Relativism and historicism

Abstract

This chapter concentrates on cultural relativism in anthropology, the strong programme of the sociology of knowledge, the social construction of reality, and relativism about rationality. Historicist relativism is treated more briefly because, as a special case, it is subject to the same arguments for and against as are other versions of relativism. Each of the forms of relativism chosen has a strong presence in contemporary anthropology and sociology. Relativism is a general term for the assertion, rarely made without the desire to shock, that certain variables, hitherto thought to be independent, are in fact dependent—that is, they vary relative to something else. Characteristically, it is asserted of moral claims, and claims bearing truth values. Moral claims and truth claims, it is said, are not self-evident or absolute, but are relative to, for example, the social class or the cultural conventions in which those who utter them are embedded. Historicist relativism is that special case of relativism in which morality and truth are relativized to time, or to historical period, or to Zeitgeist, or to historical context.