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[–] Sieg_Heil_EFS 0 points 2 points (+2|-0) ago  (edited ago)

>In one of the Sociology modules I've been on here at university (albeit, taught from an anthropological perspective), they've really been trying to hammer the whole culturally-relativistic idea of "Saying a culture is superior or inferior is ethnocentric!" into our heads, but I don't entirely think that's a useful paradigm to work by, I think it's quite dismissive and do think that these problems need to be addressed.

Lemme guess: anthropologists adopted that mentality so they could observe things like forced underage marriages without instinctively interrupting the ceremony and no longer being allowed near the tribe.

Remind me, when your professor objects to the killing of indigenous people in Australia, to tell him/her that they're being ethnocentric and Anglocentric because Aboriginal Australian culture is 60,000 years old and thus has no concept of human rights. If that's not the case, he's applying a different standard and applying lower expectations to Australian Aborigines. People who aren't extremist would call that thinking---"boongs will never measure up to white standards"--racist.

>Nevertheless, do address your specific point - of a decline in civic and charitable participation in particular - I'd say it's something of interest. Sadly, even in a case of correlation (and possibly even causation), I'm not aware of any other work that's been done pertaining to this, and I believe one of the key areas within Sociology should be in seeing how this issue can be resolved, and going into more depth on the underlying mechanisms of how this occurs and manifests itself (i.e. if increased immigration leads to increased segregation, even if we do know the reasons, what are the specific processes that occur by individuals leading to this increasing of segregation and how does segregation occur? Is it self-segregation, segregation by the majority, or both?).

All of my this.