Cultural Relativism In Eagle Huntress

Throughout this unit, a lot was learned about culture. Cultural Relativism is a counter of Ethnocentrism, however Ethnocentrism is countered by Ex-centricity. All of these are a way to understand and compare culture, but they are all different and unique. For example, Cultural relativism is examining each culture individually and accepting each culture as unique and not judged by the standards of another culture. On the other hand, Ethnocentrism is countered by this. This is because Ethnocentrism is evaluating another culture against the standards of your own culture, thus making your culture superior. The counter to this is Ex-centricity. Looking at a culture ex-centrically means that one makes sicen of his world by means of critical

This film is about a culture where men primarily dominate the sport of Eagle hunting. Traditionally. Eagle hunting would symbolize becoming a man, as this tradition was passed from father to son. Even though it is traditionally for boys, a girl named Aisholpan decided to become an eagle huntress. The elders in the community disapprove of this, but she does it anyway with the help of her father. Her father takes her to get herself an eagle and then she trains with it. Later she joins the competition and wins her first festival, killing a fox and having true happiness. This film is Ex-centric. The girl, Aisholpan, is outside of her culture and developing an understanding of it. Aisholpan has joined the Eagle hunting Culture and is outside the center of her culture a female Mongolian. She is making sense of the future of her world by defamiliarizing herself with the traditional roles of females in her culture. This film is not very Ethnocentric because she is not believing that her cultural is the best, she is changing it. “This is just the beginning [ of girls hunting eagles]” according to her

“Shakespeare and the Bush” is about Laura Bohannan’s second experience to West Africa, where she stayed and interacted with the Tiv People Ethnocentrically. Bohannan is pressured into sharing the story of Hamlet to the Tiv people, even though she is not trained in the art of storytelling. As she tells the story, the Tiv people keep interrupting or mis-interpreting the story, as they are comparing the story to their own culture, and thinking their way is the best way or the correct way, thus making it Ethnocentric. The Tiv people have a hard time understanding things in the story, for example they do not understand the ghosts, they believe it is an Omen. There are many things like this that happen throughout the story, which will be discussed as the paper goes on. Eventually the Tiv people get the jist of the story, but it is not really Hamlet anymore. The Tiv even offer to correctly explain any more stories for Bohannan. I believe this experience was Ethnocentric for the Tiv people. When Bohannan says “The dead chief’s younger brother had become the great chief. He had also married his elder brother’s widow only about a month after the funeral.”(Bohannan. Pg 1) and is explaining how it it wrong that he did that the Tiv people respond by saying ““the younger brother marries the elder brother’s widow and becomes the father of his children” (Bohanan pg 2). This shows that the Tiv people