77 result in genocide—the deliberate and systematic S P O T L I G H T on social theory destruction of a cultural, racial, or political group. According to conflict theorists, Much of the history of more powerful groups within colonialism, in which one society dominate less powerful country conquers or ones. Can you think of an example dominates others, is the of a powerful group’s demonizing or story of ethnocentrism in belittling a less powerful group’s culture? Why would the powerful action. The Europeans group find it advantageous to do so? who conquered much of the world from the sixteenth century into the twentieth were confi dent that their way of life was superior to that of the people whose lands they colonized. They often sought to “civilize” the native peoples, teaching them their language, and converting them to Christianity. As the native peoples resisted to protect their way of life, the result was centuries of confl ict. In contrast to ethnocentrism, cultural relativism is the practice of understanding a culture by its own standards. Cultural relativism does not require adopting or agreeing with the ideas and practices of another culture, but rather making the effort to understand the culture on its own terms and with a willingness to acknowledge it as a viable alternative to one’s own. In other words, to practice cultural relativism we need to understand a culture, not judge it, as, for example, when we seek to learn about religious rituals or family traditions in a different culture. Studying cultures other than their own (an especially important task in this era of globalization) often requires sociologists to practice cultural relativism so that they can focus their attention on a group’s unique values, beliefs, and practices. Such cross-cultural understanding is diffi cult to achieve; it is hard for any of us to operate outside of the nurture and promote consensus, cohesiveness, and solidarity through a shared collective identity. However, just as the common bond of culture creates a sense of “us,” it can also create a sense of “them”—those outside the culture who are different in some way. Perhaps the outsiders speak a different language, practice a different religion, dress differently, or are from a different social class. Whatever the distinction, as those who share a culture increase the sense that they have a common bond, they often have a tendency to marginalize, belittle, or even demonize “outsiders” who have a different culture. Cultural confl ict is most likely to emerge when values and beliefs differ among different cultures. Contrasting beliefs about religion and clashes over core values have been the source of or justifi cation for many confl icts over the centuries. Unlike questions that can be answered with scientifi c evidence, disputes about values and beliefs cannot be resolved by appeals to reason. The cultural confl icts that result from these disputes can be intense and ongoing. One source of cultural confl ict is ethnocentrism, the judging of other cultures by the standards of one’s own on the assumption that one’s own is superior. Out of ignorance, the social worker mentioned earlier in this chapter was being ethnocentric in judging the Native American family’s childrearing practices through the lens of her own culture. Had she known more about how children are brought up in that society, she would have understood that the family had a different approach that could also achieve the goal of raising a healthy child. This family’s experience is a relatively mild example, but ethnocentrism can have harsh and even violent consequences if members of one culture act upon a conviction that their ideas, values, and way of life are superior to those of another culture. An ethnocentric worldview can be the source of xenophobia, the unreasonable fear and hatred of foreigners or people from other cultures, which, at its extreme, can The infamously xenophobic Ku Klux Klan, which had several million members during its heyday in the 1920s, appropriated Christian symbolism to promote a white supremacist agenda that asserted the superiority of white Protestants and attacked the supposedly alien influence of black people and most immigrants, including non-Protestant whites. Today, some Muslim extremists similarly invoke religious symbolism in calling for attacks against perceived threats from the alien cultural influence of nonbelievers. Just as most Christians rejected the Klan, most Muslims reject these extremist views. Cultural Diversity
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