Paradigms and assumptions
| English | Chinese | Pinyin |
|---|---|---|
| paradigm | 范式 | fàn shì |
| ethnocentrism | 民族中心主义 | mín zú zhōng xīn zhǔ yì |
| cultural relativism | 文化相对主义 | wén huà xiāng duì zhǔ yì |
The assumptions you cannot see are your own
- A paradigm 范式 is a shared way of seeing that a society does not notice it is using.
- From inside one, its assumptions look like facts about the world rather than choices about how to look at it.
- The standard tool for making them visible is comparison: another society doing the same thing differently.
Why is your own paradigm hard to see?
Which is why comparison with another society is the standard tool for revealing it.
Ethnocentrism
- Ethnocentrism 民族中心主义 is judging another group by your own group's standards.
- It rarely announces itself. It appears as a description that quietly treats one arrangement as the normal one and the other as a deviation from it.
- ⚠ The word "still" often marks it: they still live in extended families assumes a direction of travel that has not been argued for.
Why does "they still live in extended families" signal ethnocentrism?
One arrangement is quietly treated as normal and the other as a deviation from it.
Relativism, and its limit
- Cultural relativism 文化相对主义 is the discipline of understanding a practice in its own context before judging it.
- It is a method, not a moral position: understanding why something happens is not the same as approving of it.
- Social science describes and explains. It does not settle questions of value, and a strong answer says which of the two it is doing.
Understanding a practice in its own context means approving of it.
Relativism is a method, not a moral position. Explanation and evaluation are different tasks.
Naming the assumption.
Claim: "Young people in this country are becoming less social."
The measure: time spent in face-to-face group activities.
The assumption: that face-to-face contact is what social contact means. Drop it, and the same generation is highly social by a different measure.
The claim is not wrong. It is a claim about the measure, and saying so is what turns a description into an analysis.
"Young people today are less social." Name the assumption behind that claim.
Example: "It assumes that being social means meeting face to face, so contact through a screen does not count."
A good answer names the assumption, says whose it is, and shows what changes if you drop it. All three parts — a description of a practice with no assumption identified is the level below.
Put the three parts of a strong answer about an assumption in order.
A description with no assumption identified is the level below, however well written.
Do not use relativism as a way to avoid the question. "It depends on your culture" ends an analysis rather than performing one; the work is to show how the context changes what the practice means, and to say when the context stops being an explanation.