2.
What is “cultural relativism?” How has cultural relativism evolved in anthropology? What are some of the criticisms against cultural relativism? Cultural Relativism is the effort to understand the beliefs of people from other cultures from which they are from. It refers to not judging another culture using our own standards of right and wrong, moral or immoral. We should try and educate ourselves on many beliefs and traditions instead of what we are just used to. Culture Relativism believes in the education of all cultures and supports the norms as well as values of others. In anthropology, anthropologists must be able to set aside their own values and set norms as they seek to expand their knowledge of other cultures. They must take this into consideration while conducting research. A criticism within cultural relativism is that there cannot be judgement of another culture whether they are right or wrong. This is stating that there are no fixed standards of morals. This initially makes judgment of any kind meaningless to the opposing party. This criticism justifies evils such as rape and slavery. 3.
What is “thick description,” and how is it related to fieldwork and ethnographic studies?
Thick description aims to go beyond what we just see, but a way of providing cultural context. Initially characterizes the intentional and interpretative meaning of the behavior by an actor. It asks questions: why it was done, how it was read, and which actors were involved. It looks to get the whole story, instead of what we just see. The term thick description is coined from Geertz who used to describe ethnography in one of the most famous anthropology texts ‘
The Interpretation of Cultures (1973)
’. Ethnography is long
-
term participant observation; therefore, thick description is a qualitative research technique. Providing detailed descriptions observed by a certified researcher. It is used to be better understood by an outsider such as an anthropologist who is looking into specific details of behaviour in other cultures. Downloaded by Sieon Sieon (sieonsieon0@gmail.com)
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