I fancy that I am not ethnocentric at all—although I certainly make comparisons from others cultures to my own, I don’t think of myself as making judgements. And after living in a couple different cultures and really trying to understand them (to the best of my ability in the time I was there), I don’t necessarily have a single culture (US/Colorado/Fort Collins/my family) anymore that I’m making these comparisons to..
However, I do find myself making gut judgements here in Cuenca. An example: when my host parents, for instance, payed a man to carry their groceries while they shopped, I couldn’t stop myself from being shocked. (There I was, perfectly able to carry their food, but my arms were left empty despite offering—what??) I certainly don’t understand all of what went into this action, but after this moment, I quickly do some mental calculations to make it acceptable (or at least understandable) to me. The process went like this: I certainly use and benefit from cheap manual labor in exchange for convenience all the time—one example is that my cell phone, clothes, and accessories were all likely made by underpaid human hands. The only difference is that the system that I typically live in keeps me from seeing it face to face—my money never goes directly from my hands to the hands that pick my vegetables or assemble my clothes. If it felt weird to pay someone to carry our groceries, my consumerism should feel just as weird.
This thought process, I think, is just another example of ethnocentrism: I simply reframed my own culture to act as the measure against the culture here. Cultural relativism, I think, would not require these mental gymnastics. Instead of measuring things against any stretched understanding of my own culture, I’d think about what it means in the context of the rest of the culture. Through this view, I’m not left with answers, but I do place it in the context of the other services that I’ve seen being paid for. This evening, I didn’t question the money that was given to a man who watched over the Church parking lot/told people where to park—I’ve seen it happen so many times before. [tangent: I’m reminded of (after being in Mongolia for a month), seeing the police taze horses who’d gotten into a concert, and not realizing it was noteworthy until someone mentioned how strange it was.] All of which to say, becoming accustomed to cultural norms takes time. And approached with this in mind—that things that seem strange now are only strange because they’re new—will probably lessen cultural shock from being in a new place.
But if I accept that all things are right within their own culture—an extreme form of cultural relativism—that ignores the (in my mind) fact that there likely are injustices in every culture. There certainly are in mine (again, I’m noticing myself feeling the need to frame this within my own culture). SO. As someone who does believe in some sort of universal morality (including equality among all people), this type of cultural relativism has its limits.
To end with, here’s a cultural value that I really appreciate here: on my way to the coast, I saw countless road signs that said things like “trees are life, respect them,” all encouraging respect for nature. So here’s a picture of a blue-footed booby and an almost-blue-footed booby at a national park that we visited over our Carnaval week break.
An adolescnet blue footed booby and probably its parent. I feel like this is kind of where I am in life, too…