These two articles were really interesting and painted a good picture of a completely different culture from my own. Anyways, if an inexperienced anthropology student, much like myself, wasn't really aware of ethnocentrism, then these articles could be see in the wrong context. Richard Lee's article was really interesting since he had been a part of the Bushman's culture for three years, but he still had ethnocentric tendencies. I don't think he saw his culture as better, but he assumed the Bushmen were attacking him at random because of the "skinny ox situation." He thought his choice in the Christmas ox was right, and he didn't really get to the bottom of the situation until the day of the Christmas feast when he found out the Bushmen were playing a joke on him the entire time. He even thought "the Christmas feast was evidently going to be a disaster, and the incessant complaints about the meagerness of the ox had already taken the fun out of it for me. Moreover, I was getting bored with the wisecracks, and after losing my temper a few times, I resolved to serve the beast anyway. If the meat fell short, the hell with it." In reality though, the Bushman were really accepting Lee into their culture and treating him the same as they would any other man in the tribe. They teased him and played down his efforts to keep him humble and not become a braggart. Lee didn't realize any of this though, and managed to get his feelings somewhat hurt because he saw his decision in the ox as right in his judgement, not in the eyes of the tribesmen.
Napoleon Chagnon also tended to have an ethnocentric view of the Yanomamo people. The entire article, in my opinion, made it seem these people lead violent lives since the men were always going off to war, and the women were used as currency. This isn't viewed as something positive in Western culture, but anthropologists aren't supposed to be critical of the people they study. Also, one line of Chagnon's article stood out to me: "life is relatively easy in the sense that they can 'earn a living' with about three hours' work per day." Now these people are considered lazy, a characteristic that is viewed negatively by our culture. I'm sure if Chagnon spoke to these people in their language, they would have a completely different opinion about their "laziness."
I know I not completely immune to ethnocentrism as well, there have been a few instances, which I went back and thought about, where I assumed my culture was right, or even better, than someone else. I can turn on the news right now and watch the war going on in the Middle East, and think to myself..."geez, who would want to live in those kinds of places? It's all desert and filled with terrorists."I know that seems silly saying that, but it does cross my mind sometimes watching too much media and television. I don't really understand the culture and their customs, so it is a bit arrogant and ethnocentric of me to have those views even before I have a real understanding of the Middle Eastern culture.
Indeed Stephanie, we cannot escape ethnocentrism's grasp on us. It is actually kind of discouraging, isn't it? We can tell ourselves all we want that we know another culture is different from our own, but we can't really accept those differences without letting go of some belief or custom we have that is important in our culture. Kind of a vicious cycle. Even here in the US where the majority of people share similar customs and traditions there is always room for some form of ethnocentrism between us. Such as (purposely or not), classifying someone based on their wealth, or race or religion. It's strange, growing up non-Christian in the bible belt sure can stir up some unwanted conversation. I never knew how difficult it was for some people to accept another person not sharing their same religion. It's not that most Christians have a real problem with me, they literally just cannot understand how I was raised without the church, simply because for them it was such a HUGE part of their upbringing. Honestly, it is just as difficult for me to imagine growing up with Christianity as it is for them to imagine not having it. Funny.
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