The Core of Culture Is Its Value Orientation. In considering the diversity of contemporary culture, the key to be kept in mind is that the core of any culture whatsoever is its values: different cultures have different values. The ethno-centrists deem their national culture to be supreme and hence their values as its most outstanding manifestation. This is “West-centrism”: Western countries extol their cultures as supreme in the modern era. They assume that as values of freedom and democracy are universally viable and promote the values of Western culture across the world via advanced technology and its powerful cultural carriers. Huntington holds that the Western civilization is valuable not in its universality, but in its uniqueness, it is not advisable to impose the values of the Western civilization on the non-Western societies.

Many people in Asia, Africa, Latin America and Europe agree that world cultures coexist in relative terms. Each culture is different from the other; each has its own advantage and criteria of values. This is the basic point of the trans-cultural relativism. Trans-cultural relativists not only recognize the diversity of world cultures, but also deem the values orientation as the core of all cultures. There are many theories on culture, but whether ethnocentrism, trans-cultural relativism, universal cultural values, or cultural internationalism all have something to do with values which is the core issue of culture.