What is Cultural Relativism? Definition, Strengths, and Criticisms | Theory to Go 3

What is cultural relativism? In this episode of Theory To Go, we will define the term and address the ways in which the concept is used in anthropology and qualitative sociology. We will also touch on the major criticisms of cultural relativism -- which come, mainly, from outside of the social sciences -- and discuss how anthropologists have historically responded to those criticisms.
The host, Dr. Alexander K. Smith, holds an MA from Oxford University and a PhD in the anthropology of Tibet and the Himalayas from the University of Paris, France.
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Works Cited:
Boas, Franz. 1940. Race, Language and Culture. New York: Macmillan Company.
Geertz, Clifford. 1984. “Distinguished Lecture: Anti Anti-Relativism” in American Anthropologist New Series, Vol. 86(2), pp. 263-278.
Hatch, Elvin. 1983. Culture and Morality. New York: Columbia university Press.
Müller-Wille, Ludger (ed). Franz Boas among the Inuit of Baffin Island 1883-1884: Journals and Letters. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
A few recommended articles and monographs that summarize the subject and/or comment on the relationship b/w cultural and moral relativism:
Darnell, Regna. 2009. "Anthropological Approaches to Human Nature: Cultural Relativism and Ethnocentrism" in Anthropologica 51(1), pp. 187-194.
Geertz, Clifford. 1974. "From the Native's Point of View: On the Nature of Anthropological Understanding" in Bulletin of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 28(1), pp. 26-45.
Johnson, Thomas. 2007. "Cultural Relativism: Interpretations of a Concept" in Anthropological Quarterly 8(30), pp. 791-802.
Stocking, G. W. 1983. "Observers Observed: Essays on Anthropological Fieldwork" Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
0:00 Definition
0:55 A Brief Historical Overview
2:22 Common Criticisms
3:18 Common Responses to Criticism
4:44 Conclusion and Patreon Plug

[@ArmchairAcademics]

Thanks for watching! If you have anything to add to our discussion, let us know in the comments 🍻 Corrections: 3:27 there's an awkward typo in the Geertz reference. It should read, obviously, "Geertz, Clifford. 1984...".

[@Indigomooneyes]

One of my very favourite topics in anthropology

[@ArmchairAcademics]

Thanks for posting, Yavi! It's one of mine, as well. Could go on for ages and ages -- the criticisms and disciplinary responses to criticisms are a labyrinth on their own and are very interesting; and, as a perspective in qualitative research, it's utterly essential to understand.

[@Sad_bumper_sticker.]

@@ArmchairAcademicsI wish there was a lecture on the ethics and philosophical perspective on perceiving and understaning terrorism as an acceptable justifiable form of resistance by Palestians. I find the argument that Any Means Necessary is justified as “the language of resistance” against oppresion to be ethically disconcerting and dangerous. I wish there was a video analysis specifically on philosophically and anthropologically and sociologically why this is vs is not acceptable.

[@tobiawaas5078]

Great stuff! I would love to hear your take on the writing culture debate in a future video!

[@ArmchairAcademics]

Great suggestion!

[@lordwolfgangjosephuskaiser6778]

Thank you very much for your great and wonderful Videos. I personally love Anthropology and social sciences very much 🌹🌹🌹. Please make individual Videos about the greatest and most famous Anthropologists, Sociologists, Psychologists and Philosophers like Boas, Tylor, Plessner, Cassirer, Max Weber, Émile Durkheim, Auguste Comte, Peter Sloterdijk, Gustav le Bon, Carl Gustav Jung, Sigmund Freud, Edmund Husserl, Erich Fromm, Viktor Frankl, Jan Assmann, Claude Levi Strauss, Jaque Lacan, Jaque Derrida, Michel Foucault, Thomas Kuhn, Max Scheler, Friedrich Nietzsche, Gramsci, David Buss and so on.

[@ArmchairAcademics]

Thanks so much for the kind words. Videos on specific thinkers is a great idea. I appreciate the suggestion. This year, we need to keep a lot of our content a bit shorter that we would like because of the work we're doing on our animated history series, so studies of individual authors is a good solution -- it's definite possibility. Thanks again!

[@lordwolfgangjosephuskaiser6778]

@@ArmchairAcademics You're welcome my friend. I wish good luck with all great things you're doing.

[@KayleyWhalen]

One of the more compelling questions this raises for me for activist scholars is how can we do work in a way that recognizes the uniqueness of each culture but also builds cross-cultural solidarity on issues like human rights? It's a question that got raised recently at an internationa LGBTQl conference I attended (ILGA Asia), especially in regards to how gender in each country that representatives to the conference came from was often understood vastly differently. Yet the representatives worked to nevertheless find ways to act as an international consortium of trans and nonbinary activists. When colonialism has attempted to erase many Indigenous understandings of non-binary gender identities, how does one do activism that doesn't rely on Western understandings of gender identity and gender equality? Lots to unpack in regards to cultural relativism, and I hope this video (and your amazing reading list) helps people ask some hard questions.

[@ArmchairAcademics]

That's a great point -- and a really good question, Kayley. Thanks for posting! The dialectic between cultural relativism and universal human rights is, in my opinion, one of the most interesting theoretical developments in applied anthropology that's happened over the past two to three decades. The discourse is still evolving; but, to date, it's already the source of several extremely engaging criticisms of cultural relativism. I'm thinking of putting together a long Off the Shelf on the subject next year. One of the reasons I didn't broach the topic in this video is that critiques of relativism that stem from the human rights camp tend to focus on highly specific cultural contexts. That isn't great from a pedagogical perspective because it requires that the audience has a certain amount of pre-existing linguistic and cultural/historical knowledge, which I can't provide in a short video. That's a shame because there are some incredibly moving critiques of cultural relativism to be found in de-colonial human rights literature (Reza Afshari's "Human Rights in Iran" [2001] comes to mind). In my mind, the one standout exception is Alison Renteln's "International Human Rights: Universalism Versus Relativism" (1990), which provides a pretty accessible overview, but that's already over thirty years old! Gah! Returning to your questions, I wish that I had some snappy, well-sourced responses to give you. The truth is that applications and understandings of cultural relativism are more heterogeneous than they should be in the discipline, which poses a lot of problems. And what we need is ultimately to mainstream the relativism v. human rights dialectic to help theorists draw useful generalizations that might affect the methodological awareness of future generations of researchers. Honestly, ILGA Asia sounds like a good forum for that type of work. If it comes up in the future or at any point grows into a research axis in your work, I'd love to hear about it! Thanks again for the thoughtful comment! 🍻

[@ianpalfrey8744]

So honour killings are to be seen in a cultural context?