Ethnocentrism In My Culture

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Recommended: problems relating to the study of intercultural communication encompass individual uniqueness, generalizing, lack of objectivity, and compromise

My Culture
Ferris and Stein (2016) defines culture as: “the entire way of life of a group of people” (p.73). Groups that come together is what creates culture. It brings together different languages, beliefs, values, norms, and even materials that are passed from one group to the next. There are also two types of of categories that make up culture. The first one is material culture, which consists of buildings, art, clothing and jewelry. The second category is Non-material culture which is a group 's way of doing and thinking. It consists of beliefs, values, and other speculations about society.
My family’s culture consists of both Texan and Mexican traditions. My mother and her side of the family are from the Southernmost tip of Texas and …show more content…

74). Which means judging another culture by the values and standards of your own culture. However, Cultural relativism means to understand a culture 's values and beliefs and not judging them. Stein and Ferris (2016) defined Cultural relativism as to “understand a culture on its own terms” (p.74) When I look back to my first trip to Mexico, I recall a time when I was being ethnocentric at an outside meat market. I was out with my parents picking items for our dinner that night. When we asked for a couple pounds of chicken, the butcher just grabs a couple chickens from their cage; killed and cleaned them right in front of us. Right away I was disgusted and thought to myself “Why they didn’t properly process the chicken?” In society the way every culture is different I don’t believe it is really possible to be culturally relative because it is our natural response to criticize or react to a certain way of life that is different of our own. I can’t recall a time something new was opened up to me and in no way I hadn’t judged

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