Ethnocentrism

Ethnocentrism, in social science and anthropology as well as in everyday English, is the application of one's own culture or ethnicity as a frame of reference to judge other cultures, practices, behaviors, beliefs and people, rather than judging a culture by its own standards. Because such judgment is often negative, the term is also used for the belief that one's own culture is superior to or more normal than others, particularly regarding the language, behavior, customs and religion that define an ethnicity's cultural identity, and it is sometimes related to racism, stereotyping, discrimination or xenophobia, though it does not necessarily involve a negative view of another race. The American sociologist William G. Sumner first applied the term in the social sciences, describing it in his 1906 book Folkways as the view in which one's own group is the center of everything and all others are rated by reference to it, a pattern he said often produces pride, vanity, a belief in one's group's superiority, and contempt for outsiders. Its opposite is cultural relativism, the position that a different culture is best understood through its own perspective rather than judged by the standards of one's own.