Human Rights and Ethnocentrism Presentation

Ethnocentrism has a two-fold meaning.

First, it refers to the natural tendency to see the world through the lens of your own culture. This involves accepting our cultural perspective as the way reality is and applying this assumption to our interactions with the world and other cultures.

Another way ethnocentrism manifests is through the belief that the way things are in our culture is somehow superior to others or that it's the right way. This stance also implies that other cultures are inferior and the way they operate is incorrect.

Globalization is seen as creating a global hegemony, or dominance and influence over others by the globalizing forces, in this way ‘rights’ have been spread across the world, for it is the creation of a combined will, which allows for differences to be examined through differences. This global hegemony has created forces which normalize ways of life. After WWII, with Europe in shambles and the US asserted as a global force not to reckon with institutions were created to help rebuild Europe through the economics of capitalism. 

Also because of the massive death and destruction, perhaps never seen before on that level doctrines were created that laid the standard for ‘human rights.’ In 1965 there was the international Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, in 1966 there was the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the international Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, in 1979 there was the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, in 1984 the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, and in 1989 the Convention of the Rights of the Child (United Nations Development Program, 2003). Today these doctrines set the standards globally of how people should be treated, but the truth is that not all the people of the world got together and created these doctrines, which in turn can make them highly ethnocentric.