Cultural relativism

Cultural relativism is the view that beliefs and practices should be understood in relation to their cultural settings rather than judged solely by universal standards.

Ethnocentrism: Ethnocentrism is the tendency to interpret or judge other cultures using the standards of one’s own. It reverses cultural relativism’s demand to understand practices within their own cultural settings.
Franz Boas: Franz Boas was an anthropologist who argued that cultures have distinct histories and should not be ranked on a single evolutionary scale. His historical particularism helped establish cultural relativism in American anthropology.
Participant observation: Participant observation is a research method in which investigators take part in a community’s activities while observing them. Immersion can reveal meanings that outsiders might miss when interpreting a practice.
Moral universalism: Moral universalism holds that at least some moral principles apply to all people regardless of cultural context. It challenges the extension of cultural difference into limits on moral standards.
Moral relativism: Moral relativism holds that moral judgments or principles depend on cultural, historical, or individual frameworks. The ethical version of cultural relativism raises questions about whether moral standards can cross cultures.
Historical particularism: Historical particularism is an anthropological approach that explains each culture through its specific history and circumstances. It supplied a method for studying cultures without treating them as stages on one universal path.
Emic and etic: Emic and etic are perspectives that distinguish accounts framed in a culture’s own terms from external analytical accounts. The distinction clarifies how cultural understanding can combine local meanings with outside analysis.
Cultural imperialism: Cultural imperialism is the imposition or dominance of one culture’s values and practices over another’s. Relativist arguments often warn that universal standards can disguise the export of dominant cultural values.
Universalism: Universalism holds that some principles, values, or standards apply across people and cultures. It directly challenges the idea that cultural context should limit judgments across societies.
Cultural evolutionism: Cultural evolutionism is the theory that societies develop through ordered stages from simpler to more complex forms. Boas’s approach opposed ranking cultures by a presumed universal sequence of development.

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