Ethnocentrism & Cultural Relativism

This week in sociology we began learning about culture. Culture is defined as the language, beliefs, values, norms, behaviors, and even material objects that are passed from one generation to the next. The first thing we started discussing was how ethnocentrism judges another's culture as in terms of ones own norms and values. I thought it was interesting that what we believe is normal to us is different in other cultures. For example, we think our food is normal and smells good, but food in other cultures is wrong and smells bad, or how we think it's normal to sit on a toilet when we go to the bathroom, but in japan they think it's normal to squat because it's more sanitary. We also learned about the alternative to ethnocentrism, which is cultural relativism, and what that is, is understanding unfamiliar values and norms and suspending cultural standards we've known all our lives. In my opinion, I feel like most people should stay open-minded about other cultures and not be judgmental about the way they do things differently because it can decrease competition and limit peoples opinions of another culture due to race.