Cultural Relativism

WEEK 4
 CULTURAL
RELATIVISM
Cultural relativism is the ability to understand a
culture on its own terms and not to make judgment
using the standards of one’s own culture. The
concept of cultural relativism also means that any
opinion on ethics is subject to the perspective of
each person within the particular culture. It refers
to not judging a culture to our own standards of
what is right or wrong, strange or normal. Instead,
we should try to understand cultural practices of
other groups in its own cultural context.
The Principle of Cultural Relativism
Cultural relativism is the belief that a culture
must be understood on its own terms. It is the
belief that the concepts and values of a culture
cannot be fully translated into, or fully
understood in, other languages. Example,
ritual has to be understood in terms of the
larger symbolic system of which it is a part
 Cultural relativism explains what, for example, constitutes breakfast varies widely from place to
place. What is considered a typical breakfast in Turkey, is quite different from what is considered a
typical breakfast in the U.S. or Japan. While it might seem strange to eat fish soup or stewed
vegetables for breakfast in the U.S., in other places, this is perfectly normal. Conversely, our
tendency toward sugary cereals and milk or preference for egg sandwiches loaded with bacon and
cheese would seem quite bizarre to other cultures.
 Similarly, but perhaps of more consequence, rules that regulate nudity in public vary widely around
the world. In the U.S., we tend to frame nudity in general as an inherently sexual thing, and so when
people are nude in public, people may interpret this as a sexual signal. But in many other places
around the world, being nude or partially nude in public is a normal part of life, be it at swimming
pools, beaches, in parks, or even throughout the course of daily life.
 In these cases, being nude or partially nude is not framed as sexual but as the appropriate bodily
state for engaging in a given activity. In other cases, like many cultures where Islam is the
predominant faith, a more thorough coverage of the body is expected than in other cultures. Due in
large part to ethnocentrism, this has become a highly politicized and volatile practice in today's
world
Origins and Overview

The concept of cultural relativism as we know and use it

today was established as an analytic tool by German-
American anthropologist, Franz Boas, in the early 20th
century. In the context of early social science, cultural
relativism became an important tool for pushing back on the
ethnocentrism that often tarnished research at that time,
which was mostly conducted by white, wealthy, Western
men, and often focused on people of colour, foreign
indigenous populations, and persons of lower economic class
than the researcher.
Ethnocentrism

The practice of viewing and judging someone else's culture based on

the values and beliefs of one's own. From this standpoint, we might
frame other cultures as weird, exotic, intriguing, and even as problems
to be solved. In contrast, when we recognize that the many cultures of
the world have their own beliefs, values, and practices that have
developed in particular historical, political, social, material, and
ecological contexts and that it makes sense that they would differ from
our own and that none are necessarily right or wrong or good or bad,
then we are engaging the concept of cultural relativism.