Is ethnocentrism OK?

Hi People

The subject of ethnocentrism has come up in several places in the past few days, and it's made me think much more about it than I had in the past.

Here are some thoughts.
1. It probably is futile to try to eliminate it from our thinking altogether. Our personal histories color our perceptions, and always will. The best we can hope for (and I believe Rick Paine already said this, but in my culture we believe that anything worth saying is worth repeating many times) is to remain aware that it exists as we organize our ideas and direct them toward conclusions.
2. Muhammad and Nasima are correct in noting that some western thinking about Islamic arts (and tribal arts in general) is condescending, and that the origin of this condescension is ethnocentrism.
3. There's a dilemma in Muhammad and Nasima's call for the "correct" way to see Islamic arts, since their approach is fundamentally highly ethnocentric, too. Understanding it does help to balance our own, which is ethnocentric from the other direction.
4. While it's self-evident (to me) that the closer someone is to a culture the more likely he is to be able to understand its art more fully, this correlation is not absolute. That is to say, I think most of us (Turkotek's readership) have a deeper understanding of Islamic art than most people who have not paid much attention to it, whether they are westerners or Muslims. Simply being Muslim doesn't make a person expert in Islamic arts any more than being a Buddhist makes a person expert in arts of the predominantly Buddhist part of the world. This is further emphasized when one considers all of the variations there are on Islam.

This last point is, I think, an important one and seems to take a back seat in much of the discussion. It becomes very clear to me when I apply it to the discussion on Navajo rugs now going on in our Miscellaneous Topics forum. A Navajo is more likely than I am to know the cultural implications of these rugs, but only if he's paid attention to them at some time. But as little as I know about Navajo rugs, it's probably at least equivalent to what a member of an eastern US Indian group (say, a Cherokee or a Seminole) is likely to know about them. That is, just being an American Indian doesn't make him expert (or even particularly knowledgeable) on all American Indian arts. Nor does my being of European descent (more or less - my ancestry probably includes an Asian line) leave me unable to understand anything about them.

Regards,

Steve Price

Hi Steve -

I concur with what you said here and would not claim for a moment to not being shaped by the ethnocentrism of my own culture.

I would add one thing. I think that discussions and claims of ethnocentrism are less useful when they are made at some level of generality (e.g. the existing rug literature has a severe western cultural bias) even when the claim might be true.

I think that things are more likely to advance and inter-cultural understandings would best be promoted by making claims of ethnocentrism as concrete as possible.

So in this salon we could advance such understandings by discovering how, concretely, western analytic categories, terminology and interpretations with regard to Moroccan weaving are different from those that might be offered by Muslim students of this material, and what the implications of such distinctions might be.

Regards,

R. John Howe

" 2. Muhammad and Nasima are correct in noting that some western thinking about Islamic arts (and tribal arts in general) is condescending, and that the origin of this condescension is ethnocentrism."

Hi Steve, John,

And maybe it's because of the western definition of Art. "Art" as result of human, enlightend creativity, can be a problem for Islam.
So this leaves us with applied art .
Applied art in the west is less appreciated.
Nothing to do with Islam, ethnocentrism or condescension.
Dutch thinking about Dutch textile art is condescending also.

Think that's all there is to it.
Nothing more, nothing less.

Best regards,
Vincent

Hi Vincent -

I think that's true of western definitions of what might be called "high art," but lots of us, interested in rugs, are perfectly comfortable with the notion of weaving as a "craft." Not one without some real skills, but one, the admirable aspects of which are not dependent on restricted notions of "art."

So I think that while we're not without some other species of cultural bias, we are not, mostly, open to an ethnocentric critique that takes as its contrast model western definitions of "high art."

Regards,

R. John Howe

Hi Vincent,

I think you may have a point here. Perhaps this is what our hosts are trying to say - in a nutshell.

A note: ethnocentrically speaking, the word tekhné was used in Greek both for "technique" and "art". The Latin introduced the second (ars artis).

If I well remember, until the Renaissance the distinction between Artist, Artisan and Technician was rather blurred.

The term "fine arts" as distinct from "decorative" or "applied" appeared at the end 18th century.
Regards,

Filiberto

Anarchy

Hi John,
No, I'm not comfortable with weaving as a craft.
The moment it's on my wall, it's art.

while we're not without some other species of cultural bias, we are not, mostly, open to an ethnocentric critique that takes as its contrast model western definitions of "high art."
Please, could you translate this? Because it says "we". And I'm not sure if your "we" includes me.

Hi Muhammad,
Islamic art? Yes, I sure hope Islam has something to do with it, if not only because of all the "mistakes" we see. Feminist anarchy in the centre of Islamic society.

Hi Filiberto,
So why didn't they? Life can be so easy.
But, maybe Muhammad and ................., do not understand western culture.
Nasima! Beautiful name. So sorry she doesn't participate in this discussion.
But maybe that's a mistake............

Best regards,
Vincent

Hi Vincent -

My "we" was editorial and I immediately take back any suggestion that I would be speaking for you. Talk about redundancy.

About the translation: I was trying to say that if our hosts were using some notion of what I have called "high art" (the kind that most insists that it is about creativity) as the basis for their complaint about Western ethnocentricity, that while we might rather generally be guilty of ethnocentricity, and might even be guilty of it in areas of our own pretension, like "craft," that we were not guilty of the ethnocentrism of the high art sort.

I think you have said, alternatively, that you DO see the weavings we discuss here as candidates for what might be called "art." Oddly, the writer, Bert Flint" whom I quoted in another thread, also claims that Moroccan weaving is art of the specifically creative sort. Here are some sentences:

"...A little girl sits beside her mother at the loom and her eye learns to judge what can be done and what can't, what looks attractive and what doesn't. She becomes a master or "mu'allima" when she has absorbed all the elements (patterns and structures) so thoroughly that she is able to improvise on any given subject. She then can concentrate on "how" to express herself, even without any preestablished design.

"This is far from the naive expression of some folk art that has come under the influence of either figurative art traditions of Western Europe or of some other alien art form, and it is equally free of the excesses of technical virtuosity seen in some oriental rugs. It may be considered "art" in the true sense of the word with accent on creativity. It is very important to admit that the aesthetic response evoked in us by many of these rugs and weavings can be of the same quality that contemporary abstract art can produce."

I think Mr. Flint agrees with you. I wonder if his words here trouble our hosts at all.

Regards,

R. John Howe

To be ethnocentric, if history and science are to be believed at all, is absurd. Sue

Hi Sue

"Ethnocentrism" has a few meanings. One is that you are part of a superior group (I'm reluctant to use a term like "master race", but it isn't terribly far off base here), all others are inferior. The other is the tendency to view other cultures through the eyes of your own. It generally includes some element of feeling superior, but doesn't necessarily do so.

The second type is what I'm referring to here. I think it's unavoidable - my entire perceptual world is filtered through my lifetime of experience and education, as is yours. It's useful to be aware of this and to accept that other people in other cultures have their own lifetimes of experience and education, but there's no escape from it.

Let me give you a very simple example to demonstrate that even you are subject to it. Your message, in its entirety, says,
To be ethnocentric, if history and science are to be believed at all, is absurd.

I happen to come from more or less the same culture as you do, so I think history and science are pretty useful things to know. But there are cultures that reject science (religious fundamentalists, for instance) and history has many versions (ask any feminist). That is to say, your statement is ethnocentric - it implies that our culture is superior to some others by the value it places on history and science.

It's a paradox, I guess. Like St. Augustine (I think), who devoted so much of himself to eliminating personal pride, and in the end was horrified to discover that he was proud to have done so.

Regards,

Steve Price

Hi John,

Thank you.
Yes, that's what I was thinking.
I'll post a "Minimal Art" morocan kilim this evening. I hate it & I love it.

A wise man mr. Flint.
"This is far from the naive expression of some folk art that has come under the influence of either figurative art traditions of Western Europe or of some other alien art form, and it is equally free of the excesses of technical virtuosity seen in some oriental rugs. It may be considered "art" in the true sense of the word with accent on creativity. It is very important to admit that the aesthetic response evoked in us by many of these rugs and weavings can be of the same quality that contemporary abstract art can produce."
Sheer beauty.

One step further: Contemporary abstract art used naive folk art as frame of reference.

Dear Steve,
I can not understand why ethnocentricity and culture are used together in one context.
As if one tribe could create something that another tribe can not. I hope art is culture.
Maybe we can call it cultural cultisisme?

Best regards,
Vincent

Hi Vincent

Although this appears verbatim in another thread, I'll post it again here for clarification:

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines ethnocentric as: characterized by or based on the attitude that one's own group is superior.

The anthropological definition of ethnocentric is, an adjective describing the condition of viewing and judging (often in pejorative terms) other cultures and societies according to the (usually taken-for-granted) assumptions of one’s own society.

Both definitions imply that "ethnic" is pretty much synonymous with "of a particular cultural group."

Regards,

Steve Price

Hi Steve,

Yes, But I had to chew on it for a while and most times this helps. But it keeps on coming back in the discussion.

The Dutch dictionary says:
Etnocentrisch (Ethnocentric) :Conscious of the own etnic (ethnic) identity.
Etnic (Ethnic): Idiosyncrasy of people/nation.

No groups.
No Islamic, Christian or whatever group we can come up with.
Islam etc. are spread all over the world, over different people and nations.

Am I etnocentric if I tell you as Christian that eating raw herring is better then eating a hamburger? Don't think so.
Am I etnocentric if I tell you the same as a very healthy Dutch blockhead? Yes.
Think this is what the Dutch dictionary says.

Best regards,
Vincent

PS: I hate raw salt herring.