There are many places on the web where you can learn about the term “ethnocentrism”, often geared towards an academic audience.

I see a problem with this: while the academic study of something like ethnocentrism is important, it seems to be the vast majority of the content online. There is not a lot out there for the general audience, for explaining what is important to know in our day-to-day lives, if we are to promote a culture of peace.

Ethnocentricity can be easily defined as a collection of cultural biases through which we see the world. In the context of peace at the interpersonal level, a lack of awareness of one’s own ethnocentricities can quickly lead to escalations in conflict with other persons or groups. In broader contexts, ethnocentricities can be a cause of something as large-scale as war.

How does this happen? Generally, it is that the level of awareness one has of one’s own culture is far greater than that of other’s cultures.

Examples

A young white Western male university student acquires many new friends in his first year, including a Middle-Eastern male student. He learns that his friend has his 19th birthday (the age of majority in Ontario) in a few days, and buys him a case of (alcoholic) beer in celebration. Little does he know, this could lead to a conflict, as he either didn’t know that his friend was Muslim, or wasn’t aware that his friend’s religious beliefs include sobriety as a core value. This could become a conflict escalated by either party: either by the giver being offended by the lack of graciousness on the part of the receiver, or by the receiver being offended by the lack of cultural awareness on the part of the giver.

This kind of conflict is low-stakes, and “blame” does not necessarily lie in either party if a conflict did arise. However, if suddenly once this event occurs, both parties were keenly aware of their own ethnocentricities, then the giver could offer to get something different in the future, and perhaps the receiver could understand that this gift had a positive intent of celebration behind it.

Let’s look at higher stakes situation, involving two made-up races: the Workers, and the Resters.

The Workers work hard, and resource gain from day-long hard work plus overtime is considered to be a measure of one’s personal worth. The Resters, however, value a life lived with lots of time to consider one’s role in the world, and considers work done smartly and shortly to be invaluable to being well respected. The two live in different socio-economic classes as well, with a small percentage of the Workers controlling high amounts of wealth, and the general populace of Workers living with just slightly more average income.
What kind of conflicts do you imagine emerging? Workers may see Resters as “lazy”, or as “leeching off us hard workers”, and Resters may see Workers as “rats in a maze”, engaged “in the pointless pursuit of excess wealth”. Certainly, with a lack of meaningful interactions between the two races, this could get very ugly, and certainly not peaceful.

Importance of Stories

The key problem occurring in these examples, and indeed all examples of ethnocentricity, is stories. For ethnicities, social classes, religions other than our own, it is not unusual to have only heard one or two stories of that culture – and sometimes, these stories are only outsider perspectives.

Americans sometimes only know Canada through stories of weather: cold weather, to be exact. Middle-class persons may only know the homeless through the begging they see, and alcohol abuse they hear about through stories. Westerners may only know stories of Africa through the narratives of commercials about starvation and AIDS, and through news about violent armed conflicts.

Think back to a culture of any kind that you once thought a very limited number of things about, but later in life you learned a lot more and changed your viewpoint. You likely learned more, because you met more people from that culture, learned more stories from that culture, and perhaps even through your own experiences began to tell stories from that culture to others.

Other –centrisms

Eurocentrism and Americentrism are a couple terms one could use for the dominance of Europe-centred and American-centred perspectives. One of the best examples out there, would be the world map.
Ever wondered why north is at the top? It certainly has nothing to do with the orientation of the earth relative to anything, except the position of Europe. Had Europe been where Australia is, our globes would have the south on top, Antarctica would likely have been named Arctica, and the Arctic would have been named the Antarctic.
Other common –centrisms related to the West include the Gregorian Calendar as a worldwide standard, the 24 hour clock, the lack of non-alpha-numeric addressed websites until recently (even in Japan, all websites used our alpha-numerics rather than Japanese characters), and numerous other “standards”.

Is Ethnocentrism then, bad?

I would argue that ethnocentrism is a natural reaction. Our brains are built to work with whatever data we might have in them, and make decisions based upon said data. What is needed to lessen the negative effects of ethnocentrism is both a self-awareness of one’s own ethnocentric perspectives, and efforts made to expand one’s understanding of other cultures.

Most importantly, expanding one’s ability to tell more stories (to yourself through memory, or to others) about unfamiliar cultures. This comes through personal interaction with others, attendance or participation in cultural events or productions previously unfamiliar, and through travel – which forces one to experience both the former.

Two Study Pieces

“Departures” (TV show)

Departures is an award-winning travel show filmed by three Canadian guys under the age of 30, who explore the world and expand their knowledge of other cultures. Not only is the show very well filmed, the hosts are very good at being aware of their ethnocentric views and over time come to realize just how well privileged in travel they because of their white, western background.

Unlike other travel shows, they are not funded by any travel agencies, and do no focus upon locations that are commonly visited by tourists. Just about any episode that takes place outside of Westernized countries can be watched as means of expanding one’s understanding of other cultures.

You can catch it on CityTV, National Geographic Travel, OLN, and on DVD via their website.

“The danger of a single story” (Online TED.com Video/Audio)

Nigerian author Chimamanda Adichie discusses the importance of hearing more than one story about other cultures, citing specific examples from her experiences in Nigeria, and America.