Early History of National Geographic

The formation of the National Geographic Society, dedicated to the advancement and dissemination of specialized geographic knowledge.

The National Geographic Society origins, growing out of the meeting between a group vocational scholars and a few celebrated geographers and explorer in January 1888, in the prestigious Cosmos Club in Washington.

This society in addition to providing financial support for numerous expedition, has published the widely read National Geographic Magazine and numerous monographs.

The first National Geographic magazine was published in October 1888, as a slim, technical journal with an unassuming terra-cotta cover.

Federal scientists, including A. W Greely, John Wesley Powell, and Henry Gannet, established the society to improve intergovernmental communication on geographical issues, and also to inform people who were influential in Washington society and politics.

It too was to serve the community of scientists associated with the geographical work of the federal government , a category that included surveyors, topographers, statisticians, hydrographers, geologists and explorers.

Its first elected president was Gardiner Green Hubbard, a Boston lawyer and humanitarian who had help organize the first telephone company for Alexander Graham Bell, his son in law.

In 1903, the Hubbard and Alexander Graham Bell families presented the society with a permanent facility, Hubbard Memorial Hall, laying foundations for a tight family venture that rapidly became poplar national institution.

Expeditions are sent out under its auspices and in cooperation with other agencies.

By 1905 the Geographic was on its way to becoming one of the most ubiquitous sources of information and images about the world in American culture.
Early History of National Geographic

The nature of Ethnocentrism

Culture shock can be an excellent lesson to relative values and in understanding human differences. The reason culture shock occurs is that we are not prepared for these differences.

Because of the way we are taught our culture, to some degree we are all “ethnocentric”. The term of ethnocentrism is derived from two words, ethno or nation and kentron, or center. Thus it refers to the fact that our outlook or world view is centered on our own way of life.

Ethnocentrism is the belief that one’s own patterns of behavior are the best: the most natural, beautiful, right or important. It is the process of judging another culture using the standards of one’s own culture. Therefore other people, to the extent that they live differently live by standards that the inhuman, irrigational, unnatural, or wrong.

Ethnocentrism leads members do ethnic groups to view their culture as superior, as the one that other cultures should adopt.

Ethnocentrism also leads to prejudice against foreigners, who may be viewed as barbarians, uncultured people or savages.

People will find aspect of another culture distasteful, be it sexual practices, a way of treating friends or relatives, or simply a food that they cannot manage to get down with a smile.

Ethnocentrism creates a strong sense of group solidarity and group superiority, but also discourages intercultural or intergroup understanding.

A good example is seen in nationalism, the sense of identity that arises when one group exalts its own culture over all other groups and organizes politically and socially around this principle.
The nature of Ethnocentrism

Different society with different culture

The idea of a science of society can be said to have emerged in the eighteenth century Enlightenment, a period in European history characterized by intellectual innovations, ranging across the arts, literature, science and engineering.

Society refers to the totality of social organizations, such as corporation, school, hospitals and religious groups that share a common habitat or a territorially defined place and depend on each other for survival.

While culture is the core concept in cultural anthropology and is an important concept in sociology.

Although the basic types of cultural behavior are universal, in most cases they differ in form from one culture to another.

Take endorsement of the body. In the United States, it has many ways of changing the natural appearance of the human body.

It is the most ancient and widely encountered form of permanent body alteration. The practice of tattooing is believed to have spread from the Middle East, through India, China and Japan to Pacific Island cultures as early as 2000 BC.

On a fairly simple level, some people do things such as comb their hair a certain way, pierce their ears, or polish their nails.

Others have parts of their body designed with tattoos, permanent mutilations of the body following patterns that are unique to our culture.

Tattoos in other cultures are quite different. As early as 300 BC Japanese and Chinese society tattooed their faced to protect themselves from evils forces.

Still others have cosmetic surgery such as nose jobs, hair transplant, and silicone injections to change their appearance.

In other cultures the ways in which the body is adorned are quite different. Some of the better known examples, such as the extended lower lip of the Ubangi women, or a bone inserted into a pierced nose, seem bizarre to us. But in every culture we find some form of adornment.

Among some South American Indian tribes boards are tied firmly against the head of an infant to change the shape of the skull.

The sense of ‘culture' as a ‘whole way of life’ has been most marked in twentieth century anthropology and sociology.
Different society with different culture