Cultural relativism means?
Hi Lashunte. Cultural relativism is the principle of regarding the beliefs, values, and practices of a culture from the viewpoint of that culture itself. In sociology, the principle is sometimes practiced to avoid cultural bias in research, as well as to avoid judging another culture by the standards of one's own culture. Cultural relativism is related to but often distinguished from moral relativism, the view that morality is relative to a standard, especially a cultural standard.
What are cultural relativism and ethnocentrism?
Both of these terms I learned in 1st year anthropology, and they are quite important for that discipline.Ethnocentrism begins with the idea that you grow up in a particular social and cultural environment, surrounded by people of a similar cultural background, similar religious beliefs, a similar language, and all this imprints on you a particular way of understanding the world. Your way of understanding the world will be largely similar to the way the people you grew up with understand the world, and this is kinda inevitable because it is from them that you learn language, morals, what things mean, how to behave, etc.However, when you meet someone from a different cultural background, they will probably have a different view of the world which is a result of their own social upbringing. They may behave differently, have different taste in clothes or food, and have different beliefs. This will also mean they see reality slightly differently to the way you do. You may therefore think they are strange, exotic or primitive because of this. You may dislike them or fear them because of it, or you may think they are really interesting and mysterious, you may even romanticize them and say they are “in touch with nature” or “authentic”.Ethnocentrism just refers to these problems. Whenever we try to understand people from other cultures, our understanding will happen through our cultural frameworks which have been put in place by our socialization and language acquisition. Hence, what we think is right or wrong, valid or invalid, will partly be a product of own framework which they do not share. So when we look at other cultures, we will tend to view them on our own terms, and not theirs.Cultural relativism attempts to escape (or at least account for) this dilemma by asserting that all cultures have their own legitimate view of the world, that will see things differently to the ways other cultures view the world. There’s no one way to say which culture’s view is “right” because even the idea of being “right” is subject to a particular cultural framework. So we need to be very careful about how we describe and judge what other cultures do. We need to suspend our judgement because this would be imposing the terms of our culture onto the evaluation of others, and therefore blocking our understanding of other cultures.
How do we reconcile feminism and cultural relativism?
They are both two different moral theories and in many cases contradict each other. How can we justify using one over the other? For example, feminists, under their moral theories, would state that it is immoral to, for example, perform female genital mutilation or force women to cover themselves, since this is against their theory and is taking away womens' rights. Cultural relativists would say that each moral theory depends on a certain culture, so it would be ethical to, in this case, perform female genital mutilation or make women cover themselves, because in these respective cultures it is morally right or allowed to do so. What are your views on this? Thanks!
Can rights be universal with cultural relativism?
Of course. Cultural relativism involves accepting differences in practice and belief, not differences in intrinsic rights. There are obviously some specific cultural practices that are difficult (if not impossible) to rectify with Liberal principles, but none of those that I can think of are so intrinsic to the culture in question that they preclude integration.People make two common mistakes when they think about this issue:They essentialize cultures, treating a culture as though it were a static, fixed, invariable and over-simplified object rather than a dynamic and fluid system with a broad range of internal differences.They treat the concept of 'acceptance' as though it means completely mindless knee-jerk equality, rather than an ongoing problem of cultural communication.These mistakes boil down to a kind of prejudice: a claim that Culture X is entirely this and nothing else, and that we must either embrace it 100% as exactly that or else reject it 100%. Get rid of that black-and-white thinking, and any problem with universal rights disappears.
Do you prefer Cultural relativism or Ethnocentrism?
I'm having a difficult time answering this question. I believe that people are entitled to their own beliefs and values. However, there are some things that I do not condone. For example, we enjoy dogs as pets but it's common for Chinese to eat dogs. Also, I do not support cannibalism and things like that. My class assignment is to chose only one and explain why and I would just like to have a greater idea. Tell me your choice and why you have chosen it. Please and I do appreciate it.
What is the difference between ethnocentrism and cultural relativism?
They're opposites. Ethnocentrism is "my culture's the best in every way." Cultural relativism is "Every culture is equally valid, so you have no right to impose your culture's values on other cultures." Conservatives lean towards ethnocentrism, while liberals lean towards cultural relativism.Most people dwell between these extremes. Thus IMO you can respect other cultures while considering FGM evil, along with slavery, chattelization and subjugation of women, rape, imperialism. You can also regard handling corpses of loved ones in preparation for burial as not evil but a cultural artifact that must be abandoned where ebola is a danger.
What are some examples of relativism?
Moral relativism states that moral norms emerge from the particular requirements of a specific society or culture and hence are valid only relative to that environment.So one example could be that hitting children in some cultures is considered moral as a legitimate method of education, while in others it’s considered to be child abuse, hence immoral.According to moral relativism there is no absolute “outside” set of moral rules that we can rely on to determine which of these practices is right or wrong, and thus we have no right to condemn the practices of any given culture.Incidentally this conclusion isn’t quite accurate, because we can use scientific research in order to determine whether a particular practice is actually effective relative to it’s intended goal, and for example in the case of corporal punishment, we know it to be quite detrimental to a childs overall development process, thus disproving that moral claim.