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Importance of Cultural Relativism

Cultural relativism helps anthropologists understand other cultures without judgment based on their own cultural biases. It acknowledges that no single culture can claim to represent an absolute truth. People from different cultures can develop cross-cultural relationships to gain new perspectives and opportunities by understanding each other's diverse traditions, though this can also feel threatening by challenging claims of any one culture as entirely correct.

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Maybelyn Oczon
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798 views1 page

Importance of Cultural Relativism

Cultural relativism helps anthropologists understand other cultures without judgment based on their own cultural biases. It acknowledges that no single culture can claim to represent an absolute truth. People from different cultures can develop cross-cultural relationships to gain new perspectives and opportunities by understanding each other's diverse traditions, though this can also feel threatening by challenging claims of any one culture as entirely correct.

Uploaded by

Maybelyn Oczon
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Cultural relativism helps anthropologists and other social scientists to identify their cultural biases

and assumptions and put them to one side, in order to understand other cultures on their own terms.
Edit: Note that this does not necessarily involve acceptance of those cultural moral norms. The
Cross-Cultural Relationship is the idea that people from different cultures can have
relationships that acknowledge, respect and begin to understand each others diverse
lives. People with different backgrounds can help each other see possibilities that they
never thought were there because of limitations, or cultural proscriptions, posed by their
own traditions. Traditional practices in certain cultures can restrict opportunity because
they are “wrong” according to one specific culture. Becoming aware of these new
possibilities will ultimately change the people that are exposed to the new ideas. This
cross-cultural relationship provides hope that new opportunities will be discovered but at
the same time it is threatening. The threat is that once the relationship occurs, one can
no longer claim that any single culture is the absolute truth.

Cultural relativism is the ability to understand a culture on its own terms and not to make
judgments using the standards of one’s own culture. The goal of this is promote
understanding of cultural practices that are not typically part of one’s own culture. Using
the perspective of cultural relativism leads to the view that no one culture is superior
than another culture when compared to systems of morality, law, politics, etc. [11] It is a
concept that cultural norms and values derive their meaning within a specific social
context. This is also based on the idea that there is no absolute standard of good or evil,
therefore every decision and judgment of what is right and wrong is individually decided
in each society. The concept of cultural relativism also means that any opinion on ethics
is subject to the perspective of each person within their particular culture. Overall, there
is no right or wrong ethical system. In a holistic understanding of the term cultural
relativism, it tries to promote the understanding of cultural practices that are unfamiliar
to other cultures such as eating insects, genocides or genital cutting.
There are two different categories of cultural relativism: Absolute: Everything that
happens within a culture must and should not be questioned by outsiders. The extreme
example of absolute cultural relativism would be the Nazi party’s point of view justifying
the Holocaust.
Critical: Creates questions about cultural practices in terms of who is accepting them
and why. Critical cultural relativism also recognizes power relationships.

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