Revisiting Cultural Relativism: Old Prospects for a New Cultural Critique

Abstract

Cultural is among the most misunderstood yet socially charged concepts associated with anthropology today. While most American cultural anthropologists have utilized cultural as a pedagogical and sometimes political medium to challenge ethnocentric western views and cultural practices and to promote an appreciation of cultural diversity, ethicists, philosophers and the general public have all too often embraced a view of cultural that ostensibly allows repugnant customs and social practices to go unchallenged. For example, British philosopher turned social anthropologist, Ernest Gellner (1995:1822) maintains that cultural relativism, and by extension all interpretive theories that emphasize the local, abandon the pursuit of truth and thus betray the cannons of scientific inquiry. On the other hand, while philosopher James Rachels (2003:28-31) acknowledges that there are merits to cultural that include challenging assumptions about our own rational standards, keeping an open mind, and avoiding potentially dogmatic arguments, he invokes the rhetorically charged examples of excision, infanticide and funerary rites as practiced in a range of societies to dismiss cultural as unsuitable for the rational grounding of Cultural is among the most misunderstood yet socially charged concepts associated with anthropology today. While most American cultural anthropologists have utilized cultural as a pedagogical and sometimes political medium to challenge ethnocentric western views and cultural practices and to promote an appreciation of cultural diversity, ethicists, philosophers and the general public have all too often embraced a view of cultural that ostensibly allows repugnant customs and social practices to go unchallenged. For example, British philosopher turned social anthropologist, Ernest Gellner (1995:1822) maintains that cultural relativism, and by extension all interpretive theories that emphasize the local, abandon the pursuit of truth and thus betray the cannons of scientific inquiry. On the other hand, while philosopher James Rachels (2003:28-31) acknowledges that there are merits to cultural that include challenging assumptions about our own rational standards, keeping an open mind, and avoiding potentially dogmatic arguments, he invokes the rhetorically charged examples of excision, infanticide and funerary rites as practiced in a range of societies to dismiss cultural as unsuitable for the rational grounding of are also found more contemporaneously in the writings of Hume and Montaigne, no doubt a reflection of the expansion of trade and empire, as was the case with Herodotus. This is not to say, however, that Dundes Renteln believes that cultural is a historically continuous concept reproduced unchanged throughout history. She remarks that the modern version of cultural was central to Franz Boas's, Melville Herskovits's and Ruth Benedict's opposition to invidious nineteenth century models of cultural evolution that placed European societies at the pinnacle of human development while relegating indigenous culture to humanity's dawn. Although acknowledging their historical, if not theoretical conflation, Dundes Renteln elects to ignore debates about epistemological and linguistic in favor of discussing cultural and ethical because she believes that the latter more directly address universal human rights. In this regard, Renteln contends that Herskovits's belief that some - she emphasizes not all - evaluations are relative to the cultural background out of which they arise (1988:59) is defensible. Dundes Renteln maintains that there are three theories of ethical that appear under various guises (1988:60). She refers to the first as the theory of apparent ethical relativism that contends that peoples differ in their basic moral beliefs (1988:60). …