Sociology and What Is Ethnocentrism

The following sample essay is about sociology and ethnocentrism. To read the introduction, body, and conclusion of the essay, scroll down.

Ethnocentrism is primarily viewing one’s own culture and deeming it more superior to other cultures in terms of belief systems and moral values. In this ideology, most individuals tend to judge often racially or in relation to ones particular ethnic group. This bias focuses on language, behavior, customs and religion to get a basis of comparison and arguments with each individual or group.

The ethnic distinctiveness is even relayed by comedians in the society. For instance, an American comedian, Chris Rock usually salutes people in an ethnical manner to certain cultures. Moreover, at times he cracks jokes about several ethnic tribes and their mannerism while making his own superior (Andersen & Taylor, 2010).

These facts may not be notable because no one notices them in the comedy, but in the real sense the comedies usually exposes an underlying factor that affects the society.

A false assumption in ethnocentrism makes up or engages cultural differences. Ethnocentrism usually makes us heed wrong assumptions and later on help us in making a premature and unwise judgement. It is special since it handles in-group favoritism and out-group hostility.

Ethnocentrism effect on individuals, societies, and multinational corporations

The effect of ethnocentrism can range from mild to disastrous. This is because it does not affect some people while others it strongly affects. Due to lack of understanding, the possible effects are biases in the job seeking industry.

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For instance, a situation where one is hired because they share an ethnic background with employer, best explains this. The adjacent effect to that is Corruption and fund embezzlement. This is the event of a certain community benefiting more from budgets allocated for other communities simply because the leaders involved view their needs more to other communities (Ferrante, 2010). This in-turn affects the political arena since favoritism is the creme, political leaders are appointed because they belong to a certain ethnical group not because they have the capability to lead the country as a whole. Since ethnocentrism plays a major role in individuals’ identity formation, the other effect would be racism, tribalism and the like. This is because no one is nurtured to view past the racial or tribal context and thus eliminate the least person who may be trivial in giving back to the economy. An example of this is evidence in the German holocaust period. The period saw the death of hundreds of Jews due to the religious and ethnic cleansing that took place in the region (Ferrante, 2010).

Ethnocentrism can be dealt with using intercultural communication sensitivity aspect. This is where, forums of different ethnic and racial leaders are put in place to share what is affecting the community or society and therefore, help curb the problem before it gets out of hand. Intercultural sensitivity aspect suggests that one’s different cultural experience increases as one’s competence in intercultural situation goes up. This introduces the multiculturalism aspect, which has been an advent of immigration. Most immigrants learn a lot through learning to adapt and survive in different cultures. This gives them an upper hand to learn and understand what happening in different communities and to help solve the problem (Shepard, 2004).

The other effects of ethnocentrism are negligence, which is because of the deep engraved nature of selflessness. This tends to eliminate patriotism since one will consider the ethnical aspect more than the country. The other effect is social prejudices, which is because of negligence and abuse to one’s community or racial background. This causes bitterness and strife, which may result in loss of lives, experienced in Germany’s history. The other effect of ethnocentrism is economical imbalance, which is a result of corruption and centralization of fund allocated for various project (Newman, 2008).

Reference:

1. Andersen, M. L. & Taylor, H. F. (2010). Sociology: The Essentials. New York, NY: Cengage Learning.
2. Brym, R. J. &Lie, J. (2009). Sociology: your compass for a new world, the brief edition. New York, NY: Cengage Learning.
3. Ferrante, J. (2010). Sociology: A Global Perspective. New York, NY: Cengage Learning.
4. Giddens, A. & Griffiths, S. (2006). Sociology. New York, NY: Polity.
5. Giddens, A. (1986). Sociology: a brief but critical introduction. Washington, DC: Macmillan.
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