4-1 Discussion: Cultural Relativism
In this module, you read about cultural relativism, the idea that people's actions, activities, and beliefs should be understood and explained in terms of their own culture. After reading this module's required resources, paying special attention to the information about cultural relativism, do you think that cultural relativism should always be applied without exception? For example, if a culture's activities breached human rights, do you think that cultural relativism still applies? Why or why not?
In response to your peers, agree or disagree with their assessment of cultural relativism. Be sure to justify your opinion
A number of anthropologists, in fact, advocate “critical relativism,” or taking a stance on a practice or belief only after trying to understand it in its cultural and historical context. Critical relativism also holds that no group of people is homogeneous, so it is impossible to judge an entire culture based on the actions or beliefs of a few (Merry 2003). For example, many North Americans practice male circumcision,
which other societies consider abhorrent, including people in the German city of Cologne, who banned circumcision in 2012 as a human rights abuse.
When it comes to human rights and cultural relativism, we must acknowledge that there are human rights lawfully upheld internationally despite cultural norms, morals, and state political systems. Human rights address a variety of specific problems such as fair trials, slavery, education, and genocide. People have human rights independently of whether they are found in the practices, morality, or law of their country or culture (Human Rights, 2019).
With all that said, there are still questions as to the meaning of human rights in different social and cultural contexts (Johansson Dahre, 2017). This is why anthropologists should still use cultural relativism to describe and judge behaviors in the terms of that culture even though it may violate human rights. This is because understanding ideas and behaviors through cultural relativism helps make more informed decisions and ultimately will help universal human rights. Critical
