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Argumentative Research Paper

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Ethnocentrism

Introduction

Ernst Mayr, a familiar biologist who said, “Our understanding of the world is

achieved by conceptual improvements than by the discovery of new facts, even though the

two are not mutually exclusive”. Simply, humans have a tendency to consider any subject

against own experience in the same context. Our topic as ethnocentrism is a psychological

result of that philosophy. The ethnocentrism can be defined as the syndrome of

discriminatory attitudes to other’s culture through the experience own culture. William

Graham Summer defines the ethnocentrism, as “The tendency to assume that one’s culture

and way of life is superior to all others” ("Define Ethnocentrism and Explain Its Merits and

Demerits"). The main elements of ethnocentrism are such as group self-centredness, out-

group negativity and mere in-group positivity (Bizumic, Boris, and John Duckitt).

This paper is aimed to analyse the origin and history of Ethnocentrism as the cause of

diversity problem in several aspects and discusses some arguments which are positively or

negatively impacting towards the individuals and society.

The group self-centredness means giving importance to only own group while out-

group negativity means opposing other group and mere in-group positivity means considering
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entire features of own group positively. Besides the ethnocentrism suggest protecting the

ethnic purity of own group through cohesion and devotion in the group. The psychologists

are started to consider and analyse the topic as ethnocentrism between the ending of the

ninetieth century and the start of the twentieth century. They found that the member of any

group became more dependable with each other due to the competition with other groups.

Thus, they not only became cooperative but also achieve attitude and behaviour of neglecting

the culture of other groups. The ethnocentrism created when humans found the attitude of

"The US" and "Them". Humans started to find or create diversity as they use different

language, they worship in a different way, they have much wealth etc. Thus, a group started

to feel insecure about other group and think that other group can be harmful to own group.

Ethnicity helps us to establish our own specific identity that based on different culture.

Therefore, ethnocentrism originated due to the diversity of ethnic groupings, preferences,

attitudes, politics, colonialism etc. As a real example, in 1940 Chinese destroyed several

Buddhist Monasteries in Tibet to diminish the Buddhist culture (Daniel). In this context,

various questions arise and those questions are as follows-

Is ethnocentrism has any positive effect?

How religious diversity is created by ethnocentrism?

Analysing the definition and concept of ethnocentrism we can found six different

facets that define self-centredness.

Preference is the primary facet of ethnocentrism that suggests preferring own group

than the other groups for the ethnic diversity. Ethically it is right as it does not describe to

hate the ethnicity of other groups. Brewer and Gartner narrate that the preference has a very

positive effect because it helps to establish the trust and dependency between the members of

a single group.
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Superiority is the most important facet as it tells that own ethnic group is much better

than another ethnic group as per the purity, morality, sociability, history and spirituality. This

facet also a have a positive impact as thorough it several groups can find new creativity or

new dimension that can bring the superiority over the other ethnic groups.

Purity is a facet of ethnocentrism that suggests to maintain purity to a specific ethnic

group and not to use any features of another ethnic group. Another message is holding the

uniqueness and following a specific distance or diversity with the other groups or their

members. Though the negative fact is when a group will try to gain complete purity they need

to find a negative point in other ethnic groups.

Exploitativeness is another facet of ethnocentrism that suggests following other

ethnic out-group little bit or does not consider any point of another group. The inner thought

is to be connected with the negative point of another group when the group is changing its

any features.

Group Cohesion consider integration, unity and cooperation with an entire individual

member of own ethnic group through meeting the requirement of that group. This facet

orders to diminish individual problems, independence, differences and disagreements.

Darwin claims that group cohesion is important to establish a suitable function successfully.

Another researcher said that group cohesion is a result of classification of the group and it can

also result in the threat.

Group devotion means the considering strong, ardent and unconditional locality

through the dedication towards own group. This can be achieved by the high level of

commitment for own group through giving importance entire individuals of that group.

Adorno, a psychologist said that it is the effect of love and respect. He also added that
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“involves blind attachment to certain national cultural values, uncritical conformity

with the prevailing group ways”.

Due to the ethnocentrism, various problems arise such as political conflict, national

conflict, religious conflict, social diversity, cultural diversity etc. In the current US is one of

the most developed countries economically than other countries. Then huge people came

from different countries to live in the US and they can be neglected as per ethnic diversity.

However, the original citizens of US do not attend any debatable incident that supports an

original class or ethnicity. In the 16th century, few powerful countries of Europe have a

tendency to capture the ownership of another overseas country through defeating war and

control them. As per the information, the world history courses of Europe's academic

institution do not include the history of that captured country. Because the powerful countries

of Europe think that those captured countries have ethnicity of less quality that is the most

current example of ethnocentrism. From the historical vault, the actual example of

ethnocentrism is Nazi Germany. Adolf Hitler hated Jews so much and at the end of the

Second World War, he ordered to kill entire people of Jews religion who lived in Europe.

Though the Jews people have not guilty for that horrible punishment that most concerning

example or issue of Ethnocentrism ("Examples Of Ethnocentrism"). Furthermore, we can

also find in several movies, song, literature the negative effect of ethnocentrism.

Conclusion

Some researchers express that ethnocentrism is beneficial for the society while some

researchers totally ignore the statement and said ethnocentrism cause a various problem in

our society over the world. Ethnocentrism diminishes the criticism of social order when the

citizens of a country consider that democracy is a suitable place to engage political system.

As an example, the social and national diversities between India and Pakistan. In details as
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the India and Pakistan consider different socialism due to the ethnocentrism then it provides a

national diversity that is more stable (Daniel). Therefore, we got an example as the

ethnocentrism has a positive effect that is also a question in the introduction part of this

paper. As per the pure ethnocentrism, it always suggests modifying the existing socio-culture

that is really effective for the up gradation of civilisation. A group can be enhanced in

different aspect by ethnocentrism because the superior facet of ethnocentrism suggests

thinking and made own group superior to others. Besides another positive point patriotic

though can be modified by following the stable spirit of ethnocentrism ("Advantages and

Disadvantages of Ethnocentrism in Sociology | SLN").

There is a huge negative effect of ethnocentrism as we already several historical

dangerous incidents that are caused due to the diversity thought of ethnocentrism. It forces

every people to consider a fake concept about cultural diversity. Due to the exploitativeness

facet of ethnocentrism, people have a negative concept about other's culture. Thus, people

started to misjudge and hate people of different culture. It also creates diversity in the single

group due to a massive change of culture in a group. Then some people will think that others

people having more comfort without finding the difficulties in others life. This sense damage

international relation and racism is a significant example of it. Besides, it also motivates to

establish a culture that is unethical. When a group try to achieve more superiority over other

groups, they often forget to follow ethical rules of culture. They just establish a modified

culture, which can be harmful to the member of that group. Furthermore, due to the

ethnocentrism, some people intended to misjudge people by premature philosophy

(Lombardo). From the case of Nazi Germany, we can find that ethnocentrism involves in

religious diversity and the conflict is not diminished till today. The religious diversity is the

most common problem among the entire problems that are created by ethnocentrism. Based

on all discussion we can assume that the ethnocentrism has a much negative impact and few
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positive impacts on our society. However, the pure philosophy of ethnocentrism is just to

consider own culture as the best culture rather than hating other culture. Due to some

negative thinking about ethnocentrism, the idea has changed and people started to hate each

other that was not the actual goal of ethnocentrism. Through some ethical step, these

diversities can be eliminated and we can establish can stable society.

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Works Cited

"Advantages And Disadvantages Of Ethnocentrism In Sociology |

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Today." International Journal of Applied Sociology 1.1 (2011): 8-14.

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Today". Article.Sapub.Org, 2018,

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