| CULTURAL RELATIVISM--WHAT IT ISN'T |
| There are people�both relativists and non-relativists�who think that cultural relativism means other things too that it does not. Namely, cultural relativism does not mean that:
1. �anything goes� or judgment is impossible. Some critics of relativism insist that it means, or leads to, a position of no standards at all, a �do what you want to do,� �if it feels good, do it� ethic or anti-ethic. That is not what cultural relativism teaches us. It does not say, �Anything goes� but rather �Here, this goes, and there, that goes.� It is descriptive. It does not tell us what moral or value judgments to make, only that diverging moral or value judgments are being made. And it certainly does not conclude that value judgments are impossible. Rather, it is a description of exactly how they are made. All judgments are made in relation to some standard of judgment, and we should find out what that standard of judgment is. But there is no such thing as a �standardless� judgment, and there does not appear to be a single standard that all cultures share. Instead, there are multiple standards. Each culture is a standard of judgment. 2. anything a culture does is good/moral/valuable/normal, etc. Some critics of relativism claim that taking a relativistic stance toward another culture is essentially condoning it. But what does it mean to condone? It means to judge favorably. And relativism is not, we repeat, about judging but about understanding. The classic objection to cultural relativism is that it ends up accepting or excusing Nazi atrocities. Far from it. Cultural relativism would not lead us to say, �Nazi attitudes and behaviors are good or acceptable.� What it would lead us to say is, �Here is where those attitudes and behaviors came from, and here is what they meant to them.� We certainly do not have to say that we approve for us to say that we understand. In fact, not only do we not have to, but we cannot �condone� this or any other behavior, because condoning,, like condemning, is a value response. To say a behavior is good or bad is to judge, and that means judging against some particular value standard. That means exiting your cultural relativism and resuming participation in your community of values, your culture. As an anthropologist I can understand a behavior without judging�in fact, I can only understand without judging�but as a member of American culture I can say that I do not share or condone that behavior. But I must always remember that my judgment is a product of my American culture and would not be shared by all cultures. 3. anything a culture believes is true. Some critics of relativism assert that relativism compels us to accept as valid any belief or �knowledge� that a culture possesses. Honestly, some relativists assert this too. If, for instance, a culture believes that the earth is flat, then it is flat for them, even while it is round for us. This is of course nonsense and has nothing to do with relativism at all. Let us prove this by contrasting two different kinds of statements: Polygamy is good. Earth is round. These statements look superficially identical. Both take the form of noun-�is�-adjective. But the similarity ends there. What kind of statement is the latter? It is a fact-statement, or a fact-claim. Is it true or false? Well, let�s assume that we do not know yet. Someone else advances the fact-claim that the earth is flat. How do we settle the issue? We look at the earth. We make observations and measurements, that is, we appeal to nature or reality. We find that the earth really is round, not flat, and verify the initial statement. How about the former example? Is it true or false that polygamy is good? The answer is�neither. Or both. It depends. It�s relative. That is, in Tivland or in Aboriginal Australia or in fundamentalist Mormonism, polygamy is good. In mainstream American society, polygamy is bad. So reality makes it possible for the statement and its opposite to be �true� at the same time. But reality does not allow the earth to be round and flat at the same time. This is because �polygamy is good� is not the same kind of statement as �earth is round.� Again, the latter is a fact-claim (either true or false), but the former is a value-claim (neither true nor false). Value claims are judgments and therefore must be made by reference to, relative to, some value standard. Shall we use mainstream American standards, or Tiv standards, or Aboriginal standards, ad infinitum? The answer is that any of those standards will do equally well. This is where many ethical philosophers and others fail to see the point: a value statement like �polygamy is good� is not, cannot be, true or false because it is not even a complete statement yet. Before we can evaluate the statement, we need to know more: good for what, good according to whom? If you say, �Polygamy is good among the Tiv,� I can respond, �That is true.� If you say, �Polygamy is good,� my response is not �True� or �False� but �Go on, finish your statement.� I do not know yet which cultural value-standard you are applying, so the statement is unfinished, useless, as formulated. Since there are multiple possible value standards that can be brought to bear on the claim, then the final judgment will be relative to whichever standard we ultimately use. In other words, value statements like this one are culturally relative, whereas fact statements are not. Or, it might be said that fact statements are �relative��but they are relative to a single standard (Reality) that is objective and universally shared. Or the acceleration of gravity on earth (32 feet per second per second) is the same for all people in all cultures because they share a single common standard for measuring that quantity. If all people in all cultures shared a single common standard for evaluating polygamy, then they would all come to the same evaluation, but then there would not be many different cultures for it to be relative to. Therefore, we can conclude as follows: Value statement Fact statement Neither true nor false Either true or false Culturally relative Not culturally relative Many possible standards (cultures) Single possible standard (reality) 4. cultural relativism is self-contradictory, because if everything is relative, then cultural relativism is relative too, which means we do not know if it is relative or not. This criticism is flawed, and perhaps you can now see why. Cultural relativism, as we have tried to show, is an awareness and acknowledgment of cultural difference. It amounts to saying, �Different cultures have different notions of good/normal/moral/valuable.� It amounts to saying, �Each culture is a possible standard for evaluating behavior.� Now, what kind of statement is that: value or fact? It is a fact statement. It is not saying culture is good, or cultural relativism is good, or multiple value standards are good. Perhaps from certain viewpoints, multiple values standards�multiple cultures�are not good at all. They definitely make the human world more complicated and contentious. Still, culture is; multiple value standards exist. That is a fact. If �different cultures exist� or �different cultures have different values� is a fact statement, or at least a fact claim, then it is not relative�it is either true or false. I think we can show with sufficient certainty that it is true. Go to Borneo and see the human heads hanging in the Iban houses, and then look for heads in a typical American home! So cultural relativism�or better yet, the reason for cultural relativism�is as true as the roundness of the earth. If someone were to push and ask, �Then is cultural relativism good?� the answer would have to be �Depends.� It is good for understanding and tolerating other cultures, it is good for trying to conduct economic or political relations between them. It is not so good for condemning or converting them. It is relative to your values and your goals. |