Ethnocentrism and Cultural Evolution: Understanding Differences

Ethnocentrism and Cultural Relativism

Ethnocentrism is the belief that one's own culture is the center of the world, in the sense that all other cultures are classified according to their degree of approximation to the mainstream culture. Ethnocentrism has sometimes been presented as a scientific doctrine, as the Nazis attempted to establish rigorous biological criteria to distinguish different races. A graphic illustration of the critique of ethnocentrism is provided by the anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss when he says that "The savage is he who calls another savage."

Although ethnocentrism is a critical concept, not all human cultures are comparable because there are significant differences between their cultural traits. While no culture is superior to others in all aspects, it is true that certain cultures are more comprehensive than others. A given culture can encompass another when it is capable of incorporating all of the other culture's features. The most comprehensive of all cultures deserve the name of "civilized cultures."

Defining Civilization

Civilization can be defined as a set of cultural traits characteristic of state societies that know how to write. This condition involves socioeconomic inequality. Any social group that does not have these cultural features will not be considered civilized. The anthropologist Edward Tylor distinguished three stages of cultural evolution:

• Savagery
• Barbarism
• Civilization

Hominization: The Evolution of Humankind

Key aspects of hominization include:

• Increased cranial capacity: From 600 cm³ in apes to 1,300 cm³ in humans.
• Bipedalism: Walking upright, which frees the upper limbs for tool use.
• Opposable thumb: Development of the opposable thumb, which enables manual dexterity and the ability to make tools, a fundamental aspect of technological development.
• Larynx evolution: Development of the larynx, allowing for linguistic articulation.

These factors are independent of genetic endowment but are influenced by learning. Thanks to this factor, a larger or more complex brain is the neurological basis of a superior ability to learn from the environment and transmit knowledge. Tool use is linked to both human nature and cranial capacity. Anthropologists refer to the "cultural takeoff" as the point that distinguishes the development of human culture from the rudimentary cultures of animals.

Language vs. Animal Communication

The difference between human language and animal communication is that the former consists of signs, while the latter consists of signals. Animal communication transmits information on present situations, here and now, so that the signals are indexes in that situation; that is, they are effects caused by the observation of certain relevant facts (presence of food, a predator, etc.). For example, an alarm signal is indicative of the presence of a predator and triggers the escape of a gang of green monkeys.

Peirce's Three Types of Signs

According to Charles Sanders Peirce, there are three types of signs:

• Icons: Signs that resemble their referent.
• Indexes: Signs that have no resemblance to what they designate but have some causal relationship with the designated object.
• Symbols: Signs that have no resemblance to what they designate, nor are they causally related to it, but are purely conventional.