race," or nation feels it has aspects which are uniquely valuable. (This tendency is humorously illustrated in the romantic comedy My Big Fat Greek Wedding, in which the heroine's father perpetually exalts Greek culture: "Give me any word, and I'll show you how it derives from Greek roots." "Oh, yeah, how about kimono?")

Other examples abound: Toynbee notes that Ancient Persia regarded itself the center of the world and viewed other nations as increasingly barbaric according to their degree of distance.

China's very name is composed of ideographs meaning "center" and "country" respectively, and traditional Chinese world maps show China in the center. It's also important to note that it wasn't just China that bought into this idea. At the height of the Chinese empire, the Japanese, Koreans, Vietnamese, and Thai also believed China to be the centre of the universe and referred to China as the middle kingdom. To this day, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam still refer to China as the middle country.

It is often claimed that England defined the world's meridians with itself on the center line, so that to this day, longitude is measured in degrees east or west of Greenwich, thus establishing as fact an Anglo-centrist's worldview. In fact the real reason is rather different, since Greenwich was at the time the foremost astronomical observatory and the idea of making the Greenwich meridian zero had a practical consequence in that it put the 180 degree meridian (International Date Line) in a place that inconvenienced the smallest number of people.^{[citation needed]}

Native American tribal names often translate as some variant on "the people"; other tribes were labeled with often pejorative names.

The United States has traditionally conceived of itself as having a unique role in world history; an outlook known as American exceptionalism.^{[citation needed]}

In the United States foreigners or immigrants that are not considered residents are called "aliens" and in the case they do not hold a legal status within the country they are called "illegal aliens". The connotation of the word does not only suggest pure ethnocentrism but is in some sense a distancing language used between an American citizen and an immigrant or visitor.

Psychological underpinnings of ethnocentrism

The psychological underpinning of ethnocentrism appears to be assigning to various cultures higher or lower status or value by the ethnocentric person who then assumes that the culture of higher status or value is intrinsically better than other cultures. The ethnocentric person, when assigning the status or value to various cultures, will automatically assign to their own culture the highest status or value.

Ethnocentrism is a natural result of the observation that most people are more comfortable with and prefer the company of people who are like themselves, sharing similar values and behaving in similar ways. It is not unusual for a person to consider that what ever they believe is the most appropriate system of belief or that how ever they behave is the most appropriate and natural behavior.

A person who is born into a particular culture and grows up absorbing the values and behaviors of the culture will develop patterns of thought reflecting the culture as normal. If the person then experiences other cultures that have different values and normal behaviors, the person finds that the thought patterns appropriate to their birth culture and the meanings their birth culture attaches to behaviors are not appropriate for the new cultures. However, since a person is accustomed to their birth culture it can be difficult for the person to see the behaviors of people from a different culture from the viewpoint of that culture rather than from their own.

The ethnocentric person will see those cultures other than their birth culture as being not only different but also wrong to some degree. The ethnocentric person will resist or refuse the new meanings and new thought patterns since they are seen as being less desirable than those of the birth culture.

The ethnocentric person may also adopt a new culture, repudiating their birth culture, considering that the adopted culture is somehow superior to the birth culture.

Throughout history, warring factions have been composed of fairly homogeneous ethnic groups.^{[citation needed]} Ethnic strife is seen dominating the landscape in many parts of the world even to this day. Evolutionary psychology posits that the reason for these groupings stems from the alignment of interests among members of these groups due to their genetic similarity.^{[citation needed]} In this vein, van den Berghe (1981) sees ethnocentrism as a natural outgrowth of nepotism. A comprehensive look at ethnocentrism from the perspective of evolutionary psychology may be found in the volume edited by Reynolds et al. (1987).

Independent of evolutionary psychology, observers such as Shelby Steele have suggested that ethnocentrism is a mainstay of any modern society, and in cases such as the white and black population in the USA, programs such as affirmative action serve only to relieve the moral consciences of the white population.

References

Reynolds, V., Falger, V., & Vine, I. (Eds.) (1987). The Sociobiology of Ethnocentrism. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press.
Salter, F.K., ed. 2002. Risky Transactions. Trust, Kinship, and Ethnicity. Oxford and New York: Berghahn.
Sow, Adama:, ed. 2005 Ethnozentrismus als Katalysator bestehender Konflikte in Afrika südlich der Sahara, am Beispiel der Unruhen in Côte d'Ivoire at: European University Center for Peace Studies (EPU), Stadtschleining (German)
van den Berghe, P. L. (1981). The ethnic phenomenon. Westport, CT: Praeger.

Journals

Group Processes and Intergroup Relations, Sage Press.

		Dictionary. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2007, 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2007. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. Read more
		Encyclopedia of Public Health. Encyclopedia of Public Health. Copyright © 2002 by The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved. Read more
		Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. All rights reserved. Read more
		Archaeology Dictionary. The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Archaeology. Copyright © 2002, 2003 by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. Read more
		Sports Science and Medicine. The Oxford Dictionary of Sports Science & Medicine. Copyright © Michael Kent 1998, 2006, 2007. All rights reserved. Read more
		Columbia Encyclopedia. The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition Copyright © 2003, Columbia University Press. Licensed from Columbia University Press. All rights reserved. www.cc.columbia.edu/cu/cup/ Read more
		Science Dictionary. The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition Edited by E.D. Hirsch, Jr., Joseph F. Kett, and James Trefil. Copyright © 2002 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin. All rights reserved. Read more
		Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Ethnocentrism". Read more
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ethnocentrism

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