Academia Nuts #1
As a bit of background, the textbook for my business communication class this semester, which has 246 black and white pages in a thin paperback volume and was written by Robyn Walker who also teaches the class, cost me $67.75 before taxes.
Now read this quote from said book: "Ethnocentrism is the belief that your own cultural background, including ways of analyzing problems, values, beliefs, language, and verbal and nonverbal communication is correct."
Read it again. Apparently, you are an ethnocentrist if you believe your values and beliefs to be correct. In other words, you are an ethnocentrist if you believe anything at all. Does anyone believe something that he believes to be false? Clearly that would be nonsense, and so is this description of ethnocentrism.
This is the kind of failure of reason that's becoming more and more common as the a priori assumptions of the "politically correct" orthodoxy are shoehorned into our reality. Read this definition of the same subject in the margin here: "Ethnocentrism is the belief that one's own cultural background is correct, and that other cultures are somehow inferior."
"Somehow." As if it is really so difficult to think of ways one culture might be inferior to another. I'm sure that if Professor Walker gave the matter some hard honest thought--thirty seconds, say--she could think of a culture or two that are or were inferior to her own. She might feel guilty about suddenly becoming an "ethnocentrist," but that wouldn't make it any less true.
Now read this quote from said book: "Ethnocentrism is the belief that your own cultural background, including ways of analyzing problems, values, beliefs, language, and verbal and nonverbal communication is correct."
Read it again. Apparently, you are an ethnocentrist if you believe your values and beliefs to be correct. In other words, you are an ethnocentrist if you believe anything at all. Does anyone believe something that he believes to be false? Clearly that would be nonsense, and so is this description of ethnocentrism.
This is the kind of failure of reason that's becoming more and more common as the a priori assumptions of the "politically correct" orthodoxy are shoehorned into our reality. Read this definition of the same subject in the margin here: "Ethnocentrism is the belief that one's own cultural background is correct, and that other cultures are somehow inferior."
"Somehow." As if it is really so difficult to think of ways one culture might be inferior to another. I'm sure that if Professor Walker gave the matter some hard honest thought--thirty seconds, say--she could think of a culture or two that are or were inferior to her own. She might feel guilty about suddenly becoming an "ethnocentrist," but that wouldn't make it any less true.
posted by Matthew at 7:03 PM
2 Comments:
ah, to be ethnocentric is to be so not postmodern!
i guess the warning is not to be so closed minded as to think everyone thinks as you do...just bc we're all so darn ethnocentric doesn't mean superiority/inferoiority isn't relative...but, of course, that's just a pm perspective.
I'm not defending ethnocentrism, and I'm definitely not confessing myself to be one. Obviously it's a bad thing and we should be open to other cultures and all that. I was just pointing out that the definition of ethnocentrism has become so broad as to become meaningless.
We all have beliefs, but according to the quoted definition, believing in beliefs is ethnocentric. Thus, we are all ethnocentric, according to Prof. Walker. Moreover, it is impossible to not be as such, for there has never been a person without beliefs. So why even bring it up?
Isn't the position hypocritical anyway? All other things being equal, wouldn't she see an ethnocentrist culture as being objectively inferior to one that abhors the idea?
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