Cultural Relativity

Cultural relativity is an attempt to understand the cultural development of societies and social groups own their own terms; that is, without trying to impose absolute ideas of moral value or trying to measure different cultural variations in terms of some form of absolute cultural standard.

In this sense, under specific circumstances, any form of human behaviour can appear to be good or bad. A good example here is our attitude to the killing of another human being.

In peace time this may be considered to be murder or manslaughter (deviant), whereas in war time this may be considered a duty.

As this example suggests, what is significant is not the act itself (taking the life of another person) but the social context of the act (in this instance, the moral background against which the act is viewed).

However, the concept of cultural relativity does present problems, since if we apply it politically, not just sociologically, we have to accept any form of behaviour as acceptable as long as it conforms to the cultural expectations of the society in which it takes place.

To complete this section we can give a flavour of the type of problems that can occur in the study of cultures that are radically different to our own by looking at an edited anthropological account of a culture known as The Hsilnge. If you read this account, try to think about the possible problems involved in producing studies of cultures that are very different to your cultural experiences.