Xenocentrism is not a well read cultural counter proposition to ethnocentrism in anthropology. If I am not wrong many believe it is cultural relativism which is a more suitable reply to ethnocentrism. But why does every individual want to follow the west, its lifestyle or culture of consumption, broadly the whole system..........................
Hari: I do not understand what you mean by a counter proposition. Ethnocentrism refers to members of a culture judging the culture of another group as less adequate than their own culture. Cultural relativism deals with there being differences between what is judged right and wrong across cultures. By xenocentrism, which sounds like a derivative of xenophobia, are you talking about the fear of outsiders and ways that are different from the culture in question? If these are what you mean by these terms, what do you mean by a counter proposition? I also did not follow how you jumped to assuming every individual wants to follow "the west." You must be thinking of a specific population, but you did not specify what population you have been observing. By the west, do you mean Europe, the US, Canada, or some other groups? Are you thinking about wealth versus poverty? Are you thinking about technologies? Are you thinking about music, movies or television shows? Are you thinking about cuisine? Are you thinking about democracy? When you say the whole system, does this ignore the fact many western countries have ethnic enclaves that are preserving aspects of their former cultures? Has the introduction of democracy worked better in some places than others? I have met people visiting my country who given a chance cooked dishes from their original culture, rather than enjoying purely food from my culture on their visit. At least in my experience, the west is hardly uniform. Since terrorists sometimes attack western targets, evidently everyone does not want to universally adopt western values. Best of luck with exploring these subjects further in your subsequent travels and in reviewing the news, Bruce
Bruce thanks a lot for your further inquiry into it. to put the question in a different way, I am interested to understand if xenocentrism is psychological dimension of cultural studies.... just to quote the definition of xenocentrism from Merriam-Webster 'oriented toward or preferring a culture other than one's own'. So for me to understand, xenocentrism is opposite to ethnocentrism..Further, while I referred west in general- it is America in particular, with special reference to their culture of consumption.....though evidently everyone does not want to universally adopt western values, but mostly people from many developing countries try to look at the American its life style and living standard (food habit, consumes, housing, and other material consumption ) and also its technology...I am not considering radicalism......and all recent incidents as fight against the values of west or may be against ....imperialism or anything else...Sure, I will be interested to continue my exploration...further help me out if possible...
Any thing connected to "ethno-" and "xeno-" is first of all to be suspect of the ways and means of its being constructed. It seems to me that local xenocentrisms aimed at imaginary "West" are to be approached primarilly through the analyses of peculiarities of the processes by which the local elites have been constructing local "natural" identitiesa - like ethnic or etatist ones.
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