The Problem of Orientation: Ethnocentrism-Polycentrism

Polymorphism of nationalist expression in terms of goals, strategies, orientations, and ideologies provides a wide range of options for typologization. The propensities of ethnic movements towards liberal (polycentric) or illiberal (ethnocentric) nationalism seem to be counted among their important qualitative characteristics. The most famous definition of ethnocentrism was given by W.G. Sumner in 1906: it is a view of things in which “one’s own group is the center of everything and all others are scaled and rated with reference to it.”1 Correspondingly, polycentrism ought to be defined as a view of things in which every group including one’s own, has equal and independent value.