Ethnocentrism

Ethnocentrism means that a group of people views the world from its own distinct set of cultural values, or ways of living and thinking. This bias typically leads to feelings of superiority in its relationships with other groups. Ethnocentrism varies widely in type and degree among cultures.

Ethnocentrism makes appreciating cultural diversity difficult if not unattainable. Indeed, most people do not understand that they do not understand other people's cultural values. People may try to be genuinely empathetic to those with different cultural values, but even geographers, anthropologists, and sociologists fail in ridding themselves of subconscious predilections.

Bigotry and racism can emanate from ethnocentrism. Extreme ethnocentrism can cause ethnocide or genocide. Ethnocide is the killing, either unintentionally or intentionally, of a group's culture by another group. For example, the construction of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline in the 1970s inadvertently contributed to the acceleration of ethnocide of the native cultures. The ethnocentric “white man's burden” justified European colonialism throughout Africa, subjugating its cultures and enslaving its peoples. Ethnocentrism sparked the German Nazis to kill 6 million Jews during the Holocaust in the 20th century. Ethnic cleansing is a process by which a dominant group of people expels a minority ethnic group from a particular place. Ethnic cleansing drove Bosnians from their ancestral homes in recent warfare in Southern Europe.

Ethnocentrism inscribes the landscape. China, “the Middle Kingdom,” considered itself for centuries as the center of its universe and people located farther from its cultural hearth, for instance, in Inner Mongolia and Outer Mongolia, as increasingly more barbaric. Europeans stamped their “superior” cultural traits onto landscapes around the globe as they conquered and controlled numerous native peoples. Extractive processes, agricultural fields, urban structures, and religious icons changed indigenous homelands indelibly. These cultural conquests set the stage for a world system of core-periphery relations and hegemonic actors dominating the marginalized aborigines. Ethnocentrism plundered the resources of the peripheral places and decimated native cultures and their natural environments.

Ethnocentrism was central to the idea of “manifest destiny” in U.S. historical geography. In their march westward to the Pacific Ocean, Anglo Americans vanquished the Native American, French, and Spanish ways of living. “The Five Civilized Tribes” were not “civilized” enough to protect their sacred lands and prevent their children from dying along the “Trail of Tears.” Anglo-dominated Louisiana legislatures promulgated English-only laws for all government proceedings and school instruction to eliminate the remnants of French culture. Under the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo, the United States annexed half of Mexico and imposed new mores, especially language and law, on the inhabitants captured in the new country.

Ethnocentrism, then, is an extraordinarily powerful cultural concept that not only leads to misunderstandings among people but is also responsible for devastating natural environments, destroying nations, and killing millions of people.