Answer to Question #135989 in Sociology for Nicole Roxin Zambas

Question

How can you value your own culture without being ethnocentric?

Answer 1

How can you value your own culture without being ethnocentric?

Often, individuals will have a strong belief that their culture is better than the other without the knowledge that they are ethnocentric. However, there are other ways that one can value his or her culture without projecting or expressing a judgmental attitude towards other culture. For instance, one can engage in cultural relativism which requires one to be open-minded and view cultures that are not his or her own as other standard measures (Bilewicz, Witkowska, Stefaniak & Imhoff, 2017). Notably, this embracement does not mean one accepts everything from the culture but instead see some things from a positive or different point of view. Alternatively, one can evaluate his or her biased cultural beliefs to another culture’s and see that the other values are better than his or her. As such, one will fail to feel their culture is better than the other.

Reference

Bilewicz, M., Witkowska, M., Stefaniak, A., & Imhoff, R. (2017). The lay historian explains intergroup behaviour: Examining the role of identification and cognitive structuring in ethnocentric historical attributions. Memory Studies, 10(3), 310-322.