Challenges Of Multiculturalism And Ethnocentrism

Globalisation has been progressing in unprecedented ways over the years, intertwining people in all parts of the world. While globalisation may have been beneficial, it has also resulted in catastrophic evolution and unprecedented consequences such as radicalization and terrorism. Is globalisation leading us to a more peaceful and harmonious world? Or is it resulting in greater societal instability and more conflicts? Mankind has been confronted with enormous challenges in the 21st century regarding the organisation of inter-group relations and the development of concrete plans to achieve better evolutionary future.

Multiculturalism has been viewed and adopted as a normative framework, for managing relation between diverse groups, tolerating and advocating the recognition of cultural differences. It has been crucial in the Western political discourse over the past few decades, in attempts of creating plural nationalism by replacing racial hierarchy with democratic citizenship through political

Ethnocentric individuals judge other cultures by standard and values relative to their own ethnicity. The concept serves to develop cultural differences and distinctiveness, defining each ethnicity’s unique cultural identity. Ethnocentrism is a universal condition that is unavoidable due to the inherently partial judgement about others in perspective of one’s own cultural values regardless of whether the assumption that our own culture is preferable or better has been made. When there is an inherent belief or practice to one’s own culture, it will be challenging for people to judge certain situation based on the viewpoint of another. Even an opinion of paedophilia in Saudi Arabia being wrong or one’s fashion sense being bad, are forms of biasedness as our judgement is aligned to our own