Ethnocentrism vs. Cultural Relativism

Ethnocentism is defined as "the use of one's own culture as a yardstick for judging the wasy of other individuals or societies, generally leading to a negative evaluation of their values, norms, and behaviors." Most of us are guilty of judging other people and looking down on them because they are different. Every society has aspects that make it different than any other culture, and that is why we are different because, honestly, what would this world be like if we were all the same? As in the Nacirema article, we were told to mark the texts for things that we thought were odd and different from what we find normal, and make notes about what was interesting. Even in that instance, we could be classified as being ethnocentric by judging the rituals that the people performed. As we looked closer at the rituals and things that, at a first glance, seemed weird to us started to sound like some things that take place in American society every day. For example, there were rituals to make fat people skinny and skinny people fat; America has this too. The medicine men are like our doctors, and they were seen as being all-knowledgeable, just like our doctors are; according to some, they have all of the answers. Once we made these parallels, we started relating to this article more because we could see our lives within it, which brings us around to cultural relativism. Cultural relativism is "not judging a culture but trying to understand it on its own terms," and it exactly what you are able to do once you can put yourself in someone elses shoes are truely relate to what is being said.