Cultural Relativism

Cultural relativism is the principle that the beliefs, values, and practices of a culture should be understood and evaluated in terms of that culture's own standards and context, rather than judged by the criteria of an outside society. It developed in opposition to ethnocentrism and to nineteenth-century evolutionary schemes that ranked societies from primitive to civilized. Franz Boas established the approach through historical particularism, insisting that each culture has its own history and logic, and his students, including Ruth Benedict, in Patterns of Culture, and Margaret Mead, and Melville Herskovits, advanced it. William Graham Sumner's concept of ethnocentrism describes the tendency the doctrine opposes. Methodologically, relativism encourages researchers to suspend judgment and take insiders' perspectives, as in Bronislaw Malinowski's participant observation. Critics argue that moral relativism can excuse harmful practices and conflict with universal human rights, a debate in which Clifford Geertz warned of anti-anti-relativism and Martha Nussbaum defended universal capabilities. The American Anthropological Association's debate over the Universal Declaration of Human Rights illustrates the tension. Many scholars distinguish methodological from ethical relativism. Cultural relativism remains central to research on diversity, ethics, human rights, anthropology, and cross-cultural understanding.