Psychology Project: Ethnocentricism

[mijan]

I've been handed a very interesting project topic for my individual presentation in my Psych 101 class. Ethnocentricism. Yeaaaah, talk about a loaded topic, but hell, it FASCINATES me. Technically, it's "Ethnocentricism and Prejudice

Comments

[igrockspock]

The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman is an amazing piece of literary non-fiction about a Hmong girl in the United States with severe epilepsy. Her parents, war refugees from Laos, completely lack the ability to understand her condition. Because the Hmong regard cutting open the body as sacriligeous, their language doesn't even contain words for every human organ, much less concepts like neurons and synapses. They care for her as best they can with traditional medicine, but they just don't have much interest or use for Western medicine. The understaffed public hospital that's treating her really has no understanding of Hmong culture, so they end up calling child protective services and the little girl gets taken away from her family. It's one of the most fascinating books I've ever read, and it could make an amazing case study for your class.

[rokikurama]

I feel so happy to be able to offer something back after years of semi-lurking on your lj! Disclaimer: I'm a communications/cultural studies and media grad student, so all of this might not be as relevant to psych

*Richard Dyer's book White: Essays on Race and Culture is a (perhaps ironically) good resource on ethnocentrism because he explicates how white people often take their race privilege for granted, not even noticing how it act.

*Lisa Nakamura's work on race and cyberculture feels a bit dated, but the concepts are pretty classic (though I don't agree with all of her points, she makes them clearly) Cybertypes is the book I'm thinking of, particularly her chapter "Head-Hunting on the Internet: Identity Tourism, Avatars, and Racial Passing in Textual and Graphic Chat Spaces."

I hope this helps and would love to talk more about it (if they're useful or not!)

[mijan]

Oh fabulous! Thank you! I'll definitely look into them. :D

Also, lurk less, comment more! ♥

[rokikurama]

I'll try :-)

Also, dunno if it's too late, but the article below on the "weird" (white, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic) subject pool for much social science work (i.e. college students participating in experiments for course credit) is also good for showing how identity-centrism works.

Behavioral and Brain Sciences / Volume 33 / Issue 2-3 / June 2010, pp 61-83
"The weirdest people in the world?"
Joseph Henrich, Steven J. Heine and Ara Norenzayan

[roseandheather]

I'm certainly not able to point you in the direction of any relevant books - I'm a vet nurse, nothing else - but if you ever want a first-person perspective on living in a completely foreign country as a distinct racial minority and how I dealt with it, feel free to throw a few questions my way, I'd be happy to give you an informal perspective. Just for God's sakes don't use me as an official source!

Full disclosure: the country in question was Malaysia, the primary racial makeup was Malay, Tamil Indian, and Chinese, and I was seven at the time.

[parthenia14]

Tajfel's work on ingroups/outgroups (or, the classic social psychological reasons why we Other other people) - probably updated since I studied it, but definitely Social Psychology 101. He proposes certain biases that cause us to consider our group to be better than the other group.

[rubymiene]

Something I think is really interesting is how language demonstrates ethnocentricism. The really good examples I can think of all in Chinese, but I'm sure there's stuff like that in all languages.