How Human Beings Accept their Differences
During an anthropology class, I watched the film “Disappearing world: The Kayapo Indians of the Brazilian rainforest” (Caird & Beckham, 1987) and felt a little strangeness when I encountered some of their customs like hunting turtles and rituals with a different dancing style. But how can we avoid this feeling? You probably felt it when you heard about behaviours and beliefs of any other society, such as eating grasshoppers among Chinese people, veiling among Muslim women, beliefs in witchcraft, or arranged marriages. In fact, ethnocentric biases is based on judging other societies and cultures from one’s own views and standards (Kennedy, 2014); as a result, the beliefs or practices of other societies …show more content…
Most people consider that the familiar opinions, explanations, and customs are true and moral (Gezon & Kottak, 2014, p.30). So, if you are ready to know another culture and talk with people of this society, you will get acquainted with their behaviours. You will also recognize that people think their own culture is the right one in the world. As well as you think your own cultural ideals, values, and beliefs are right, this ethnic group also considers that its culture is true one. An example is the transmission of culture through learning. By enculturation process, children are in contact with many practices of their ethnic group. When they grow up and become more familiar with the culture, it turns into a common right culture because their parents and friends share the same ideals and practices (Kennedy, 2014, …show more content…
Although each culture seems isolated with your own set of features, we can find some common behaviours, customs, or ideals to know that humans are not completely different; and we can give a chance to be familiar with the differences. Diverse ethnicities are interacting all the time and borrowing some cultural traits (Kennedy, 2014); as a result, they share some cultural features that can decrease the ethnocentric barriers and promote the acceptance of another culture. For instance, when the Portuguese colonized Brazil in 16th century, they taught their language to Brazilian Indians. So, sharing the same language was a possibility to learn about the other culture by understanding their behaviours and beliefs and accept
During an anthropology class, I watched the film “Disappearing world: The Kayapo Indians of the Brazilian rainforest” (Caird & Beckham, 1987) and felt a little strangeness when I encountered some of their customs like hunting turtles and rituals with a different dancing style. But how can we avoid this feeling? You probably felt it when you heard about behaviours and beliefs of any other society, such as eating grasshoppers among Chinese people, veiling among Muslim women, beliefs in witchcraft, or arranged marriages. In fact, ethnocentric biases is based on judging other societies and cultures from one’s own views and standards (Kennedy, 2014); as a result, the beliefs or practices of other societies …show more content…
Most people consider that the familiar opinions, explanations, and customs are true and moral (Gezon & Kottak, 2014, p.30). So, if you are ready to know another culture and talk with people of this society, you will get acquainted with their behaviours. You will also recognize that people think their own culture is the right one in the world. As well as you think your own cultural ideals, values, and beliefs are right, this ethnic group also considers that its culture is true one. An example is the transmission of culture through learning. By enculturation process, children are in contact with many practices of their ethnic group. When they grow up and become more familiar with the culture, it turns into a common right culture because their parents and friends share the same ideals and practices (Kennedy, 2014, …show more content…
Although each culture seems isolated with your own set of features, we can find some common behaviours, customs, or ideals to know that humans are not completely different; and we can give a chance to be familiar with the differences. Diverse ethnicities are interacting all the time and borrowing some cultural traits (Kennedy, 2014); as a result, they share some cultural features that can decrease the ethnocentric barriers and promote the acceptance of another culture. For instance, when the Portuguese colonized Brazil in 16th century, they taught their language to Brazilian Indians. So, sharing the same language was a possibility to learn about the other culture by understanding their behaviours and beliefs and accept