Quotes About Ethnocentrism

As anthropologist Michael Ghiglieri writes: "Xenophobia and ethnocentrism are not just essential ingredients to war. Because they instinctively tell men precisely whom to bond with versus whom to fight against, they are the most dangerously manipulable facets of war psychology that promote genocide. Indeed, genocide itself has become a potent force in human evolution.

Americans believe that they are normal, that they make sense, and that the rest of the world is exotic. They do not seem to understand that they are the most exotic people in the world right now.

ethnocentrism—the tendency to evaluate the customs of other groups according to one's own cultural standards.

We have to work extra hard, because we in America are very ethnocentric--we think our culture is superior. Why's that? It's because we've got moon rocks, and nobody else has moon rocks.

Others think their American ways will work in other countries. That's not always accurate and can be disrespectful to the local culture.

A British traveler remarked, 'There are [fashions in Guatemala] which it would require more than common charity to speak of with respect...' FILL IN YOUR OWN GRIPES! ;-)

The more we claim to discriminate between cultures and customs as good and bad, the more completely do we identify ourselves with those we would condemn. By refusing to consider as human those who seem to us to be the most "savage" or "barbarous" of their representatives, we merely adopt one of their own characteristic attitudes. The barbarian is, first and foremost, the man who believes in barbarism.

Stephen Jay Gould's 1981 book The Mismeasure of Man is both amusing and horrifying when it recounts how nineteenth century anthropologists pursued craniometry

Because of our cultural conditioning, we not only think our actions are normal, the way everyone behaves; we also think what we do is right, the way everyone should behave. We therefore regard any behavior that is different from ours as wrong. Naturally, this puts cultural incidents into a whole new light.

I cannot but conclude the bulk of your natives to be the most pernicious race of little odious vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth.

There is no 'European people' united by common mores.

I don't think it is wrong, racist, immoral or anything, for a country to say 'we will decide what the cultural identity and the cultural destiny of this country will be and nobody else'.

We have to work extra hard, because we in America are very ethnocentric--we think our culture is superior. Why's that? It's because we've got moon rocks, and nobody else has moon rocks.

What the hell does the Jewish Museum know about Guatemalan pricks? This particular prick isn't even circumcised.

Unfortunately, it makes as little sense to offer this kind of explanation as to say that we have become too "civilized " to eat insects or horses.

Anthropologists teach others to try to avoid the pitfalls of ethnocentrism by learning to understand a culture in terms of its own assumptions about reality. Western shamans can do a similar service with regard to cognicentrism. The anthropologists' lesson is called cultural relativism. What Western shamans can try to create, to some degree, is cognitive relativism.

Each man calls barbarism whatever is not his own practice...for we have no other criterion of reason than the example and idea of the opinions and customs of the country we live in.

universal features shared by all musics. The very word 'universal' should put us on our guard: as the postcolonial scholar Homi Bhabha says, 'universalism…masks ethnocentric norms, values, and interests'.

Civilization is the way one's own people live. Savagery is the way foreigners live.

Civilization is the way one's own people live. Savagery is the way foreigners live.

Canaanite "genocide" • the binding of Isaac • a jealous, egocentric deity • ethnocentrism/racism • chattel slavery • bride-price • women as inferior to men • harsh laws in Israel • the Mosaic law as perfect and permanently binding for all nations • the irrelevance of God for morality