
As we learned in this course, Ethnocentrism is judging another culture solely by the values and standards of one’s own culture. At the same time, it’s also a kind of faith to that culture. Cultural relativism is the idea that a person’s beliefs and activities should be understood based on that person’s own culture. In my observation, one ethnocentrism example would be in the blog post 4 which talks about the customs about the Sudan. An author whose name is Jalil al-Hamza upload a video called “The most beautiful country in the world” instead of “one of the most beautiful country. One challenge I encountered for cultural relativism in my research would be in Sudan, a health value of a cow is even larger than a person. Personally, I think the base of a country is people. If all the people are in danger, then this country is done. Even if we say the value for all the life is equal, but right now, people on the top of food chain. Personally, I think the value of human is a little bit higher than other animals.
Basically, the research of ethnography is a method which is used to study for a group of people in their own culture. In this method, anthologist use to do some observational studies or having some conversations with those face to face. The purpose for this study is to see others behaviors or culture in their own ways instead of our own perspectives. In my blog post, I searched how Sudanese suffer in the health issues and some of their customs by looking at pictures, stories and some videos. For example, through reading the Sudanese’s stories that how Sudanese suffer from the bad health care condition. Also, in those pictures, I learnt why the value of a cow is more important than human because animals can provide more food than human beings. Thorough the study of ethnography, I learnt how to understand different situation in different cultures in their own standpoint instead of using my own.
For the videos in my blog posts, one digital strategy I used is searching the term of “Sudan traditional custom” on Youtube. Under the video, there are a part which is called more description. In this part, it has the license of this video. Based on the license, I can tell this is violating laws or not. For those pictures which I found for my post, one easy way to find was searching on the website which the librarian mentioned during the class. What I did is typing Sudan health problems and malnutrition. Most of the result is one the Wikipedia. On the bottom of the picture, it also shows what the license is. Then, I will know I can use this picture, and it is not violating copyright laws. For the sources which talks about the health problem in Sudan, I simply type the same thing on google. Then, find some credibility stories. Talking about the credibility of the sources, I have to make the author or organization have enough speaking power in this aspect. So, I would choose some famous organization such as Red Cross Society. Also, I need some Sudanese real experience to prove how serious of health problems in the Sudan.