Sociology > Cultural relativity and ethnocentrism.

Define and discuss, using examples, the concept of cultural relativity and ethnocentrism. Does the concept of cultural relativity have limits?

It is always difficult not to understand another culture, especially when we live in a society that is rapidly changing. New York City has increasingly brought people of various cultures to interact closer with each other. This interaction can be related to two important concepts known as ethnocentrism and cultural relativity.

Ethnocentrism can be defined as “thinking that one’s own ethnic group, nation or culture is superior to others” or “judging other groups as inferior to one’s own”. Ethnocentrism basically refers to judging other groups from our own cultural point of view. People are naturally centered around themselves and their experiences because it is all they know and all they can truly understand. Every one of us is ethnocentric, and there is no way not to be ethnocentric. It cannot be avoided, nor can it be willed away by a positive of well-meaning attitude.

The problem with ethnocentrism is that it leads us to misunderstanding others. We falsely see what is meaningful and functional to other peoples through our eyes. We see their way in terms of our life experience, not their context. We do not understand that their ways have their own meanings and functions in life, just us our ways have for us.

The most common example of ethnocentrism is the idea of racism, a system of discrimination based on race; one race is typically is in power over another race is one example for ethnocentrisms.

Cultural relativity is an attempt to understand the cultural development of societies and social groups on their own terms; that is, without trying to impose absolute ideas of moral value or trying to measure different cultural variations in terms of some form of absolute cultural standard. Cultural relativity challenges our ordinary beliefs in the objectivity and universality of moral truths. Different societies have different moral codes and we don’t have an objective standard that we could use to judge or rate witch society is better or worse than another.

Every human on the planet does things differently, eats differently, speaks different languages, different music and dances, and have many different customs. For example many African countries practice forced female genital mutilation which is a traditional ethnic custom signifying a woman’s unique place in her society, and is not inherently any different from circumcision or ear piercing. To think anything different would amount to viewing their society through distorted Western eyes, and casting judgment on it because it is different from the society we live in.

Another example of moral judgment such as “polygamy is morally wrong” may be true, relative to one society, but false relative to another. It is not true, or false. In some countries like India and China people kill newborn babies because they are females. In Somalia and Sudan a family kills a woman family member who is raped. There are too many examples, all over the world, of traditional practices and cultural prejudices that are damaging to women, physically and psychologically. According to Bagish’s statement that we have to evaluate and judge some cultural practices from on objective cross-cultural perspective. As we do this, we have to make our values explicit by being aware what one’s hierarchy value is. Moral cultural relativism is considered a trap because it limits the concept of morality to the portions that are shared universally.

The limits of cultural relativism vary depending on the individual. What is tolerable to me may not be tolerable by another individual or an entire culture. My own personal limit of cultural relativism is the point when it directly threatens me. This is the universal standard for all individual and cultures. We can respect other cultures but fully understand them is impossible because we already have a distorted view, stemmed from our own beliefs. Nature leaves plenty of room for cultural variety, and we should too.

References:

http://www.cas-courses.buffalo.edu/classes/ apy/anab/apy106/handouts/relativism.htm

http://www.uwec.edu/minkushk/Anth%20356%20Ethnocentrism.ppt

http://encyclopedia.laborlawtalk.com/Cultural_relativism

Henry H. Bagish: Confessions of a Former Cultural Relativist Conrad Phillip Kottak: Anthropology

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