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Module Three Journal
In the video Would You Eat It? 10 Weird Foods We Dare You to Try (Nghe, 2016)., the narrator describes ten foods famed as local delicacies. The foods described include rocky mountain oysters, Icelandic shark meat and deep-fried spiders. The cultural norms and values present in the
video surround the food, the way the food is prepared and the occasion or frequency the delicacy is enjoyed. The cultural norms and values surrounding the foods described in the video differ quite a bit from that of my own. I am first generation American (My mom is from the Dominican Republic), and I was raised vegetarian
-ish
, so pretty much my entire life, my diet has consisted of plant-based and staple foods of the Dominican like rice, beans, avocado and occasionally fish. While I generally like to be the type of person to at least try something, especially when experiencing another culture; many of the foods such as balut, century eggs and fruit bat soup, I don’t think I could get myself to try. In regard to cultural relativism, the first thing I noticed while watching this video was the description listed under the title, “Top 10 most disgusting delicacies in the world!” (eyeroll) (Nghe, 2016). Description aside, throughout the video, the narrator displayed what was almost a comedic amount of ethnocentrism, talking about how disgusting the foods are or how bad they smell. That being said, this video felt like a good exercise to practice cultural relativism because I was able to see an extreme example of ethnocentrism to contrast. I think my biggest take away from this journal assignment is that it helped me practice cultural relativism. Initially, I thought that this perspective would come very easily to me because on paper, I definitely subscribe to it. However, while watching the video, I found it challenging to maintain the perspective when the cultural norms and values, in this case food, starkly contrasted
