Ethnocentrism

Ethnocentrism is the tendency to judge other cultures by one’s own cultural standards and to treat one’s own culture as superior or central.

In-group favoritism: The tendency to favor members of one’s own group over people outside it. Preference for one’s group can turn cultural belonging into a basis for ranking cultures.
William Graham Sumner: An American sociologist who introduced the term “ethnocentrism” in his 1906 book Folkways. Sumner named the tendency and described its connection to group loyalty and hostility.
Ethnography: The systematic study and description of a people, usually through sustained fieldwork. Ethnographers must examine how their own assumptions shape observations of other cultures.
Cultural prejudice: Negative judgments about people or practices based on cultural difference. Treating one’s own culture as the norm can turn difference into a basis for prejudice.
Social identity theory: A theory explaining how group membership shapes self-concept and intergroup behavior. It explains how identifying with a cultural group can encourage comparisons that privilege it.
Folkways: William Graham Sumner’s 1906 study of customary practices, social norms, and moral rules. This work introduced ethnocentrism while examining how customs shape judgments.
Translation: The process of conveying meaning from one language into another. Cultural assumptions can distort translation when concepts lack direct equivalents.
Xenophobia: Fear or hostility toward people perceived as foreign or unfamiliar. Ethnocentric distinctions between “us” and “them” can feed hostility toward outsiders.
Cultural schema: A shared mental framework that organizes expectations and interpretations within a culture. Schemas supply the familiar assumptions through which unfamiliar customs may be judged.
Franz Boas: A German-American anthropologist who established historical particularism and challenged racial hierarchies. Boas’s approach urged studying cultures in context rather than ranking them on a single scale.

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