In reality, these travelers are guilty of cultural imperialism, the deliberate imposition of one’s own ostensibly advanced cultural values on another culture. People with the best intentions sometimes travel to a society to “help” its people, because they see them as uneducated or backward-essentially inferior. But ethnocentrism can lead to disdain or dislike for other cultures and could cause misunderstanding and conflict. A good example of ethnocentrism is referring to parts of Asia as the “Far East.” One might question, “Far east of where?”Ī high level of appreciation for one’s own culture can be healthy a shared sense of community pride, for example, connects people in a society. Someone from a country where dog meat is standard fare might find it off-putting to see a dog in a French restaurant-not on the menu, but as a pet and fellow patron’s companion. For example, Americans tend to say that people from England drive on the “wrong” side of the road, rather than on the “other” side. Ethnocentrism, as sociologist William Graham Sumner (1906) described the term, involves a belief or attitude that one’s own culture is better than all others, and should therefore serve as the standard frame of reference.Almost everyone is a little bit ethnocentric.
Such attitudes are an example of ethnocentrism, or evaluating and judging another culture based on how it compares to one’s own cultural norms. Often, people in the United States express disgust at other cultures’ cuisine and think that it’s gross to eat meat from a dog or guinea pig, for example, while they don’t question their own habit of eating cows or pigs. Some travelers pride themselves on their willingness to try unfamiliar foods, like celebrated food writer Anthony Bourdain, while others return home expressing gratitude for their native culture’s fare. The way cuisines vary across cultures fascinates many people. If your professor comes into an early morning class holding a mug of liquid, what do you assume she is drinking? In the United States, the mug is most likely filled with coffee, not Earl Grey tea, a favorite in England, or Yak Butter tea, a staple in Tibet. North Americans keep more distance and maintain a larger “personal space.” Even something as simple as eating and drinking varies greatly from culture to culture. In some Middle Eastern cultures, it is common to stand close to others in conversation. For example, while all cultures have language, analysis of particular language structures and conversational etiquette reveal tremendous differences.