Comment upon the statement “Cultural diffusion tends to reduce ethnocentrism.” Justify your answer with examples and logical arguments?

Ethnocentrism means a person from one culture observes and judges the other culture through their own framework, which often results in negative thoughts and conflicts. Cultural diffusion implies sharing, spreading, and adapting elements of another culture in our own life or society. By this, we can understand better the frame and background of the practices and thoughts of the others. Therefore, it can help people get over the ethnocentric observations by adopting the various cultural schemes in their own lives.

Explanation:

Ethnocentrism is the way of observing the culture and community through the frame of another cultural context. The member of one group may want to apply thoughts and ideas of their own group to another one, completely ignoring the background, history, and all the other differences that make this impossible.

Ethnocentrism often implies that one set of ideas existing in the culture is the best, and should be applied to other cultures, which produces negative thoughts, prejudices, judgmental behavior, and conflict.

Cultural diffusion is the process of spreading and mixing different ideas and activities from various cultures, and sharing them with people from other national, ethnic, religious, etc. background. In the globalized world, it is easier than ever to meet different ideas and share our own, which can also be applied to culture. With the help of traveling, technology (such as the internet), and education, people have various ways to learn about different cultures, as well as spread knowledge about their own culture. Everyone can also adopt some of the various practices and thoughts that exist around the world.

This can provide the needed context and first-hand experience of someone very different from us. By learning more about the various societies and their members, as well as having personal and emotional connections to them, we realize the more and more different contexts, backgrounds, experiences, and histories people have lived through. We start to empathize with them and therefore realize their own frame of thought and position from which they come. By this, we can finally see their culture through their eyes, and not only our own. We can, therefore, understand culture throughout and not judge them based only on our experiences. Finally, one culture can apply even the elements of another culture through cultural diffusion.

In anthropology, researchers are trying to adopt cultural diffusion in their methods through the methodology of observation with participation. They do not only watch the culture or community they research, but they also adapt to it and participate in their life, or in the special section, they explore (for example, if they research religion, they participate in the rituals). Through adaption to cultural behaviors, the researcher is meant to lose their ethnocentric viewpoint, understand the culture completely, and respect its ways and ideas. This is an example of how the cultural diffusion method can help people get over the conscious or subconscious ethnocentric view of another culture.

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