Is a belief that ones cultural values beliefs and attitudes are superior to others?

Abstract

The term ethnocentrism passed from social science theory into common English usage during the twentieth century. In present usage it means the belief that one’s culture is superior to others the use of a frame of reference derived from one’s own culture to judge the arrtibutes of another culture, often in disparaging terms. The term was apparently invented in 1906 by the sociologist William Graham Sumner, who conceptualized it as a means of promoting solidarity within what he called ‘ingroups’ and antagonism toward ‘outgroups.’ He claimed ethnocentrism in this sociological as well as cultural sense to be a universal tendency of intergroup relations among humans. After 1950 Sumner’s theory came under criticism from sociologists, who argued that individuals often belong to multiple groups and often admire outgroups, and from anthropologists, who described parts of the world in which ethnic identities, and thus alliances and antagonisms, were unstable historically. As Sumner’s sociological formulation and claims of universality lost credibility, the vlaue of the ethnocentrism concept as a descriptor of recurrent attitudes gave it a permanent home in the English language.

Ethnocentrism

The term ‘ethnocentrism’ combines the original Greek word ‘ethnos’ with the word ‘center,’ and its literal translation is that a particular ‘ethnos’ (ethnic group, nation, or people) is in the center. The concept has existed since at least the 1870s, and it was probably Ludwig Gumplowicz (born 9 March 1838; died 19/20 August 1909) who coined the concept (Gumplowicz, 1879, 1881), and used it in his books and papers written in German and Polish. William G. Sumner (born 30 October 1840; died 12 April 1910) later adopted and popularized the concept (Sumner, 1906). Given that Sumner did not reference Gumplowicz's work on ethnocentrism, later researchers (e.g., Adorno et al., 1950; LeVine and Campbell, 1972) have incorrectly credited Sumner with inventing the concept in 1906 (for the early conceptual history, see Bizumic, 2014).

Gumplowicz saw ethnocentrism as a similar concept to geocentrism and anthropocentrism, but with a focus on one's own ethnic group or people. He viewed it as a belief that one's own ethnic group is more important, superior, and better than any other group. Sumner similarly saw ethnocentrism as a “view of things in which one's own group is the center of everything, and all others are scaled and rated with reference to it” (Sumner, 1906: p. 13). He also included feelings of ingroup devotion and cohesion as well as rejection of outgroups, group superiority, and exploitative intergroup relations in his explicit conceptualizations of ethnocentrism (Sumner, 1906, 1911). Sumner, however, also assumed that ethnocentrism would almost always translate into outgroup negativity, and that ingroup positivity and outgroup negativity are highly intercorrelated.

Later social scientists based their conceptualizations of ethnocentrism on Sumner's writings, and given the complexity and breadth of his discussions of ethnocentrism, they tended to see it in various ways. Certain researchers have focused on intragroup factors, others on intergroup factors, and still others on outgroup factors. Occasionally, and influenced by the work of Theodor W. Adorno and colleagues (Adorno et al., 1950), ethnocentrism has been seen primarily as hostility or prejudice against a variety of outgroups. The influential book on theories of ethnocentrism by Robert LeVine and David Campbell focused on Sumner's conceptualizations and identified 23 facets in ethnocentrism, which they conceived as potentially a single dimension consisting of ingroup positivity and outgroup negativity (LeVine and Campbell, 1972). Empirical research, however, suggested that ingroup positivity (i.e., ingroup love) and outgroup negativity (i.e., outgroup hate) are often unrelated phenomena and not necessarily mutually interdependent (Brewer, 1999). Indeed, more recent cross-cultural measurement of ethnocentrism has suggested that there are two kinds of ethnocentrism: (1) intragroup ethnocentrism, which includes a sense of strong group cohesion and devotion to one's own ethnic group, and (2) intergroup ethnocentrism, which includes preference for ethnic ingroups over outgroups, a belief in ethnic superiority, a desire to maintain ethnic purity, and approval of exploitation of ethnic outgroups if it is in the interest of one's own ethnic group (Bizumic and Duckitt, 2012). These two kinds of ethnocentrism express a strong belief in the importance of one's own ethnic group and cover most historical definitions of ethnocentrism. These two kinds of ethnocentrism were shown to be empirically and conceptually distinct from mere ingroup positivity and outgroup negativity or prejudice.

Ethnocentrism, Social Identity, and Social Dominance

The concept of ethnocentrism, developed in the disciplines of sociology and anthropology, has been incorporated as an important element of the social psychology of conflict analysis. Referring initially to a tendency of social groups to be ethnically centered in that they see themselves to be superior while holding other groups in contempt, ethnocentrism has been largely cast as a form of generalized prejudice toward all manner of out-groups. Ethnocentrism took a lead position in the development of realistic group conflict theory, which posits that real conflicts of interest cause intergroup conflict. Incompatible goals and competition over scarce resources are seen to result in real threat, which increases in-group solidarity and awareness of identity, causes hostility to the source of the threat, and increases ethnocentric reactions (LeVine and Campbell, 1972; Sherif, 1966). As ethnocentrism moves to higher levels, it is predicted that the cognitive distortions noted above increase in the direction of more extreme stereotypes, negative enemy images, and influential self-serving biases.

A more recent line of theorizing, social identity theory, puts less emphasis on real conflicts of interest and more on the processes of social categorization and identity formation in causing intergroup conflict (Tajfel, 1982). It appears that the mere fact of categorizing individuals into groups gives rise to a perception of heightened similarity within groups along with exaggerated differences among groups. Identity groups are typically defined in ethnic, racial, religious, cultural, or national terms and are the object of identification by their members in ways that constitute an important element of their social identity. It is posited that individuals strive to enhance their self-esteem, which in part derives from the social groups to which they belong, resulting in motivation to achieve and maintain a positive social identity. This leads to making favorable comparisons with other groups, in which one's own group is seen as distinctive and held in higher regard, while other groups may be the objects of derogation and discrimination. In this way, a different explanation is offered for ethnocentrism in comparison to realistic group conflict theory. At the same time, the two theories can be seen as complementary, in that both help explain the insidious power of group and intergroup dynamics to exacerbate conflicts of interest.

Social dominance theory augments the above two theories by affirming group differences in power and status while also explaining individual differences in out-group discrimination (Sidanius and Pratto, 1999). Individuals vary in their social dominance orientation, and those who are high on social dominance support ideologies and policies that legitimize hierarchies among groups, and individual and institutional discrimination in favor of more powerful groups in the hierarchy. Social dominance theory thus complements both realistic group conflict theory and social identity theory by adding a dimension of individual differences, much like the syndrome of authoritarianism, which can help explain the causation and maintenance of conflict between different groups in society.

Pluralism and Multiculturalism

Yet philosophers who reject ethnocentrism, relativism, and isolationism must still confront the persistence of ethical diversity and disagreement and the challenges they pose, especially in the culturally complex societies found in large, modern nation-states. An increasingly influential response, associated with some forms of ethical pluralism, is the doctrine of multiculturalism, which in its most familiar form recommends that we act and judge on the presumption that the ethical beliefs and practices of every way of life are in principle valuable and worthy of respect. But compelling philosophical discussions of multiculturalism have construed this presumption as, at best, a ‘starting hypothesis,’ maintaining that a final verdict on the worth of any practice must always await the results of respectful, but sustained, critical reflection (Taylor, 1992). In response, some philosophers have urged adoption of a critical multiculturalism (as a form of objectivist ethical pluralism) that leaves open the possibility that reflection on almost any practice might generate rationally compelling grounds on which to reject the practice as ethically indefensible (Moody-Adams, 1997).

The question of how to put multiculturalism into practice has also been a central topic of debate in contemporary ethical and political philosophy. Some theorists have developed a model of ‘multicultural citizenship’ for culturally complex liberal democracies that is centered around formal political accommodation of cultural minorities (Kymlicka, 1996; Modood, 2007). These efforts have generated resistance from theorists who cite conflicts with the individualist assumptions of liberal political philosophy, and with the secular neutrality thought to be central to the most familiar variants of liberal thought. In other contexts, political debates about whether the idea of nationality can be separated from the idea of a single defining ethnic and cultural heritage continues to generate controversy about the possibility of a politically robust multiculturalism (Parekh, 2002). The challenge of moving beyond the theoretical and practical dimensions of this impasse between multiculturalism and its critics will remain an important element of normative ethics and political philosophy in the twenty-first century.

Universality

Kohlberg has been accused of ethnocentrism and gender bias in claiming universal validity for a stage model that was initially developed from interviews with males in the USA only. Two issues are at stake: first, is there a universal core to morality, and second, is Kohlberg's stage sequence universal? The first issue is dealt with theoretically in moral philosophy and practically in endeavors to win worldwide acceptance for human rights. The second issue sparked extensive empirical research (see Gender Differences in Personality and Social Behavior; Ethnocentrism).

The universal presence of Stages 1–4 is reported in a review of 45 studies from 27 widely diverse cultures involving over 5000 subjects. Postconventional thinking was found in urban samples only, not in traditional tribal or village societies either in Western or non-Western cultures (Snarey, 1985). Principled thinking thus seems a ‘metalevel’ feature necessary for adjudicating conflicts between subculture-specific norms and not required in normatively integrated and isolated cultures.

Gilligan (1982) has claimed the existence of two moralities: a rigid justice orientation more typical for males (corresponding to Stage 4) and a flexible morality of care and responsibility more typical for females (corresponding to Stage 3). Empirically, reviews of research involving 19 000 subjects have shown that either there are no stage differences between the sexes (Lind et al., 1987) or else they tend not to disadvantage women, or to disappear when education and employment are controlled for (Walker, 1984). Conceptually, Gilligan starts from a more encompassing understanding of morality than Kohlberg by including questions about the good life. Also, there are some theoretical confusions: ‘care’ often is experienced as a ‘duty’ by women, and flexibility – if not a mere reflection of powerlessness – seems a correlate of a modern secularized moral understanding (‘ethics of responsibility,’ Max Weber) rather than of sex membership.

Original Theory of the Authoritarian Personality and the F Scale

It was in 1950 with the publication of a classic volume titled The Authoritarian Personality that these ideas finally became prominent in the social sciences. In this volume the authors (Adorno et al., 1950) theoretically elaborated a theory of the authoritarian personality and reported the results of a multipronged decade-long program of research testing the theory. Their investigation had begun with the objective of explaining the psychological bases of anti-Semitism. This was shown to be part of a much broader ethnocentric pattern involving a generalized dislike of out-groups and minorities, as well as an excessive and uncritical Nationalism. Anti-Semitism and ethnocentrism were also strongly related to political and economic conservatism. These attitudes and beliefs appeared to cluster together to form a coherent pattern, and this patterning seemed best explained as an expression of basic needs within the personality.

Evidence from a number of sources and particularly their own research comparing persons high and low in ethnocentrism on indices and ratings scored blind from interview data, and projective test protocols suggested that a constellation of nine tightly covarying traits characterized this authoritarian personality syndrome. Moreover, these traits seemed to be directly expressed in particular ‘implicitly antidemocratic,’ or authoritarian, attitudes and beliefs. This meant that it would be possible to identify authoritarian personalities by the degree to which people would agree with these ‘implicitly antidemocratic’ attitudes and beliefs. On this basis, Adorno et al. (1950) developed their famous F scale consisting of items expressing attitudes which were believed to be direct expressions of each of the nine ‘traits’ of the authoritarian personality syndrome. These nine ‘traits’ are listed below with their gist definitions in parentheses followed by an example in quotation marks:

Conventionalism (rigid adherence to conventional middle-class values): “A person who has bad manners, habits, and breeding can hardly expect to get along with decent people.”

Authoritarian submission (a submissive, uncritical attitude toward authorities): “Obedience and respect for authority are the most important virtues children should learn.”

Authoritarian aggression (tendency to condemn, reject, and punish people who violate conventional values): “Homosexuals are hardly better than criminals, and ought to be severely punished.”

• Anti-intraception (opposition to the subjective, imaginative, and tender-minded): “Nowadays more and more people are prying into matters that should remain personal and private.”

Superstition and stereotypy (belief in mystical determinants of the individual's fate, disposition to think in rigid categories): “Some day it will probably be shown that astrology can explain a lot of things.”

Power and toughness (preoccupation with the dominance–submission, strong–weak, leader–follower dimension; identification with power, strength, toughness): “People can be divided into two distinct classes, the weak and the strong.”

Destructiveness and cynicism (generalized hostility, vilification of the human): “Human nature being what it is, there will always be war and conflict.”

Projectivity (disposition to believe that wild and dangerous things go on in the world; the projection outward of unconscious emotional impulses): “Most people do not realize how much our lives are controlled by plots hatched in secret places.”

Sex (an exaggerated concern with sexual ‘goings-on’): “The wild sex life of the old Greeks and Romans was tame compared to some of the ‘goings-on’ in these regions, even in places where people might least expect it.”

Adorno et al.'s (1950) theoretical explanation for the origin of this authoritarian personality drew heavily on psychodynamic theory. It suggested that overstrict, harsh, and punitive parental socialization sets up an enduring conflict within the individual. In this conflict, parental punitiveness engenders resentment and hostility toward parental authority and by extension all authority, but cannot be expressed because of fear of and dependence on the all-powerful parents. The anger and hostility are therefore repressed and replaced by an uncritical idealization of the parents and conventional authority and submission to them. The repressed anger and hostility toward authority does not disappear but is displaced and directed toward substitute targets, notably those seen as being sanctioned by conventional authority, such as vulnerable and culturally deviant out-groups and minorities. These inner impulses and conflicts are then directly expressed in the nine surface trait components of the authoritarian personality and those implicit antidemocratic beliefs sampled by the F scale.

Initially, this theory inspired a great deal of enthusiasm. It seemed to effectively tie together concepts over an extremely broad range – from individual psychodynamics to sociological phenomena of immense significance for human society and history. In the two decades following the publication of their book, the F scale was used in hundreds of studies as a measure of an authoritarian personality dimension. These studies confirmed that scores on the F scale were strongly correlated to right-wing attitudes, political conservatism, nationalism, and generalized prejudice against out-groups and minorities (see, e.g., the review by Brown, 1965).

Culture or Ontology?

The author has already suggested that contemporary interpretations of magic are entangled in a paradox: in trying to combat the ethnocentrism that portrays magic as an irrational practice, they end up, unwittingly and unwillingly no doubt, being ethnocentric themselves. It may be the case that magic ritualizes hope and optimism, that witchcraft makes accidents meaningful, that sex avoidance expresses social conflicts, that the devil symbolizes the nature of capitalism, and so on but this is not how the people involved in these beliefs and practices understand them. As far as they are concerned, magic before a fishing expedition in the open sea ensures safety and a good catch, witchcraft is a force in the body of the witch that flies at night and attacks its unsuspecting victims, contact with menstrual blood causes serious harm, and the devil is a malevolent supernatural force. If anthropological interpretations are valid, the inescapable conclusion is that natives suffer from a ‘cultural unconscious’ (Argyrou, 2002). They may not be irrational but they are certainly ignorant of the true meaning of their magical beliefs and practices.

It is problems such as these that seem to be behind a recent call to replace the notion of culture with that of ontology (e.g., Viveiros de Castro, 2003; Holbraad, 2010). The problem with cultural analysis, according to the argument, is that it posits one reality that is open to different representations – one nature, many cultures. This is a problem because in this schema only one representation can be valid – usually the Western representation. An ontological perspective, by contrast, posits multiple realities, which means that other ways of life can no longer be treated as misrepresentations of reality. They are realities in their own right and if anthropologists are to understand them, they need to expand their conceptual horizons.

Can this theorization of other ways of life save the day? Without further elaboration of the thesis, it is too early to tell. One question, however, may be raised: does this thesis not posit a reality (of multiple ontologies) that the natives are once again not aware of?

Two Dominant Approaches to Interethnic Conflict

There are two dominant approaches to studying interethnic conflict: primordialism and instrumentalism (Che, 2016; Bayar, 2009). Primordialists suggest the ubiquity of ethnocentrism. Ethnocentrism is the belief that one's ethnic in-group is superior and that ethnic out-groups are inferior. It also suggests the appropriateness of judging the world from the perspective of one's own ethnic group. Primordialists argue that the aggression of in-groups toward out-groups is rooted in a primordial urge linking group identity with specific ascriptive characteristics, often ethnicity and/or race. Thus, ethnic identity, in this view, emerges naturally. Primordialists assume that in-group relationships are more peaceful, orderly, and supportive, while out-group relationships are conflictual, anarchic, and destructive. Primordialists insist that ethnic similarity leads to cooperation and ethnic difference leads to interethnic conflict. Few theorists grant wholesale acceptance to primordial arguments except for sociobiologists following social Darwinist tenets.

Instrumentalists posit that interethnic conflict does not emerge from any “natural” division of groups into nations but is the result of elite manipulation of communal appeals to pursue their own interests. Instrumentalists conclude that cultural difference does not necessitate conflict (Che, 2016). Furthermore, Che (2016) argues, it only makes it easier for elites to move their societies closer to hostility and rivalry. In this case, instrumentalists insist that ethnicity is malleable and its boundaries and content are subject to change. Instrumentalists emphasize the instances of positive orientation toward out-groups prevalent throughout social intercourse.

Further, in-groups and out-groups are often subgroups within larger social organizations, and social integration can encompass previously separated groups. For instrumentalists, ethnicity does not emerge naturally but is a result of socialization under elite and communal pressures and orientations into the lifeways of one's dominant community (Che, 2016). Banton (2000) relates the socialization process inculcates common language, religion, customs, dress, food, etc. Still, it also instills a sense of group fidelity and affinity while simultaneously inculcating a sense of out-group enmity. However, instrumentalists remind us that while powerful, these processes are neither uniform, singular, nor irreversible. Groups into which persons are socialized are not always the ones they would like to belong to, feel loyal, or adopt their standards. People have multiple, often crisscrossing identities, and travel and intergroup communication often make these crisscrossing identities more salient than the singular ones that may have resulted from socialization. In fact, individuals are often socialized into multilingual, cosmopolitan, and quite gregarious groups toward ethnically dissimilar neighbors.

Therefore, instrumentalists maintain that primordialists adopt a myopic view of socialization and then promote this unique instance—which should only be considered a particular case—as representative of a general tendency. To be sure, socialization is an important mechanism for transferring ethnic amity toward in-groups and enmity toward out-groups; however, instrumentalists maintain—socialization is complex, malleable, and much less invariant than primordialists insist.

Not only do instrumentalists emphasize more excellent prospects for intergroup cooperation and multiculturalism, but, eschewing the notion of the inherent tendency of in-group/out-group conflict, they implicitly suggest the dominant role of elite manipulation of cultural difference as a causal factor in interethnic conflict. Che (2016) also suggests that, at the extreme, some instrumentalists suggest that ethnicities are “constructed” (see Chandra, 2012). Such assessments are only partially correct; for example, a perceived Chinese threat to Bugis, Javanese, and Minangkabau helped fuse those identities into ethnic Malay. While their brethren fight on the subcontinent as rival Hindu and Muslim, in South Africa and Uganda, such groups identified primarily as Indians. Nonetheless, the boundary between Malay and Chinese is not imagined, nor is the boundary among Acholi, Buganda, and Indian. While ethnic leaders may exploit perceived differences to promote their interests unless they respond to actual grievances and aspirations, their movements flounder. Efforts to “construct” ethnic identities without a cultural basis are often unsuccessful, as evidenced in the failure to promote the “Occitanian” identity in southern France in the 1960s or the effort to create a “Pandanian” identity among northern Italians in the 1990s.

In sum, primordialists suggest a natural division of humanity into ethnic families that are prone to conflict. At the same time, instrumentalists focus on the social construction of ethnicity and elite manipulation of cultural differences as essential factors in the interethnic conflict. Early systematic research on the role of cultural similarity in conflict suggests a relationship between the distribution of ethnic groups and a state's level of internal conflict. The findings indicated that ethnically diverse states are at risk for interethnic conflict. On the other hand, states in which ethnic groups are relatively equally distributed are at the highest risk for interethnic conflict, and ethnically homogeneous states are the least likely to experience interethnic conflict. On the interstate level, the findings have been less persuasive. Early research found, at best, weak relationships between cultural similarity and interstate conflict. Scholars suggested that ethnic similarity is often associated with conflict since ethnically similar groups often live close to each other with more opportunities to interact. Recent scholarship has begun to challenge these earlier findings with results that demonstrate that cultural variables are significant predictors of interstate conflict.

Primordialism and instrumentalism are more ideal types than mutually exclusive frameworks, and most research on interethnic conflict borrows aspects of both (Galvan, 2006). Both approaches suggest that ethnocentrism is an essential precipitant to interethnic conflict. Synthesizing aspects of primordialism and instrumentalism, scholars emphasize the role of displacement, territorial imperatives, relative deprivation, and ethnic divisions of labor as factors complicit in motivating ethnic groups to conflict. In the next section, we discuss each of these approaches, in turn, to flesh out the rationale encouraging ethnic groups to conflict and cooperation.

Toward a Definition of Racism for Historical Purposes

Somewhere between the view that race is a peculiar modern idea without much historical precedent and the notion that it is simply an extension of the ancient phenomena of ethnocentrism and xenophobia may lie a working definition that is neither too broad for historical specificity or too narrow to cover more than the limited span of Western history during which a racism based on scientific theories of human variation was widely accepted. If racism is defined as an ideology rather than as a theory, links can be established between belief and practice that the history of ideas may obscure. But ideologies have content, and it is necessary to distinguish racist ideologies from other belief systems that emphasize human differences and can be used as rationalizations of inequality. The classic sociological distinction between racism and ethnocentrism is helpful, but not perhaps in the usual sense, in which the key variable is whether differences are described in cultural or physical terms. It is actually quite difficult in specific historical cases to say whether appearance or ‘culture’ is the source of the salient differences, because culture can be reified and essentialized to the point where it has the same deterministic effect as skin color. But it would stretch the concept of racism much too far to make it cover the pride and loyalty that may result from ethnic identity. Such groupcenteredness may engender prejudice and discrimination against those outside the group, but two additional elements would seem to be required before the categorization of racism is justified. One is a belief that the differences between the ethnic groups involved are permanent and ineradicable. If conversion or assimilation is genuinely on offer, we have religious or cultural intolerance but not racism. The second is the social side of the ideology – its linkage to patterns of domination or exclusion. To attempt a short formulation, we might say that racism exists when one ethnic group or historical collectivity dominates, excludes, or seeks to eliminate another on the basis of differences that it believes are hereditary and unalterable.

Prejudice as a Normal Process

In the early 1970s, Tajfel et al. (1971) imagined a minimal group situation that would serve as a baseline to which variables would be added to obtain discrimination between groups. To their surprise, mere categorization sufficed to lead to ethnocentrism, also called ingroup favoritism bias. Although this bias is not necessarily linked to outgroup derogation, researchers interpreted the phenomenon as discriminatory. A misunderstanding of the minimal group situation thus led people to consider that prejudice was a normal and inevitable process that would provide a positive social identity to group members. Tajfel (1981) proposed the social identity theory that became a main worldwide influx to work on intergroup relations and especially on prejudice from the point of view of dominant and dominated groups. With the variables of permeability (vs impermeability), stability (vs instability), and legitimacy (vs illegitimacy), Tajfel offered precise hypothesis concerning individual mobility and social (intergroup) change.

Beliefs in normality were reinforced by uncontrollable behaviors. All people know the negative stereotypes held by different groups and many do not share them. When they are overloaded by a demanding environment and in need of cognitive capacities, however, they may let prejudice leak. Such perspective makes a clear distinction between beliefs or stereotypes, on the one hand, and prejudice, on the other (Devine, 1989). It should be noted, however, that most books on prejudice (or racism) associate it with stereotypes and discrimination.