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com/definition/Ethnocentrism

Ethnocentrism (Greek ethnos nation + -centrism) is a set of beliefs or practices based on the view
that one's own group is the center of everything. The term was popularized by the sociologist William
Graham Sumner and often entails the belief that one's own race or ethnic group is the most important
and/or that some or all aspects of its culture are superior to those of other groups. Within this
ideology, individuals will judge other groups in relation to their own particular ethnic group or culture,
especially with concern to language, behaviour, customs, and religion. These ethnic distinctions and
sub-divisions serve to define each ethnicity's unique cultural identity.

The reasons for maintaining an ethnicity or culture are often personal, and relate to the cohesion of
familiar personal and social elements; that is, attachment or custom. We all are born into a human
culture, and it is the culture that shapes our self-awareness and understanding of other individuals. It
also reflects, depending on the cultural teaching, customs or patterns of behaviour in relating to other
cultures. This behaviour can range from universal acceptance or feelings of inferiority compared with
other cultures, to racism, which many consider an aspect of xenophobia. Some examples of
ethnocentric behaviours are represented by such social phenomena as economic isolationism,
counter-cultures, anti-establishmentism, and widespread social patterns of interpersonal abusive
behaviours as ostracization, prejudice, and discrimination.

ethnocentrism. A belief, attitude or mindset that holds that one's own ethnic group is superior to all
others. A tendency to judge other cultures by the standards of one's own. Adj. Ethnocentric.

http://www.travel-industry-dictionary.com/ethnocentrism.html

Ethnocentrism can be understood as the disposition to read the rest of the world,
those of different cultural traditions, from inside the conceptual scheme of one's own
ethnocultural group. The ethnocentric attitude assumes that one's own ethnic
Weltanschauung (worldview) is the only one from which other customs, practices,
and habits can be understood and judged. Ethnocentrism thus is conceived critically
as involving overgeneralizations about cultures and their inhabitants, others' or one's
own, on the basis of limited or skewed, if any, evidence. So the notion of
ethnocentrism is conceived as a profound failure to understand other conceptual
schemes, and, by extension, practices, habits, expressions, and articulations of others
on their own terms. Standing inside our own conceptual schemes, we are blinded
even to the possibilities of other ways of thinking, seeing, understanding, and
interpreting the world, of being and belonging—in short, other ways of worldmaking.

Read more: Ethnocentrism - Definition - Racism, Concept, Conceptual, Understood,

Practices, and Culture http://science.jrank.org/pages/9234/Ethnocentrism-
Definition.html#ixzz1435xCufn

Anthropology is the study of cultures, so fieldwork often means living in remote

locations to study other species or cultures. It can also mean studying bones and
artifacts. Anthropological fieldwork varies depending on the area of interest

Read more: Definition of Anthropology Fieldwork | eHow.com

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fieldwork.html#ixzz1436hhiFV

Also, field work . work done in the field, as research, exploration,

surveying, or interviewing: archaeological fieldwork.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/fieldwork