Insider And Outsider Analysis

Elijah Hong
100972519
C. Koggel
Moral, Social and Religious Issues in Contemporary Society
October 15th, 2014
Crocker on Ethnocentrism David A. Crocker asks the question of who should be tasked with the development of moral ethics on a global level, especially in regions where ethical thought is relatively shallow. If there was one way he would answer this question, he would state that a combination of "insider" and "outsider" ethicists would find the best and culturally sensitive form of morality for particular cultures. For this to have any meaning however, a description is required for both "insider" and "outsider". An "insider", as termed by Crocker, is "one who is counted, recognized, or accepted by himself/herself
An "outsider can be beneficial to a social group in the way the outsider can assess the culture in an unbiased manner, and with this perspective, "outsider-ethicist strengths are the mirror image of an insider-ethicist weaknesses" and therefore the "outsider" is able to give insight on the things the culture may be unaware of (Crocker, 35). "Outsiders" are also able to bring out new ideas to a group based on their own culture, ideas the culture in assessment may not have even considered. The last advantage of an "outsider" is that they are not bound by the "insider 's" commitments to the group or status quo, and can therefore say things, or criticize things that a member of the group would not. Being an "outsider" has a list of negative attributes as well. "Outsiders" do not have the same familiarity with the customs of the group and how certain actions affect them, and Crocker argues that these key understandings are "relevant for progressive social change" (Crocker, 34). "Outsiders" who come from a more developed region and culture tend to put more trust in their own ideas and disregard the ingenuity of the group under assessment. In the long term, the groups that have an "outsider" ethicist may become dependent upon them for ideas, and thereby never becoming able to express their own ideas, and their own
The first he describes as being a "habitual disposition to judge foreign peoples or groups by the standards and practices of one 's own culture or ethnic group", and the second is described as the "tendency toward viewing alien cultures with disfavor and a resulting sense of inherent superiority" (Crocker, 27). Crocker 's accounts of "insiders" and "outsiders" do answer some of the concerns raised by ethnocentrism. Not one, nor the other is predominantly to blame for ethnocentrism, rather both "insiders" and "outsiders" demonstrate these negative aspects. "Insiders" can reject any advice from an outsider with the existence of an a priori that gives the "insider" the notion that "nothing can be learned from an outsider". Outsiders exhibit ethnocentrism in the way they give more credit to the ideas of their own culture because it is often socio-economically more