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Understanding Cultural Relativism and Its Importance

Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the "Everything Psychology Book."

Akeem Marsh, MD, is a board-certified child, adolescent, and adult psychiatrist who has dedicated his career to working with medically underserved communities.

Bartosz Hadyniak/E+/Getty

Beliefs of Cultural Relativism

• Limitations
• In Mental Health

Cultural Relativism vs. Ethnocentrism

• How to Promote

Cultural relativism suggests that ethics, morals, values, norms, beliefs, and behaviors must be understood within the context of the culture from which they arise. It means that all cultures have their own beliefs and that there is no universal or absolute standard to judge those cultural norms. 

"Cultural relativism leads us to accept that cultures are foundationally different, with differing social and ethical norms. This includes understanding that a person’s place of birth, including where or how a patient was raised during their formative years, is the basis of a person’s approach to the world and emotional self," says Anu Raj, PsyD , a clinical psychologist at New York Institute of Technology.

Advocates of cultural relativism suggest that one culture's values, beliefs, and norms should not be judged through the lens of another culture.

It is the opposite of ethnocentrism, which involves judging or understanding cultural beliefs from the perspective of your own. Instead, cultural relativism suggests that observers and researchers should focus on describing those practices without attempting to impose their own biases and judgments upon them.

History of Cultural Relativism

The concept of cultural relativism was introduced by anthropologist Franz Boas in 1887. While he did not coin the term, it later became widely used by his students to describe his anthropological perspective and theories.

Cultural relativism suggests that:

• Different societies have their own moral codes and practices.
• Norms, beliefs, and values must be judged and understood from the context of the culture where they originate.
• No culture is objectively better than others; cultures and their customs and beliefs are not objectively superior or inferior to any other culture.
• Practices and behaviors considered acceptable or unacceptable vary from one culture to the next.
• Cultural relativism aims to help promote acceptance, tolerance, and an appreciation for diverse cultural beliefs and practices.
• No universal ethical or moral truths apply to all people in all situations.
• What is considered right and wrong is determined by society’s moral codes.
• Researchers and observers should strive to observe behavior rather than pass judgments on it based on their own cultural perspective.

Different Types of Cultural Relativism

There are two distinct types of cultural relativism: absolute cultural relativism and critical cultural relativism.

Absolute Cultural Relativism

According to this perspective, outsiders should not question or judge cultural events. Essentially, this point of view proposes that outsiders should not criticize or question the cultural practices of other societies, no matter what they might involve.

Critical Cultural Relativism

Critical cultural relativism suggests that practices should be evaluated in terms of how and why they are adopted. This perspective suggests that cultural practices can be evaluated and understood by looking at factors such as the historical context and social influences.

It also recognizes that all societies experience inequalities and power dynamics that influence how and why certain beliefs are adopted and who adopts them.

Strengths of Cultural Relativism

Cultural relativism has a number of benefits that can help people gain greater insight into different cultures. This perspective can help:

• Promote cultural understanding : Because cultural relativism encourages seeing cultures with an open mind, it can foster greater empathy , understanding, and respect for cultures different from ours. 
• Protect cultural respect and autonomy : Cultural relativism recognizes that no culture is superior to any other. Rather than attempting to change other cultures, this perspective encourages people to respect the autonomy and self-determinism of other cultures, which can play an important role in preserving the heritage and traditions of other cultures.
• Foster learning : By embracing cultural relativism, people from different backgrounds are able to communicate effectively and create an open dialogue to foster greater learning for other cultures of the world.

Cultural relativism can also be important in helping mental health professionals deliver culturally competent care to clients of different backgrounds.

"What’s considered “typical and normal versus pathological” depends on cultural norms. It varies between providers and patients; it impacts diagnosis, treatment, and prognosis," Raj explains.

When mental health professionals account for the differences in values, and attitudes towards and of marginalized people (including communities of color and LGBTQ+ communities), providers develop respect for individual patients. Consequently, patients are less likely to be misdiagnosed and more likely to continue treatment.

Limitations of Cultural Relativism

While cultural relativism has strengths, that does not mean it is without limitations.

Failure to Address Human Rights

This perspective has been criticized for failing to address universal rights. Some suggest that this approach may appear to condone cultural practices that constitute human rights violations. It can be challenging to practice non-judgment of other cultures while still protecting people’s right to live free from discrimination and oppression.

Cultural relativism may sometimes hamper progress by inhibiting the examination of practices, norms, and traditions that limit a society’s growth and progress.

Reducing Cultures to Stereotypes

Cultural relativism sometimes falls victim to the tendency to stereotype and simplify cultures. Rather than fully appreciating the full complexity and diversity that may exist within a culture, people may reduce it to a homogenous stereotype. This often prevents outsiders from seeing the many variations that may exist within a society and fully appreciating the way cultures evolve over time.

Individual Rights vs. Cultural Values

This perspective may sometimes lead observers to place a higher priority on a culture’s collective values while dismissing individual variations. This might involve, for example, avoiding criticism of cultures that punish political dissidents who voice opposition to cultural norms, and practices.

Examples of Cultural Relativism

In reality, people make cultural judgments all the time. If you've ever eaten food from another culture and described it as 'gross' or learned about a specific cultural practice and called it 'weird,' you've made a judgment about that culture based on the norms of your own. Because you don't eat those foods or engage in those practices in your culture, you are making culture-biased value judgments.

Cultural differences can affect a wide range of behaviors, including healthcare decisions. For example, research has found that while people from Western cultures prefer to be fully informed in order to make autonomous healthcare conditions, individuals from other cultures prefer varying degrees of truth-telling from medical providers.

An example of using cultural relativism in these cases would be describing the food practices of a different culture and learning more about why certain foods and dishes are important in those societies. Another example would be learning more about different cultural practices and exploring how they originated and the purpose they serve rather than evaluating them from your own cultural background. 

In medical settings, healthcare practitioners must balance the interests and autonomy of their patients with respect and tolerance for multicultural values.

Cultural Relativism in Mental Health

Cultural relativism can also play an important role in the practice and application of mental health. "An individual’s perception of mental health, including stigma, is often influenced by their cultural identity and social values," explains Raj.

People who experience cultural discrimination are also more likely to experience higher stress levels, which can seriously affect mental health. Research has shown that perceived discrimination increases psychological distress and predicts symptoms of anxiety and depression. It also contributes to worse physical health, including a higher risk for heart disease, diabetes, cancer, and stroke.

Therapists must strive to understand people from different backgrounds to provide culturally competent care. "Through the lens of cultural competency, providers can educate themselves and elevate the plethora of coping mechanisms that a patient already might possess," says Raj. 

Cultural relativism and ethnocentrism are two contrasting perspectives that can be used to evaluate and understand other cultures.

Ethnocentrism involves judging other cultures based on the standards and values of one's own culture, often leading to a biased or prejudiced perspective .

Where cultural relativism suggests that all cultures are equally valid, ethnocentrism involves seeing your own culture as superior or more correct than others.

Cultural relativism emphasizes the importance of diversity and recognizes that values, beliefs, and behaviors can vary across societies. This can be contrasted with ethnocentrism, which promotes the idea that your own culture is the norm or benchmark against which others should be evaluated. This can limit understanding and decrease tolerance for people of different backgrounds. 

How Do You Promote Cultural Relativism?

There are a number of strategies that can help promote cultural relativism. This can be particularly important for mental health professionals and other healthcare practitioners. 

"Therapists must be able to view the world through the eyes of their patients. Most importantly, culturally competent therapists understand their patient’s behavior through the cultural framework in which they live," Raj says.

Promoting cultural relativism involves adopting an open-minded and respectful approach toward other cultures. Some things you can do to foster greater cultural relativism:

• Embrace cultural diversity : Strive to appreciate other cultures, including their unique values, traditions, and perspectives. Remember that diversity enriches our lives, experiences, and world knowledge.
• Learn more about other cultures : Take the time to explore cultures other than your own, including histories, traditions, and beliefs. Resources that can help include books, documentaries, and online resources.
• Practice empathy : Seek to understand others by imagining things from their perspective. Try to understand their experiences, challenges, and aspirations. Cultivate empathy and respect for the differences between people and cultures.
• Seek diversity : Make an active effort to spend more time with people from different walks of life. Talk to people from diverse backgrounds and approach these discussions with an open mind and a desire to learn. Be willing to share your own perspectives and experiences without trying to change others or impose your beliefs on them.
• Challenge biases : Try to become more aware of how your unconscious biases might shape your perceptions and interactions with others. Practicing cultural relativism is an ongoing process. It takes time, open-mindedness , and a willingness to reflect on your biases.

Promoting Cultural Relativism Among Mental Health Professionals

How can therapists apply cultural relativism to ensure they understand other cultural perspectives and avoid unintentional biases in therapy?   

A 2019 study found that the ideal training for therapists included graduate coursework in diversity, supervised clinical experiences working with diverse populations, experiential activities, didactic training, and cultural immersion when possible.

Avoiding Bias in Therapy

Raj suggests that there are important questions that professionals should ask themselves, including:

• How do I identify?
• How does my patient identify? 
• What prejudices or biases am I holding? 
•  Are there biases or stereotypes I hold based on my own upbringing and culture? 

She also suggests that therapists should always be willing to ask about client involvement in treatment planning. She recommends asking questions such as: 

• What approaches have been successful or failed in the past? 
• How does the patient perceive their ailment? 
• What were the results of the patient’s previous coping mechanisms? 
• How does the patient’s culture drive their behavior, coping skills, and outcomes?

By making clients an active part of their treatment and taking steps to understand their background better, therapists can utilize cultural relativism to deliver more sensitive, informed care.

The New Republic. Pioneers of cultural relativism )

Kanarek J. Critiquing cultural relativism . The Intellectual Standard. 2013;2(2):1.

Rosenberg AR, Starks H, Unguru Y, Feudtner C, Diekema D. Truth telling in the setting of cultural differences and incurable pediatric illness: A review . JAMA Pediatr . 2017;171(11):1113-1119. doi:10.1001/jamapediatrics.2017.2568

Williams DR, Lawrence JA, Davis BA, Vu C. Understanding how discrimination can affect health . Health Serv Res . 2019;54 Suppl 2(Suppl 2):1374-1388. doi:10.1111/1475-6773.13222

Benuto LT, Singer J, Newlands RT, Casas JB. Training culturally competent psychologists: Where are we and where do we need to go ? Training and Education in Professional Psychology . 2019;13(1):56-63. doi:10.1037/tep0000214

By Kendra Cherry, MSEd Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the "Everything Psychology Book."

Cultural Relativism: Definition & Examples

Charlotte Nickerson

Research Assistant at Harvard University

Undergraduate at Harvard University

Charlotte Nickerson is a student at Harvard University obsessed with the intersection of mental health, productivity, and design.

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Saul Mcleod, PhD

Editor-in-Chief for Simply Psychology

BSc (Hons) Psychology, MRes, PhD, University of Manchester

Saul Mcleod, PhD., is a qualified psychology teacher with over 18 years of experience in further and higher education. He has been published in peer-reviewed journals, including the Journal of Clinical Psychology.

On This Page:

Key Takeaways

• Cultural Relativism is the claim that ethical practices differ among cultures, and what is considered right in one culture may be considered wrong in another. The implication of cultural relativism is that no one society is superior to another; they are merely different.
• This claim comes with several corollaries; namely, that different societies have different moral codes, there is no objective standard to judge how good or bad these moral codes are, and that the job of those who study cultures is not to compare these customs to their own, but to describe them.
• Moral relativism claims that what is customary in a culture is absolutely right in that culture. Cultural relativism is not as strong, sometimes asserting that there is no real way to measure right or wrong.
• Cultural relativism is contrary to ethnocentrism, which encourages people to look at the world from the perspective of their own culture.
• While cultural relativism has been the subject of controversy — especially from philosophers — anthropological and sociological studies have led to a widespread consensus among social scientists that cultural relativism is true.

Cultural relativism is the principle of regarding the beliefs, values, and practices of a culture from the viewpoint of that culture itself.

It states that there are no universal beliefs, and each culture must be understood in its own terms because cultures cannot be translated into terms that are accessible everywhere.

The principle is sometimes practiced to avoid cultural bias in research and to avoid judging another culture by the standards of one’s own culture. For this reason, cultural relativism has been considered an attempt to avoid ethnocentrism.

Cultural Relativism refers to the ability to understand a culture on its own terms and consequently not make judgments based on the standards of one’s own culture.

Implications

From the cultural relativist perspective, no culture is superior to another when comparing their systems of morality, law, politics, etc.

This is because cultural norms and values, according to cultural relativism, derive their meaning within a specific social context.

Cultural relativism is also based on the idea that there is no absolute standard of good or evil. Thus, every decision and judgment of what is right or wrong is individually decided in each society.

As a result, any opinion on ethics is subject to the perspective of each person within their particular culture.

In practice, cultural relativists try to promote the understanding of cultural practices that are unfamiliar to other cultures, such as eating insects and sacrificial killing.

There are two different categories of cultural relativism: absolute and critical. Absolute cultural relativists believe that outsiders must and should not question everything that happens within a culture.

Meanwhile, critical cultural relativism questions cultural practices regarding who is accepting them and why, as well as recognizing power relationships.

Cultural relativism challenges beliefs about the objectivity and universality of moral truth.

In effect, cultural relativism says that there is no such thing as universal truth and ethics; there are only various cultural codes. Moreover, the code of one culture has no special status but is merely one among many.

Assumptions

Cultural relativism has several different elements, and there is some disagreement as to what claims are true and pertinent to cultural relativism and which are not. Some claims include that:

Different societies have different moral codes;

There is no objective standard that can be used to judge one societal code as better than another;

The moral code of one’s own society has no special status but is merely one among many;

There is no “universal truth” in ethics, meaning that there are no moral truths that hold for all people at all times;

The moral code of a society determines what is right and wrong within that society; that is, if the moral code of a society says that a certain action is right, then that action is right, at least within that society and;

It is arrogant for people to attempt to judge the conduct of other people. Instead, researchers should adopt an attitude of tolerance toward the practices of other cultures.

Illustrative Examples

Food choices.

Cultural relativism does not merely relate to morality and ethics. Cultural relativism, for example, explains why certain cultures eat different foods at different meals.

For example, traditionally, breakfast in the United States is markedly different from breakfast in Japan or Colombia. While one may consist of scrambled eggs and pancakes and the other rice and soup or white cheese on a corn arepa, cultural relativists seek to understand these differences, not in terms of any perceived superiority or inferiority but in description (Bian & Markman, 2020).

Mental Illness

One of the biggest controversies concerning classification and diagnosis is that the ICD (the manuals of mental disorders) are culturally biased because they are drawn up and used by white, middle-class men. This means they tend to use definitions of abnormality that are irrelevant to all cultures.

For example, Davison & Neale (1994) explain that in Asian cultures, a person experiencing some emotional turmoil is praised & rewarded if they show no expression of their emotions.

In certain Arabic cultures, however, the outpouring of public emotion is understood and often encouraged. Without this knowledge, an individual displaying overt emotional behavior may be regarded as abnormal when in fact, it is not.

Cross-cultural misunderstandings are common and may contribute to unfair and discriminatory treatment of minorities by the majority, e.g., the high diagnosis rate of schizophrenia amongst non-white British people.

Cochrane (1977) reported that the incidence of schizophrenia in the West Indies and the UK is 1 %, but that people of Afro-Caribbean origin are seven times more likely to be diagnosed as schizophrenic when living in the UK.

Hygienic Rituals

Another phenomenon explained by cultural relativism is hygienic rituals. Different cultures may use different modes or methods of disposing of waste and cleaning up afterward.

Ritualized ablution, or washing, also differs across cultures. Catholics may dip their fingers into blessed water and anoint themselves at church, and Jewish people may pour water over their hands in a specific way during Shabbat.

Although toilet and washing practices vary drastically across cultures, cultural relativists seek to describe these differences, noting that what is customary to culture is not necessarily “right” or “wrong.”

Cultural vs. Moral Relativism

Cultural relativism is a claim that anthropologists can make when describing how ethical practices differ across cultures; as a result, the truth or falsity of cultural relativism can be determined by how anthropologists and anthropologists study the world.

Many sociologists and anthropologists have conducted such studies, leading to widespread consensus among social scientists that cultural relativism is an actual phenomenon (Bowie, 2015).

Moral relativism, meanwhile, is a claim that what is really right or wrong is what that culture says is right or wrong. While moral relativists believe that cultural relativism is true, they extend their claims much further.

Moral relativists believe that if a culture sincerely and reflectively adopts some basic moral principle, then it is morally obligatory for members of that culture to act according to that principle (Bowie, 2015).

The implication of moral relativism is that it is absolutely necessary for someone to act according to the norms of the culture in which they are located.

For example, when asking whether or not it is ethical to bribe government bureaucrats, a moral relativist would look for the answer in the norms of how people within their country deal with bureaucracy.

If people bribe government officials, then the moral relativist would consider bribery not to be wrong in that country.

However, if people do not normally bribe bureaucrats, offering them a bribe would be considered morally wrong.

A cultural relativist would posit that while bribery is an ethical norm in the cultures where it is practiced, it is not necessarily morally right or wrong in that culture (Bowie, 2015).

Cultural Relativism vs. Ethnocentrism

Ethnocentrism is the tendency to look at the world largely from the perspective of one’s own culture.

This may be motivated, for example, by the belief that one’s own race, ethnic, or cultural group is the most important or that some or all aspects of its culture are superior to those of other groups.

Ethnocentrism can often lead to incorrect assumptions about others’ behavior based on one’s own norms, values, and beliefs (Worthy, Lavigne, & Romero, 2021a).

Cultural relativism, meanwhile, is principled in regarding and valuing the practices of a culture from the point of view of that culture and avoiding making judgments stemming from one’s own assumptions.

Cultural relativism attempts to counter ethnocentrism by promoting the understanding of cultural practices unfamiliar to other cultures. For example, it is a common practice for friends of the same sex in India to hold hands while walking in public.

In the United Kingdom, holding hands is largely limited to romantically involved couples and often suggests a sexual relationship.

Someone holding an extreme ethnocentrist view may see their own understanding of hand-holding as superior and consider the foreign practice to be immoral (Worthy, Lavigne, & Romero; 2021a).

Controversy

Cultural Relativism has been criticized for numerous reasons, both theoretical and practical.

According to Karanack (2013), cultural relativism attempts to integrate knowledge between one’s own culture-bound reality. The premise that cultural relativism is based on that all cultures are valid in their customs is vague in Karanack’s view.

Karanack also criticizes cultural relativism from a theoretical perspective for having contradictory logic, asserting that cultural relativism often asserts that social facts are true and untrue, depending on the culture in which one is situated.

Nonetheless, cultural relativism also has several advantages. Firstly, it is a system that promotes cooperation. Each individual has a different perspective that is based on their upbringing, experiences, and personal thoughts, and by embracing the many differences that people have, cooperation creates the potential for a stronger society.

Each individual definition of success allows people to pursue stronger bonds with one another and potentially achieve more because there are no limitations on a group level about what can or cannot be accomplished (Karanack, 2013).

Secondly, cultural relativism envisions a society where equality across cultures is possible. Cultural relativism does so by allowing individuals to define their moral code without defining that of others. As each person can set their own standards of success and behavior, cultural relativism creates equality (Karanack, 2013).

Additionally, Cultural relativism can preserve cultures and allow people to create personal moral codes based on societal standards without precisely consulting what is “right” or “wrong.”

However, it can do so while also excluding moral relativism. This means that the moral code of a culture can be defined and an expectation implemented that people follow it, even as people devise goals and values that are particularly relevant to them.

Lastly, cultural relativism has been praised for stopping cultural conditions — the adoption of people to adapt their attitudes, thoughts, and beliefs to the people they are with on a regular basis (Karanack, 2013).

Despite these advantages, cultural relativism has been criticized for creating a system fuelled by personal bias. As people tend to prefer to be with others who have similar thoughts, feelings, and ideas, they tend to separate themselves into neighborhoods, communities, and social groups that share specific perspectives.

When people are given the power to define their own moral code, they do so based on personal bias, causing some people to follow their own code at the expense of others (Karanack, 2013).

Nonetheless, cultural relativism promotes understanding cultures outside of one’s own, enabling people to build relationships with other cultures that acknowledge and respect each other’s diverse lives.

With cultural relativism comes the ability to understand a culture on its own terms without making judgments based on one’s own cultural standards. In this way, sociologists and anthropologists can draw more accurate conclusions about outside cultures (Worthy, Lavigne, & Romero, 2020).

Bian, L., & Markman, E. M. (2020). Why do we eat cereal but not lamb chops at breakfast? Investigating Americans’ beliefs about breakfast foods. Appetite, 144, 104458.

Bowie, N.E. (2015). Relativism, Cultural and Moral. In Wiley Encyclopedia of Management (eds C.L. Cooper and ). Culture and Psychology. (2021). Glendale Community College.

Brown, M. F. (2008). Cultural Relativism 2.0 .  Current Anthropology, 49 (3), 363-383.

Cochrane, R. A. Y. M. O. N. D. (1977). Mental illness in immigrants to England and Wales: an analysis of mental hospital admissions, 1971.  Social psychiatry, 12 (1), 25-35.

Davison, G. C., & Neale, J. M. (1994). Abnormal Psychology . New York: John Willey and Sons.

Kanarek, Jaret (2013) “ Critiquing Cultural Relativism ,” The Intellectual Standard: Vol. 2: Iss. 2, Article 1.

Spiro, M. E. (1992). Cultural relativism and the future of anthropology .  Rereading cultural anthropology , 124, 51.

Tilley, J. J. (2000). Cultural relativism .  Hum. Rts. Q. , 22, 501.

Worthy, L. D., Lavigne, T., & Romero, F. (2020). Self and Culture. Culture and Psychology .

Zechenter, E. M. (1997). In the name of culture: Cultural relativism and the abuse of the individual .  Journal of Anthropological Research, 53 (3), 319-347.

Definition of Cultural Relativism in Sociology

How Breakfast Foods and Rules About Nudity Help Explain It

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Cultural relativism refers to the idea that the values, knowledge, and behavior of people must be understood within their own cultural context. This is one of the most fundamental concepts in sociology , as it recognizes and affirms the connections between the greater social structure and trends and the everyday lives of individual people.

Origins and Overview

The concept of cultural relativism as we know and use it today was established as an analytic tool by German-American  anthropologist Franz Boas in the early 20th century. In the context of early social science, cultural relativism became an important tool for pushing back on the ethnocentrism that often tarnished research at that time, which was mostly conducted by white, wealthy, Western men, and often focused on people of color, foreign indigenous populations, and persons of lower economic class than the researcher.

Ethnocentrism is the practice of viewing and judging someone else's culture based on the values and beliefs of one's own. From this standpoint, we might frame other cultures as weird, exotic, intriguing, and even as problems to be solved. In contrast, when we recognize that the many cultures of the world have their own beliefs, values, and practices that have developed in particular historical, political, social, material, and ecological contexts and that it makes sense that they would differ from our own and that none are necessarily right or wrong or good or bad, then we are engaging the concept of cultural relativism.

Cultural relativism explains why, for example, what constitutes breakfast varies widely from place to place. What is considered a typical breakfast in Turkey, as illustrated in the above image, is quite different from what is considered a typical breakfast in the U.S. or Japan. While it might seem strange to eat fish soup or stewed vegetables for breakfast in the U.S., in other places, this is perfectly normal. Conversely, our tendency toward sugary cereals and milk or preference for egg sandwiches loaded with bacon and cheese would seem quite bizarre to other cultures.

Similarly, but perhaps of more consequence, rules that regulate nudity in public vary widely around the world. In the U.S., we tend to frame nudity in general as an inherently sexual thing, and so when people are nude in public, people may interpret this as a sexual signal. But in many other places around the world, being nude or partially nude in public is a normal part of life, be it at swimming pools, beaches, in parks, or even throughout the course of daily life (see many indigenous cultures around the world).

In these cases, being nude or partially nude is not framed as sexual but as the appropriate bodily state for engaging in a given activity. In other cases, like many cultures where Islam is the predominant faith, a more thorough coverage of the body is expected than in other cultures. Due in large part to ethnocentrism, this has become a highly politicized and volatile practice in today's world.

Why Recognizing Cultural Relativism Matters

By acknowledging cultural relativism, we can recognize that our culture shapes what we consider to be beautiful, ugly, appealing, disgusting, virtuous, funny, and abhorrent. It shapes what we consider to be good and bad art, music, and film, as well as what we consider to be tasteful or tacky consumer goods. The work of sociologist Pierre Bourdieu features ample discussion of these phenomena, and the consequences of them. This varies not just in terms of national cultures but within a large society like the U.S. and also by cultures and subcultures organized by class, race, sexuality, region, religion, and ethnicity, among others.

• So What Is Culture, Exactly?
• Sociological Xenocentrism
• Franz Boas, Father of American Anthropology
• An Introduction to Cultural Anthropology
• What Is Ethnomusicology? Definition, History, and Methods
• Definition of the Sociological Imagination and Overview of the Book
• What Is Cultural Capital? Do I Have It?
• The Challenges of Ethical Living in a Consumer Society
• How Different Cultural Groups Become More Alike
• The Sociology of Consumption
• Definition of Cultural Materialism
• An Introduction to Medical Anthropology
• Introduction to Discourse in Sociology
• What Is the 'American Melting Pot?'
• What Is the Meaning of Globalization in Sociology?
• What Is Pluralism? Definition and Examples

1000-Word Philosophy: An Introductory Anthology

Philosophy, One Thousand Words at a Time

Cultural Relativism: Do Cultural Norms Make Actions Right and Wrong?

Author: Nathan Nobis Category: Ethics Word Count: 1000

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Consider these cultural practices:

arranged marriages; female genital cutting; male circumcision; requiring women to wear veils or burkas; canings as punishments; whaling and dolphin hunting; eating cats and dogs; eating meat; human sacrifice; harsh punishments throughout history. [1]  

Many readers will judge at least some practices like these to be morally wrong. If they announce this, however, they might get a response like this:

“Don’t judge these cultures’ practices! It’s their culture, their traditions, so what they do should be tolerated!”

People who say things like this may be expressing sympathy for an ethical theory called cultural relativism . [2] This essay introduces this theory. [3]

1. Understanding Cultural Relativism

Cultural relativism proposes that what is ethical is relative to , or depends on , cultural attitudes:

• if a culture disapproves of people doing an action, then it is wrong for people in that culture to do that action;
• if a culture approves of people doing an action, then it is not wrong for people in that culture to do that action. [4]

Cultural relativism is not the empirical observation, accepted as true by everyone , that different cultures sometimes have different ethical views, or that what people believe , think , or feel about the morality of an action is sometimes “relative” to the culture they are in.

Cultural relativism is a theory of what makes actions right and wrong. The “don’t judge!” and “be tolerant!” reactions above might be based on it and reasoning like this:

“People in other cultures aren’t doing anything wrong because ethics is determined by cultural attitudes: so they shouldn’t be judged; they should be tolerated.”

2. Cultural Relativism’s Implications

We can better understand cultural relativism by thinking about what follows from it: [5]

if cultural relativism were true or correct , then:

1. the majority view on any moral issue is always correct;

relativism identifies the majority view with what’s ethically correct in that culture, so the majority view is always correct, no matter what;

2. people who criticize majority views and advocate for change are always wrong:

since according to relativism, majority views are always correct, anyone who critiques them must be mistaken;

3. what’s ethical is identified by opinion polls;

according to relativism, to find out whether an action is ethical or not, we survey the population to find the majority view: research, reflection, and wise guidance aren’t needed;

4. there is only cultural change, never progress or improvement:

according to relativism, if, e.g., a culture approved of slavery then slavery was not wrong in that culture at that time; if that culture came to reject slavery, then slavery would become wrong in that culture; this, however, was not moral improvement or progress since slavery earlier was not wrong according to relativism: there was merely a change of views.

Many people think these implications show that relativism is a false theory since the majority isn’t always right, cultural critics are sometimes correct, opinion polls don’t tell us what is really ethical, and cultural views really can improve and, unfortunately, decline.

3. Arguments For Cultural Relativism

What can be said for cultural relativism? What’s appealing about it?

3.1. Tolerance

Some people argue for cultural relativism on the grounds that we should be tolerant and accepting of cultural differences .

One problem with this reasoning is that (almost?) no culture holds that we should tolerate and accept everything , no matter what. So, a principle of universal tolerance and acceptance contradicts relativism, which maintains that ethical standards are culture-bound and not universal. To think that we should be tolerant and accepting of everything is to reject relativism. 

According to relativism we should accept and tolerate only what our culture accepts. Since many cultures condemn many of the actions above, relativism implies that people who reject these judgments – like those above who urge toleration – are usually mistaken. So, if our cultures should be even just more accepting and tolerant, we should reject relativism.

3.2. Disagreements

Everyone observes that there are some profound ethical disagreements between cultures. From this fact, relativists conclude we should accept relativism.

This reasoning, however, is doubtful. In general, when there are disagreements on an issue, at most one general “side” can be correct: [6] e.g., if one person believes the Earth is spherical and another believes the Earth is flat, they can’t both be correct. Relativists urge that everyone can be right when they should think that, at most, one “side” is correct. [7]

But how can we tell which side is correct? Evaluate the arguments on each side : e.g., do cultures that support female genital cutting give good reasons for the practice? Or is the case against it stronger? [8]

About many issues, understanding and evaluating the arguments in genuinely fair and balanced ways is difficult. Whatever the challenges though, they don’t support accepting cultural relativism, which makes answering hard ethical questions very easy: do an opinion poll! [9]

Finally, some people might appeal to relativism to try to avoid challenging issues: if relativism is correct, it’s a simple “the majority rules” and there’s no need to investigate and discuss. [10]

4. Conclusion

Cultural relativists are correct that sometimes we should be more tolerant and accepting of cultural differences. [11] Some things done in other cultures are unfamiliar and may seem strange. But “different” is not the same as “wrong,” and learning about relativism can remind us of that.

But just because some culture approves of something does not mean it’s OK. Cultures, like individuals, sometimes approve of practices that are very wrong: they aren’t perfect and neither are we.

Rejecting cultural relativism usually involves accepting ethical realism , that what’s ethical is determined by factors that are “objective” and not relative to cultural attitudes: e.g., whether actions are harmful or beneficial to whoever is affected by them, or whether actions are done with the consent of all involved, and other objective considerations.

What’s of primary philosophical interest is not that some culture approves or disapproves of an action, but why , their reasons. Do they have good arguments for what they support? Do we? That’s the question that ethics is all about.

[1] For information on these cultural practices, see Wikipedia, “Arranged marriage”; Brian Earp,  “Boys and girls alike: An un-consenting child, an unnecessary, invasive surgery: is there any moral difference between male and female circumcision?” Aeon , 1/13/2015, and Brian Earp, “Does Female Genital Mutilation Have Health Benefits? The Problem with Medicalizing Morality.” University of Oxford Practical Ethics blog , 8/15/2017; James Vyver, “Why do Muslim women wear a burka, niqab or hijab?” ABC News , 8/17/2017; Wikipedia, “Caning in Singapore”; Natasha Daly, “Japan’s controversial annual dolphin hunt begins,” National Geographic , 09/09/2021; Justin McCurry, “Japan resumes commercial whaling for first time in 30 years. The Guardian , 06/30/2019; George Petras. 2/25/2019. “South Koreans eat more than 1 million dogs each year — but that’s slowly changing. Here’s why. Young Koreans lead efforts to end a centuries-old practice.” USA Today ; Melanie Joy, Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows: An Introduction to Carnism , Red Wheel, 2020; Wikipedia, “Human sacrifice”; Greta Christina, “How Religious Fundamentalism, Ironically, Leads to a Screwed-Up Moral Relativism,” The Orbit , 4/17/2014.

[2] Cultural relativism is an ethical theory , or a normative ethical theory. Such theories attempt to explain, in general, why actions are wrong (or right, or permissible) or what makes them so.

“Cultural relativism” is also sometimes called “ethical relativism,” “moral relativism” and sometimes even just “relativism.” These are names for the same view, which proposes that what’s really right and wrong – not just believed to be right and wrong – is relative to , or dependent on , cultural approval.

Another form of relativism is “individual relativism,” which is also sometimes (but sometimes not) called “ethical subjectivism,” which holds that what is right and wrong for a person to do is relative to, or dependent on, that person’s own approval or attitudes towards what they are doing. Individual relativism is very implausible since it seems to suggest, e.g., that if a person approves of their being, say, an ax-murderer, it is not wrong for them to be an ax-murderer: any action can be morally permissible provided the person doing the action approves of what they are doing.

Another view called just “relativism,” is “relativism about truth,” which claims that if someone, or a group, believes some claim, that claim is true. This view, however, is not true because belief and truth are distinct, and so what anyone believes to be true, or thinks is true, need not be actually true: e.g., sincerely, confidently believing you are a billionaire doesn’t mean or make you a billionaire and someone merely believing you are dead or imprisoned doesn’t make you that. Usually, if someone says something is “true to them” or “their truth,” they are best understood as stating what they believe or think, which may or may not be true. For more discussion, see Huemer, Michael. “Relativism: What is this Nonsense?” Fake Noûs , December 25, 2021.

[3] The understanding of relativism discussed in this essay is the version developed and discussed by James and Stuart Rachels in their Elements of Moral Philosophy textbook, as well as James Rachels’ “Some Basic Points About Arguments” chapter from their anthology The Right Thing to Do.

[4] Cultural relativism is sometimes presented as “if a culture believes an action is wrong , then that action is wrong in that culture” and “if a culture believes an action is permissible , then that action is permissible in that culture.”

This statement of the view, however, doesn’t make sense and is incorrect, since what would it be to “believe an action is wrong” on this proposal of what relativism is? What would a culture be believing or thinking here, if they believed an action is wrong? What thought would they be thinking about what “wrong” means? What would the content of the thoughts or judgments “is wrong” and “is permissible” be? 

[5] There are deeper concerns about cultural relativism in terms of simply understanding what the view actually is. 

Cultural relativism claims that ethics depends on cultures’ attitudes, but exactly what is a cultures’ attitudes? What percent of the population or how pervasive must some attitude be to be considered representative of the culture?

And what is a culture anyway? What is it to be part of a culture? (Is a visitor in a new culture “part of that culture”?).

However cultures are defined (can an individual person and their views be considered a culture?), each individual person is a member of different cultures, which often have different attitudes on the same actions. E.g., suppose some college students are also part of a “conservative,” “traditional” religion. Their college student culture may approve of what their religious cultures disapprove of, and vice-versa, and so it is unclear what action cultural relativism would require of them in these cases of intra-personal cultural conflicts. Which culture should an individual “follow” in cases of conflicts?

These interesting, theoretical questions about defining cultural relativism will not be addressed here.

[6] A potential exception to the rule that, in cases of disagreement, at most one general position is correct are aesthetic disagreements, disagreements about what’s most beautiful or attractive or pleasing.

For example, one person might think that the first song on an album is the best song, but their friend thinks that song is the worst. They seem to disagree, but it also might seem that neither of them is correct: no song is “objectively” best if “beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” as is sometimes said: it just depends on what someone likes, and we often like different things.

One theory of aesthetic judgments is that they are about what someone finds pleasing or attractive. So, on this view, one person here is saying, “I enjoy this song the most,” whereas the other says, “I don’t enjoy this song the most.” On this view, they don’t really disagree, since they are both just talking about what pleases them most: they are both accurately reporting what they like; they are both telling the truth. 

A difficulty for this view, however, is that it sometimes seems that people can be mistaken in their aesthetic judgments: e.g., if a beginning songwriter claims his songs are as good as Dolly Parton’s, or a tone-deaf singer thinks she’s as good a singer as Whitney Houston, or a local church choir thinks they are as good as the Mormon Tabernacle choir, it seems to many like all those judgments are false. If that’s correct, that means that beauty isn’t quite “in the eye of the beholder,” since some judgments about what’s beautiful, or more or most beautiful, can be mistaken. What might make them mistaken, however, is a challenging philosophical issue.

Nevertheless, judgments about what’s, say, the most flavorful ice cream or who the best guitar player is or whether someone is more beautiful or attractive than someone else are importantly different from whether killing someone was wrong or not, whether a law is just and other weighty ethical concerns.

[7] Another response to ethical disagreements is concluding that nothing is wrong or not wrong at all : there is no such thing as “wrongness.” Ethical irrealists or anti-realists called “error theorists” develop this position. See Ethical Realism by Thomas Metcalf and Moral Error Theory by Ian Tully. For a critique of moral error theory, see “Bah Fortiori: On the peculiarly specific character of our moral outrage” by Oliver Traldia.

[8] In “What’s Culture Got to Do with It? Excising the Harmful Tradition of Female Circumcision” it is observed that female genital cutting is sometimes argued, by its advocates in cultures where it is practiced, to be morally permissible because it is a tradition , it reduces promiscuity , it increases fertility and eases childbirth , it is required by their religion(s) , and it makes women more attactive to the men in these cultures . Whether any of these arguments is sound might depend on any of those claims being true and that claim’s corresponding, unstated premise being true also: all traditions are morally permissible (a premise similar to cultural relativism); all actions that decrease promiscuity are morally permissible ; all actions that increase fertility and/or ease childbirth are morally permissible ; all actions required by someone’s religion are morally permissible ; and all actions that make someone more attractive to someone else are morally permissible .

[9] Another potential motivation for relativism is people simply not knowing much about better methods to ethical reasoning. Few people take ethics classes where they learn to systematically engage issues using ethical theories that are arguably better than relativism. In such classes, students are usually exposed to ethical theories that deny cultural relativism, see Deontology: Kantian Ethics by Andrew Chapman, Consequentialism by Shane Gronholz, and John Rawls’ ‘A Theory of Justice’ by Ben Davies. For an approach that seeks to combine positive insights of many of these theories, see Principlism in Biomedical Ethics: Respect for Autonomy, Non-Maleficence, Beneficence, and Justice by G. M. Trujillo, Jr.

Some people seem to assume that the only options for what could make wrong actions wrong is either individual or cultural approval (so relativism) or God’s approval and commands: this explanation is known as the “Divine Command Theory” of ethics. There are, however, as noted there are many other plausible explanations for what makes wrong actions wrong and, interesting, the Divine Command Theory is subject to some objections that are similar to objections to relativism since both claim that its “just because ” some authority disapproves or approves of an action that makes that action wrong or not. See Because God Says So: On Divine Command Theory by Spencer Case.

[10] For this interpretation of common appeals to relativism, which sees these appeals as attempts to avoid careful and rigorous discussion, see Satris’s (1986) very insightful discussion of what he calls “Student Relativism.”

[11] Cultural “conservatives” sometimes claim that “liberals” accept relativism since liberals sometimes say things along the lines of “people should be able to do what they want,” “if people like doing that, they should be able to do that,” and so on. But what they don’t notice is that liberals say this only about actions they argue are not wrong , since, for actions that are not wrong, it makes sense to say that people should be able to do them, if they want. It’s not like “liberals” claim that if someone wants to be a school shooter or dump toxic waste in the river, they should do it. So “conservatives” sometimes do not think about the contexts and subjects that relativistic- sounding , but not genuinely relativistic, claims are made.

Christina, Greta. 4/17/2014, “How Religious Fundamentalism, Ironically, Leads to a Screwed-Up Moral Relativism,” The Orbit .

Daly, Natasha. 9/09/2021. “Japan’s controversial annual dolphin hunt begins.” National Geographic .

Earp, Brian. 1/13/2015. “Boys and girls alike: An un-consenting child, an unnecessary, invasive surgery: is there any moral difference between male and female circumcision?” Aeon .

Earp, Brian. 8/15/2017. “Does Female Genital Mutilation Have Health Benefits? The Problem with Medicalizing Morality.” University of Oxford Practical Ethics blog.

Huemer, Michael. December 25, 2021. “Relativism: What is this Nonsense?” Fake Noûs .

Joy, Melanie. 2020. Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows: An Introduction to Carnism . Red Wheel.

McCurry, Justin. 6/30/2019. “Japan resumes commercial whaling for first time in 30 years.” The Guardian .

Petras, George. 2/25/2019. “South Koreans eat more than 1 million dogs each year — but that’s slowly changing. Here’s why. Young Koreans lead efforts to end a centuries-old practice.” USA Today .

Rachels, James and Stuart. 2019. The Elements of Moral Philosophy , 9th Edition . McGraw Hill.

Rachels, James. 2019. “Some Basic Points About Arguments.” In James and Stuart Rachels’ The Right Thing to Do , 8th Edition, Rowman & Littlefield .

Satris, Stephen. 1986. “Student Relativism.” Teaching Philosophy . 9(3). 193-205.

Traldia, Oliver. January 27, 2019. “Bah Fortiori: On the peculiarly specific character of our moral outrage.” Arc Digital .

Vyver, James. 8/17/2017. “Why do Muslim women wear a burka, niqab or hijab?” ABC News .

“What’s Culture Got to Do with It? Excising the Harmful Tradition of Female Circumcision.” 1993. Harvard Law Review . 106( 8). 1944–1961.

Wikipedia, “Arranged marriage.”

Wikipedia, “Caning in Singapore.”

Wikipedia, “Human sacrifice.”

For Further Reading and Viewing

Boghossian, Paul. July 24, 2011. “The Maze of Moral Relativism.” New York Times. 

Brain in a Vat . August 16, 2020. “Is Cultural Relativism Racist? With Justin Kalef.” Youtube. 

Edgerton, Robert B. 1992. Sick Societies: Challenging the Myth of Primitive Harmony . Free Press.

Huemer, Michael. 2013. “The Progress of Liberalism”: Michael Huemer at TEDxMileHigh. Youtube.

King, Nathan. January 18, 2017. “Donald Trump and the Death of Freshman Relativism.” Huffington Post. 

Prinz, Jesse. January/February 2011. “Morality is a Culturally Conditioned Response.” Philosophy Now . 82.

Related Essays

Critical Thinking: What is it to be a Critical Thinker?  by Carolina Flores

Deontology: Kantian Ethics by Andrew Chapman

Consequentialism by Shane Gronholz

John Rawls’ ‘A Theory of Justice’ by Ben Davies

Principlism in Biomedical Ethics: Respect for Autonomy, Non-Maleficence, Beneficence, and Justice by G. M. Trujillo, Jr.

Because God Says So: On Divine Command Theory by Spencer Case

Ethical Realism by Thomas Metcalf

Moral Error Theory by Ian Tully

Evolution and Ethics by Michael Klenk

Ignorance and Blame by Daniel Miller

What Is Misogyny?  by Odelia Zuckerman and Clair Morrissey

Aristotle’s Defense of Slavery  by Dan Lowe 

The Moral Status of Animals  by Jason Wyckoff

Speciesism  by Dan Lowe

Theories of Punishment  by Travis Joseph Rodgers

Responding to Morally Flawed Historical Philosophers and Philosophies by Victor Fabian Abundez-Guerra and Nathan Nobis

Acknowledgments

The author appreciates feedback and guidance on this essay from Felipe Pereira, Dan Lowe, Thomas Metcalf, Chelsea Haramia, and a set of Facebook friends who helped him develop a list of cultural practices of ethical significance. 

PDF Download 

Download this essay in PDF .

About the Author

Nathan Nobis is a Professor of Philosophy at Morehouse College, Atlanta, GA. He is co-author of Thinking Critically About Abortion , author of Animals & Ethics 101 , and the author and co-author of many other writings and materials in philosophy and ethics. NathanNobis.com

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In This Article Expand or collapse the "in this article" section Cultural Relativism

Introduction, general overviews.

• Early Writing on Human Diversity
• Foundational Texts
• Nonrelativist Foundational Texts
• Anthropological Critiques
• Anthropological Defenses
• Philosophical Engagements
• Classics in Relativist Ethnography
• Anthropology and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
• Human Rights Revisited
• Renteln and Responses in Anthropology
• Debate on Ethical Relativism in Ethos
• Claude Lévi-Strauss and UNESCO
• The Captain Cook Controversy
• Multiculturalism and Cultural Rights
• Gender and Multiculturalism
• Power and Anthropological Authority
• Undermining Anthropological Authority
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• New Iterations of the Nature–Culture Debate

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Cultural Relativism by Mayanthi Fernando LAST REVIEWED: 25 June 2013 LAST MODIFIED: 25 June 2013 DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199766567-0003

In a 1580 essay called “On the Cannibals,” early Enlightenment thinker Michel de Montaigne posited that men are by nature ethnocentric and that they judge the customs and morals of other communities on the basis of their own particular customs and morals, which they take to be universally applicable. Montaigne’s essay foreshadowed the emergence in early 20th-century American anthropology of the principle of cultural relativism in a more robust and programmatic form, as a descriptive, methodological, epistemological, and prescriptive approach to human diversity. Franz Boas and his students, especially Melville J. Herskovits, were at the forefront of this new development, one that became foundational to modern anthropology. Against the biological and racial determinism of the time, they held that cultures develop according to the particular circumstances of history rather than in a linear progression from “primitive” to “savage” to “civilized,” that culture (rather than race or biology) most affects social life and human behavior, and that culture shapes the way members of a particular cultural group think, act, perceive, and evaluate. This new theorization of the culture concept led to a multifaceted approach to studying human diversity called cultural relativism. Cultural relativism is an umbrella term that covers different attitudes, though it relies on a basic notion of emic coherence: Each culture works in its own way, and beliefs and practices that appear strange from the outside make sense when contextualized within their particular cultural framework. More specifically, descriptive relativism holds that cultures differ substantially from place to place. Methodological relativism holds that the ethnographer must set aside his or her own cultural norms in order to understand another culture and explain its worldview. Epistemological relativism holds that because our own culture so mediates our perceptions, it is often impossible to fully grasp another culture in an unmediated way. Prescriptive or moral relativism holds that because we are all formed in culture, there is no Archimedean point from which to evaluate objectively, and so we must not judge other cultures using our own cultural norms. Recently, cultural relativism has become a straw man term, defined pejoratively as the strongest form of moral relativism; namely, that we cannot make any kind of moral judgments at all regarding foreign cultural practices. At the turn of the 20th century, cultural relativism was a progressive anthropological theory and methodological practice that sought to valorize marginalized communities in an inegalitarian world. Now cultural relativism is criticized as doing precisely the opposite: allowing repressive and inegalitarian societies to hide behind the cloak of cultural difference.

Stocking 1982 analyzes the emergence of American cultural anthropology, the rise of Franz Boas and his students, and their lasting influence. Kuper 1999 offers the most comprehensive overview of American cultural anthropology, though from a critical, social anthropological perspective dominant in Britain. The best overview of major French thinkers on the question of cultural diversity from Montaigne to Lévi-Strauss remains Todorov 1993 , which provides a good companion piece to overviews of cultural relativism that largely focus on the United States. Shweder 1984 traces American cultural anthropology’s roots in German Romanticism. Hatch 1983 and Fernandez 1990 examine anthropology’s and especially Boasian anthropologists’ relationship to cultural relativism. Renteln 1988 provides a short but comprehensive overview of more general approaches to cultural relativism within and beyond anthropology.

Fernandez, James W. 1990. Tolerance in a repugnant world and other dilemmas in the cultural relativism of Melville J. Herskovits. Ethos 18.2: 140–164.

DOI: 10.1525/eth.1990.18.2.02a00020

A close reading of Herskovits’ work on cultural relativism by one of his last students. Argues that cultural relativism was not an abstract philosophical issue but a practical and political one and that Herskovits considered cultural relativism as both a scientific method and a tool to fight injustice. Also examines some of the specific impasses that arose for Herskovits between his commitment to objective science and to political and social justice. Available online for purchase or by subscription.

Hatch, Elvin. 1983. Culture and morality: The relativity of values in anthropology . New York: Columbia Univ. Press.

Gives a critical overview of Boasian cultural relativism, including some of its epistemological, methodological, and ethical impasses. In addition to a historical overview, also argues for a new iteration of cultural relativism that overcomes what Hatch considers its earlier problems.

Kuper, Adam. 1999. Culture: The anthropologists’ account . Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press.

Though often critical of cultural anthropology, and especially of cultural relativism, provides a comprehensive account of the development of the culture concept from its evolutionary civilizational sense to its contemporary, plural meaning. Examines the work of the Boasians, David Schneider, Clifford Geertz, Marshall Sahlins, and recent poststructural anthropology.

Renteln, Alison Dundes. 1988. Relativism and the search for human rights. American Anthropologist 90.1: 56–72.

DOI: 10.1525/aa.1988.90.1.02a00040

First half of the article is useful for outlining the various versions of cultural relativism in philosophy and anthropology. Provides a brief but comprehensive historical overview of the different approaches and ensuing debates. Latter half of the article takes up the question of contemporary human rights, arguing that cultural relativism is compatible with cross-cultural universals. Available online for purchase or by subscription.

Shweder, Richard A. 1984. Anthropology’s romantic rebellion against the enlightenment, or there’s more to thinking than reason and evidence. In Culture theory: Essays on mind, self, and emotion . Edited by Richard A. Schweder and Robert A. LeVine, 27–66. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.

Locates anthropology’s celebration of local context, its commitment to local rationalities, and its notion that primitive and modern are coequal within a longer genealogy that stretches back to the German Romantic movement.

Stocking, George W., Jr. 1982. Race, culture, and evolution: Essays in the history of anthropology . Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.

A classic text by the leading historian of the discipline charting the emergence of American cultural anthropology. Gives a good sense of the theoretical and political stakes in the development of Boasian anthropology and its culture concept against the racial theories popular at the time.

Todorov, Tzvetan. 1993. On human diversity: Nationalism, racism, and exoticism in French thought . Translated by Catherine Porter. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press.

Excellent overview of French thought from the Enlightenment onwards on the unity and diversity of the human species and its values. Particularly useful for defining key terms, including ethnocentrism , humanism , scientism , cultural relativism , universalism , and exoticism . Shows how ethnocentrism underpins certain forms of both universalism and cultural relativism. The author also offers his own theory of a universalism without ethnocentrism.

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1.6 Cross-Cultural Comparison and Cultural Relativism

Learning outcomes.

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

• Define the concept of relativism and explain why this term is so important to the study of anthropology.
• Distinguish relativism from the “anything goes” approach to culture.
• Describe how relativism can enlighten our approach to social problems.

Recall our earlier discussion of cultural styles of clothing. American clothing style is related to American values. Ghanaian clothing style is related to Ghanaian values. We have seen how different realms of culture are interrelated, fitting together to form distinctive wholes. Anthropologists use the term cultural relativism to describe how every element of culture must be understood within the broader whole of that culture. Relativism highlights how each belief or practice is related to all of the other beliefs and practices in a culture. The anthropological commitment to relativism means that anthropologists do not judge the merits of particular beliefs and practices but rather seek to understand the wider contexts that produce and reinforce those elements of culture. Even when studying controversial topics such as piracy and guerilla warfare, anthropologists set aside their personal convictions in order to explore the complex web of cultural forces that determine why we do the things we do.

Relativism Is Not “Anything Goes”

Critics of the notion of relativism, believing so strongly in their own cultural norms that they cannot set them aside, even temporarily. They argue that relativism is amoral, a refusal to condemn aspects of culture considered to be wrong and harmful. For them, relativism means “anything goes.”

For anthropologists, cultural relativism is a rigorous mode of holistic analysis requiring the temporary suspension of judgment for the purposes of exploration and analysis. Anthropologists do not think that violent or exploitative cultural practices are just fine, but they do think that the reasons for those practices are a lot more complex than we might imagine. And frequently, we find that the judgmental interventions of ethnocentric outsiders can do more harm than good.

Morality, Activism, and Cultural Relativism

A striking example of the application of cultural relativism in anthropology is the controversy surrounding female genital cutting (FGC) , sometimes called female genital mutilation. FGC is a cultural practice in which an elder cuts a younger woman’s genitalia, removing all or part of the clitoris and labia. The practice is common in parts of Africa and the Middle East. FGC is not only extremely painful; it can also lead to infection, urination problems, infertility, and complications in childbirth.

The World Health Organization and the United Nations condemn the practice as a form of violence against children, a danger to women’s health, and a violation of basic human rights. These organizations view FGC as a form of discrimination against women, enforcing extreme inequality among the sexes. Efforts to ban FGC have focused on educating parents and children about the medical harms associated with the practice. Local governments are encouraged to enact laws banning FGC and impose criminal penalties against the elders who perform it.

Despite decades of campaigning against FGC, however, the practice remains widespread. If condemning FGC has not been effective in reducing it, then what can be done? Anthropologist Bettina Shell-Duncan has taken a more relativist approach, attempting to understand the larger cultural norms and values that make FGC such an enduring practice. Setting aside her personal opinions, Shell-Duncan spent long periods in African communities where FGC is practiced, talking to people about why FGC is important to them. She learned that FGC has different functions in different sociocultural contexts. Among the Rendille people of northern Kenya, many people believe that men’s and women’s bodies are naturally androgynous, a mix of masculine and feminine parts. In order for a girl to become a woman, it is necessary to remove the parts of female genitalia that resemble a man’s penis. Likewise, in order for a boy to become a man, the foreskin must be removed because it resembles the folds of female genitalia.

Other societies value FGC for different reasons. Some Muslim societies consider FGC a form of hygiene, making a girl clean so that she can pray to Allah. Some communities see FGC as a way of limiting premarital sex and discouraging extramarital affairs. In the colonial period, when FGC was banned by the colonial government, some Kenyan girls practiced FGC on themselves as a form of resistance to colonial authority. As FGC is promoted and carried out by senior women in most contexts, the practice becomes a way for senior women to solidify power and exert influence in the community.

People in communities practicing FGC are often aware of the efforts of outside groups to ban the practice. They know about medical complications such as the risk of infection. But the denunciations of outsiders often seem unconvincing to them, as those denunciations tend to ignore the cultural reasons for the endurance of FGC. People who practice FGC do not do it because they despise women or want to harm children. Shell-Duncan argues that parents weigh the risks and benefits of FGC, often deciding that the procedure is in the best interest of their child’s future.

Personally, Shell-Duncan remains critical of FGC and works on a project with the Population Council designed to dramatically reduce the practice. Cultural relativism does not mean permanently abandoning our own value systems. Instead, it asks us to set aside the norms and values of our own culture for a while in order to fully understand controversial practices in other cultures. By suspending judgment, Shell-Duncan was able to learn two important things. First, while campaigns to eradicate FGC frequently target mothers, providing them with educational material about the medical risks involved, Shell-Duncan learned that the decision to go ahead with the procedure is not made by parents alone. A large network of relatives and friends may pressure a girl’s parents to arrange for the cutting in order to ensure the girl’s chastity, marriageability, and fertility. Secondly, Shell-Duncan learned that people who practice FGC do it because they want the best for their girls. They want their girls to be respected and admired, considered clean and beautiful, fit for marriage and childbearing.

Shell-Duncan argues that outside organizations should reconsider their efforts, focusing more on communities than on individual parents. Awareness campaigns will be more effective if they resonate with local norms and values rather than dismissively condemning them as part of the whole culture of FGC. Some researchers urge anti-FGC activists to connect with local feminists and women’s groups in an effort to empower local women and localize the movement against FCG. Some alternative approaches press for more incremental forms of change, such as moving the practice to more sanitary conditions in clinics and hospitals and reducing the severity of the procedure to smaller cuts or more symbolic nicks.

As this example illustrates, cultural relativism is not an amoral “anything goes” approach but rather a strategy for forming cross-cultural relationships and gaining deeper understanding. Once this foundation has been established, anthropologists are often able to revise their activist goals and more effectively work together with people from another culture in pursuit of common interests.

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Cultural relativism

Definition & introduction.

Cultural relativism is the view that ethical and social standards reflect the cultural context from which they are derived.

Cultural relativists uphold that cultures differ fundamentally from one another, and so do the moral frameworks that structure relations within different societies. In international relations, cultural relativists determine whether an action is 'right' or 'wrong' by evaluating it according to the ethical standards of the society within which the action occurs. There is a debate in the field on whether value judgments can be made across cultures. Cultural relativism should not be confused with moral relativism, which holds that moral absolutes guiding individual behavior do not exist as a matter of principle.

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Featured reading, stanford encyclopedia of philosophy: relativism.

"Relativism, roughly put, is the view that truth and falsity, right and wrong, standards of reasoning, and procedures of justification are products of differing conventions and frameworks of assessment..."

Relativism: Cognitive and Moral

This collection of essays incorporates studies of both cognitive and ethical relativism. The selections were handpicked to demonstrate the complexity and importance of relativistic doctrines and the many fundamental issues they raise.

Some Criticisms of Cultural Relativism

Published in The Journal of Philosophy in 1955, Schmidt analyzes some of cultural relativism's key insights and ambiguities. He believed the term was "a convenient label" for his time "covering some positive insights", but also some "outright errors".

Cultural Relativism and Universal Human Rights

Donnelly's 1984 article attempts to answer the question: how can the competing claims of cultural relativism and universal human rights be reconciled? He details the relationship between relativism and universalism offering an approach to reconcile their tension.

Discussion Questions

1. Can you think of examples of universal values that supersede the particularities of cultures? What are the challenges associated with determining international standards for morality within cultural relativism? 2. Societies and aspects of their moral frameworks change with time. How is social progress possible within cultural relativism theory? Who are the agents of change?

3. What are the main contributions of cultural relativist thought to the study of international relations? What would you say are its deficiencies or dangers, if any? 4. Consider the different interpretations of marriage in the article, " When Rites Are Rights: Cultural Challenges To Marriage Laws ". In your opinion, should rites be protected as cultural rights? Explain. 5. Read " This Forest Is Ours ". The Kenyan government views the Mukogodo forest as a strategic national resource worthy of protection whereas the Indigenous Yiaaku view the Mukogodo as a cultural heritage and as inseparable from Yiaaku life. In your opinion, who should have access to the forest?

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Relativism, roughly put, is the view that truth and falsity, right and wrong, standards of reasoning, and procedures of justification are products of differing conventions and frameworks of assessment and that their authority is confined to the context giving rise to them. More precisely, “relativism” covers views which maintain that—at a high level of abstraction—at least some class of things have the properties they have (e.g., beautiful, morally good, epistemically justified) not simpliciter , but only relative to a given framework of assessment (e.g., local cultural norms, individual standards), and correspondingly, that the truth of claims attributing these properties holds only once the relevant framework of assessment is specified or supplied. Relativists characteristically insist, furthermore, that if something is only relatively so, then there can be no framework-independent vantage point from which the matter of whether the thing in question is so can be established.

Relativism has been, in its various guises, both one of the most popular and most reviled philosophical doctrines of our time. Defenders see it as a harbinger of tolerance and the only ethical and epistemic stance worthy of the open-minded and tolerant. Detractors dismiss it for its alleged incoherence and uncritical intellectual permissiveness. Debates about relativism permeate the whole spectrum of philosophical sub-disciplines. From ethics to epistemology, science to religion, political theory to ontology, theories of meaning and even logic, philosophy has felt the need to respond to this heady and seemingly subversive idea. Discussions of relativism often also invoke considerations relevant to the very nature and methodology of philosophy and to the division between the so-called “analytic and continental” camps in philosophy. And yet, despite a long history of debate going back to Plato and an increasingly large body of writing, it is still difficult to come to an agreed definition of what, at its core, relativism is, and what philosophical import it has. This entry attempts to provide a broad account of the many ways in which “relativism” has been defined, explained, defended and criticized.

1.1 The co-variance definition

1.2 relativism by contrast, 1.3 the hidden parameter definition, 1.4.1 global vs. local relativism, 1.4.2 strong vs. weak relativism, 2.1 empirical claims of diversity and their consequences, 2.2 disagreements and intractability, 2.3 no neutral ground, 2.4 underdetermination of theory by data, 2.5 context dependence, 2.6 the principle of tolerance, 3. a brief history of an old idea, 4.1 cultural relativism, 4.2 conceptual relativism, 4.3.1 alethic relativism and the charge of self-refutation., 4.4.1 relativism about rationality, 4.4.2 relativism about logic, 4.4.3 relativism about science, 4.4.4 social constructionism, 4.5 moral relativism, 5.1 the individuating features of new relativism, 5.2.1 lasersohn (2005) and the judge parameter, 5.2.2 kölbel and faultless disagreement, 5.2.3 moral relativism, 5.3 truth relativism and epistemic modals, 5.4 truth relativism and future contingents, 5.5 truth relativism and knowledge ascriptions, 5.6.1 relativism and assertion, 5.6.2 simplicity, 6. conclusion, other internet resources, related entries, 1. what is relativism.

The label “relativism” has been attached to a wide range of ideas and positions which may explain the lack of consensus on how the term should be defined. The profusion of the use of the term “relativism” in contemporary philosophy means that there is no ready consensus on any one definition. Here are three prominent, but not necessarily incompatible, approaches:

A standard way of defining and distinguishing between different types of relativism is to begin with the claim that a phenomenon x (e.g., values, epistemic, aesthetic and ethical norms, experiences, judgments, and even the world) is somehow dependent on and co-varies with some underlying, independent variable y (e.g., paradigms, cultures, conceptual schemes, belief systems, language). The type of dependency relativists propose has a bearing on the question of definitions. Let us take some examples.

Each of (a)–(c) exhibits a relation of dependence where a change in the independent variable y will result in variations in the dependent variable x . However, of the three examples cited above, normally only (a) and (b) are deemed relevant to philosophical discussions of relativism, for one main attraction of relativism is that it offers a way of settling (or explaining away) what appear to be profound disagreements on questions of value, knowledge and ontology and the relativizing parameter often involves people, their beliefs, cultures or languages.

The co-variance definition proceeds by asking the dual questions: (i) what is relativized? and (ii) what is it relativized to? The first question enables us to distinguish forms of relativism in terms of their objects , for example, relativism about truth, goodness, beauty, and their subject matters, e.g., science, law, religion. The answer to the second question individuates forms of relativism in terms of their domains or frames of reference—e.g., conceptual frameworks, cultures, historical periods, etc. Such classifications have been proposed by Haack (1996), O’Grady (2002), Baghramian (2004), Swoyer (2010), and Baghramian & Coliva (2019). The following table classifies different relativistic positions according to what is being relativized, or its objects, and what is being relativized to, or its domains.

Table 1: Domains of Relativization ( y )

Table 1 reflects the availability of fine-grained distinctions between different forms of relativism as functions of both objects ( x ) and domains ( y ) of relativization. In practice, however, much contemporary discussions of relativism focus on subjectivism, historicism, cultural relativism and conceptual relativism, along the axis of y , and cognitive/epistemic relativism, ethical or moral relativism and aesthetic relativism, along the axis of x . As we shall see in §5 , New Relativism, where the objects of relativization (in the left column) are utterance tokens expressing claims about cognitive norms, moral values, etc. and the domain of relativization is the standards of an assessor, has also been the focus of much recent discussion.

A second approach to defining relativism casts its net more widely by focusing primarily on what relativists deny . Defined negatively, relativism amounts to the rejection of a number of interconnected philosophical positions. Traditionally, relativism is contrasted with:

Absolutism , the view that at least some truths or values in the relevant domain apply to all times, places or social and cultural frameworks. They are universal and not bound by historical or social conditions. Absolutism is often used as the key contrast idea to relativism.

Objectivism or the position that cognitive, ethical and aesthetic norms and values in general, but truth in particular, are independent of judgments and beliefs at particular times and places, or in other words they are (non-trivially) mind-independent. The anti-objectivist on the other hand, denies that there is such thing as simply being ‘true’, ‘good’, ‘tasty’ or ‘beautiful’ but argues that we can coherently discuss such values only in relation to parameters that have something to do with our mental lives.

Monism or the view that, in any given area or topic subject to disagreement, there can be no more than one correct opinion, judgment, or norm. The relativist often wishes to allow for a plurality of equally valid values or even truths.

Realism , when defined in such a way that it entails both the objectivity and singularity of truth, also stands in opposition to relativism.

Relativism in this negative sense is a prominent feature of the work of the relativists malgré eux such as Richard Rorty (1979) and Jacques Derrida (1974). What justifies the appellation ‘relativist’, rather than ‘skeptic’, is not only these philosophers’ suspicion of the possibility of objectivity but their insistence on the role of socio-historical, psychological and textual contexts in accounts of ‘truth’ and ‘knowledge’ claims.

What also binds various forms of relativism is an underlying idea that claims to truth, knowledge or justification have an implicit, maybe even unnoticed, relationship to a parameter or domain. Gilbert Harman (1975), Robert Nozick (2001), and Crispin Wright (2008b) are among the philosophers to propose versions of this thesis. Paul Boghossian summarizes the position this way:

the relativist about a given domain, D , purports to have discovered that the truths of D involve an unexpected relation to a parameter. (Boghossian 2006b: 13)

To take an example, moral relativism, according to this approach, is the claim that the truth or justification of beliefs with moral content is relative to specific moral codes. So the sentence “It is wrong to sell people as slaves” is elliptical for “It is wrong to sell people as slaves relative to the moral code of …”. Or alternatively, as Kusch (2010) formulates the idea on behalf of the relativist: “It is wrong-relative-to-the-moral-code-of-… ” to sell people as slaves. The resulting sentence(s) turns out to be true, according to the relativist, depending on how we fill in the “…”. So, “It is wrong to sell people as slaves” comes out true relative to the moral code of the United Nations Charter of Human Rights and false relative to the moral code of ancient Greece. The justifying thought is that judgments about the morality of slavery, or any other ethical issue, are based on differing conventions, and there is no universal or objective criterion for choosing among differing competing socio-historically constituted conventions. Moreover, as a corollary of this approach, there is no truth of the matter of whether it is wrong to sell people as slaves, independently of the specification of some standard. Thus on the hidden parameter account, a consequence is that the relevant claims will be true, if at all, only relative to some parameter.

This particular approach to relativism is often expressed in explicitly linguistic terms and is favored by philosophers interested in the semantic dimensions of relativism. The claim is that predicates such as “is true”, “is rational”, “is right”, “is good” etc. in a natural language have the apparent logical form of one-place predicates, but their surface grammatical form is misleading, because upon further investigation they prove to be elliptical for two-place predicates such as “is true relative to…”, “is right according to”, etc., (of course, where such predicates are available). Relativism, according to this approach, is the claim that a statement of the form “ A is P ” within a given domain (e.g., science, ethics, metaphysics, etc.) is elliptical for the statement “ A is P in relation to C ”, where A stands for an assertion, belief, judgment or action, P stands for a predicate such as “true”, “beautiful”, “right”, “rational”, “logical”, “known” etc., and C stands for a specific culture, epistemic framework, language, belief-system, etc.

The three approaches outlined here are compatible and sometimes complementary. A relativistic thesis as captured by the approach outlined in §1.1 for instance, will also be relativistic in at least one of the negative senses outlined in §1.2 . Moreover, as we shall see, since various subdivisions of relativism appearing in table 1 could, with appropriate modification, be expressed as claims about the truth of sentences falling in a particular domain, then the hidden predicate approach is applicable to them as well. (See §5 for a more detailed way to give expression to the hidden parameter insight within recent work in the philosophy of language.)

1.4 The scope of relativism

A further consideration relevant to defining relativism is its scope.

The basic idea of global relativism is captured by the oft-repeated slogan “all is relative”. The claim is that all beliefs, regardless of their subject matter, are true only relative to a framework or parameter. Local relativists, by contrast, limit their claim of relativization to self-contained areas of discourse, e.g., ethics, aesthetics and taste but argue that, for instance, scientific truths are not suitable candidates for a relativistic understanding (but also see §4.4.3 ). It is worth noting that local relativisms, typically, are endorsed on the basis of philosophical considerations connected to the kinds of features that are claimed to be relative (e.g., aesthetic standards, epistemic principles), or relatedly, semantic considerations to do with discourse where such features are attributed. Global relativism, by contrast, seems to be motivated not so much by considerations about particular features, but by more general considerations about truth itself.

As we will see, global relativism is open to the charge of inconsistency and self-refutation, for if all is relative, then so is relativism. Local relativism is immune from this type of criticism, as it need not include its own statement in the scope of what is to be relativized. Unsurprisingly, local rather than global relativism is much more common within contemporary debates. There is also a question mark on whether we could apply relativism to all truths in a completely unrestricted way; for instance, Kölbel (2011) has argued that claims such as “an object is beautiful and not beautiful” and “an object is identical to itself” have to be excluded.

A further distinction is made between weak and strong forms of relativism. Strong relativism is the claim that one and the same belief or judgment may be true in one context (e.g., culture or framework or assessment) and false in another. Weak relativism is the claim that there may be beliefs or judgments that are true in one framework but not true in a second simply because they are not available or expressible in the second. Bernard Williams’ “relativism of distance” (Williams 1985) and Ian Hacking’s (1982) defense of variability in styles of reasoning are instances of weak relativism. Williams argues that certain concepts are only available to people who live a particular form of life. These are concepts that are not a part of what Williams calls the “absolute conception of the world” and do not express truths that any rational creature, regardless of her culture, would in principle acknowledge. Truths that require these concepts for their formulation are expressible only in languages whose speakers take part in that particular form of life. Such truths need not be true in a relativized sense—true relative to some parameters, false relative to others; rather, such truths are perspectival: real but visible only from a certain angle, i.e., for people who adopt a certain way of life. This weaker form of relativism, in so far as it denies the universality of certain truth claims, is captured more readily by the negative definition ( §1.2 ) of relativism.

2. Why Relativism?

Interest in relativism as a philosophical doctrine goes back to ancient Greece. In more recent decades, however, relativism has also proven popular not only as a philosophical position but also as an idea underwriting a normative—ethical and political-outlook. (see Bloom 1987, in particular the Introduction, and Kusch (ed.) 2019). A number of philosophical considerations as well as socio-historical developments explain the enduring interest in and the more recent popularity of relativism.

Data regarding diversity of belief systems, conceptual frameworks and ways of life have frequently been used by philosophers and anthropologists alike to give credibility to philosophical arguments for relativism (For example see Hollis & Lukes 1982 and Wilson 1970). The mere fact of empirical diversity does not lead to relativism, but, relativism as a philosophical doctrine, has often been taken as a natural position to adopt in light of empirical diversity, in part, because relativism helps to make sense of such diversity without the burden of explaining who is in error.

Descriptive relativism, an empirical and methodological position adopted by social anthropologists, relies on ethnographic data to highlight the paucity of universally agreed upon norms, values and explanatory frameworks. From polygamy to cannibalism, from witchcraft to science we find major differences between the worldviews and outlooks of individuals and groups. Descriptive relativism is often used as the starting point for philosophical debates on relativism in general and cultural relativism in particular. The observed radical differences among cultures, it is argued, show the need for a relativistic assessment of value systems and conceptual commitments. Some anti-relativist universalists, on the other hand, argue that underlying the apparent individual and cultural differences, there are some core commonalities to all belief systems and socio-cultural outlooks (e.g., Nussbaum 1997). But the relativistically inclined respond by first pointing to the seeming incommensurability of various ethical and conceptual frameworks and the variability of cognitive norms and practices in difference cultures, and then, on this basis, maintain that the so-called “commonalities” belie significant differences. The anti-relativist may concede the point and insist that where such disagreements exist, at most one view is correct and the rest mistaken. But in so far as we are reluctant to impute widespread and systematic error to other cultures, or to our own, relativism remains an attractive option. Descriptive relativism is also central to the brand of relativism advocated by the sociologists of scientific knowledge and other social constructionists who argue that, even in the so-called “hard sciences”, we cannot escape the specter of irresolvable differences and even incommensurability (see §4.4.3 ).

There is not only a marked diversity of views on questions of right and wrong, truth and falsehood, etc., but more significantly, many disputes arising from such differences seem intractable . There are instances of long-standing disagreement, such that the disputants are very plausibly talking about the same subject matter (thus avoiding incommensurability) and genuinely disagreeing with each other; and yet, no amount of information and debate enables them or us to resolve the disagreement. And moreover, in such cases, it can seem that neither side seems to have made any obvious mistake (see, e.g., Hales 2014 and Beddor 2019).

If well-informed, honest and intelligent people are unable to resolve conflicts of opinion, we should, some relativists argue, accept that all parties to such disputes could be right and their conflicting positions have equal claims to truth, each according to their own perspective or point of view. Their disagreement is faultless (Kölbel 2004; Brogaard 2007; Hales 2014). Many relativistically inclined philosophers, (e.g., Max Kölbel (2004), Wright (2006) and John MacFarlane with terminological qualification (2014: 133–136)) see the presence of faultless disagreements as central to motivating and justifying relativism. The anti-relativists counter that the very notion of a “faultless” disagreement is incompatible with our common understanding of what it means to disagree. It is a hallmark of disagreement, as commonly understood, that the parties involved find fault with the other sides’ views. When people disagree at least one of them is making a mistake or is failing to believe what he or she ought to believe given his or her cognitive aims. Relativism accordingly offers a revisionary account of what it means to disagree (e.g., MacFarlane 2007, 2014; see §5 where the point has been discussed in some detail); but it is not clear if the account can explain what is left of a disagreement to preserve once we allow that both parties to a disagreement could be right (Carter 2013; Dreier 2009).

A sophisticated semantic version of relativism about truth, known as truth-relativism, and alternatively as “new relativism”, has been proposed in recent years and which attempts to deal with some of these issues (e.g., MacFarlane 2014 and Ferrari 2019 for an overview). We will return to this variety of relativism in §5.

A different perspective on the move from disagreement to relativism is offered in recent work by Carol Rovane (2012 and 2013), who rejects the prevailing consensus on what she calls the “disagreement intuition of relativism” in favor of an “alternatives intuition”. According to Rovane, relativism is motivated by the existence of truths that cannot be embraced together, not because they contradict and hence disagree with each other but because they are not universal truths. The example Rovane gives is conflict between a belief that deference to parents is morally obligatory in Indian traditionalist sense and the belief that it is not morally obligatory in the American individualist sense. Each belief is true within its particular ethical framework but the two beliefs cannot be conjoined or embraced together. Or more generally, it is not possible both to exercise full autonomy and simultaneously be dedicated to one’s community and its norms. The underlying thought, for Rovane, is that not all truth-value-bearers are in logical relations to one another, that there are many noncomprehensive bodies of truths that cannot be conjoined.

What the two approaches have in common is the claim that truth and justification are plural, that there could be more than one correct account of how things stand in at least some domains and their correctness has to be decided relative to a framework of context of assessment.

Additionally, the relativistically inclined find further support for their position in the contention that there is no meta-justification of our evaluative or normative systems, that all justifications have to start and end somewhere (see Sankey 2010 and 2011) and that there are no higher-order or meta-level standards available for adjudicating clashes between systems in a non-question begging way. Steven Hales, for instance, argues that faced with disagreement and given non-neutrality, relativism is the most viable non-skeptical conclusion to draw (Hales 2006: 98; 2014). Similar considerations apply to attempts to anchor beliefs on secure foundations. Various intellectual developments, leading to loss of old certainties in the scientific and social arena have strengthened the appeal of this point. The scientific revolution of the early 20 th century, brought about by, for instance, the advent of Relativity Theory and Quantum Mechanics and the loss of faith in lasting religious or political truths (Marxism in particular), as well as the failure of foundationalist philosophical programs have been used in arguments to vindicate relativistic views (for relativism about science see §4.4.3 ). The relativists often argue that justifications are not only perspectival but also interest-relative and there is no neutral or objective starting ground for any of our beliefs (see Seidel 2014; Carter 2015: ch. 4 and Siegel in Hales 2011: 205 for criticisms of this type of justification of relativism).

Pierre Duhem’s (1861–1916) thesis of underdetermination of theory by data, the claim that empirical evidence alone is not adequate for providing justification for any given scientific theory, has played an important role in building up a case both for conceptual relativism ( §4.2 ) and for constructionism and relativism about science ( §4.4.2 and §4.4.3 ). According to the underdetermination thesis, incompatible theories can be consistent with available evidence. Relativism threatens whenever conflicting theories or views appear to have equal claim to truth or justification. The relativistically inclined use underdetermination to claim that evidence could be brought to justify opposing explanations and justification. The underdetermination thesis is also used to highlight the absence of neutral starting points for our beliefs. Choices between incompatible but equally well-supported rival theories, it is argued, are often made based on interests and local preferences rather than neutral universal grounds.

Relativists argue that beliefs and values get their justification or truth only relative to specific epistemic systems or practices (see Kusch forthcoming ). Strong support for this view has come from social scientists and cultural theorist who focus on the socio-cultural determinants of human beliefs and actions. The social sciences, from their very inception, were hospitable to relativism. Indeed, August Comte, the father of sociology, claimed that a strength of “positive sociology” was its “tendency to render relative the ideas which were at first absolute” (Comte 1976 [1830–42]: 89). Comte also was responsible for the battle cry “all is relative”, but immediately and no doubt self-consciously contradicted himself by adding “and that’s the only absolute”. Other social scientists, under the influence of Karl Marx (1818–1883), Max Weber (1864–1920), and Wilhelm Dilthey (1833–1911), have given credence to the idea that human beliefs and actions could be understood and evaluated only relative to their social and economic background and context (cf., Kinzel 2019). Beliefs, desires and actions, the argument goes, are never independent of a background of cultural presuppositions, interests and values. We cannot step out of our language, culture and socio-historical conditions to survey reality from an Archimedean vantage point. Even perceptions are “theory-laden” and could vary between linguistic and cultural groupings. The sociological view that beliefs are context-dependent, in the sense that their context helps explain why people have the beliefs they do, has also been used to support what is sometimes called “social” or “sociological relativism” or the view that truth or correctness is relative to social contexts because we can both understand and judge beliefs and values only relative to the context out of which they arise. Context-dependence is also used to explain empirical observations of diversity in beliefs and values; different social contexts, the argument goes, give rise to differing, possibly incompatible norms and values.

Advocates of relativism, particularly outside philosophical circles, often cite tolerance as a key normative reason for becoming a relativist. On this rationale, all ways of life and cultures are worthy of respect in their own terms, and it is a sign of unacceptable ethnocentrism to presume that we could single out one outlook or point of view as objectively superior to others. The Principle of Tolerance acquires an overtly socio-political form in the hand of Paul Feyerabend who maintains that “A free society is a society in which all traditions are given equal rights” (Feyerabend 1978: 30). Anti-relativists find this normative advocacy of relativism unconvincing for two key kinds of reasons. Some anti-relativists (e.g., Rachels 2009) often appeal to cases at the limits (e.g., toleration of heinous crimes) to show the thesis to be implausibly overpermissive (see §4.5 ). Others argue that if all values are relative then tolerance and maximizing freedom are valuable only to those who have already embraced them. Relativists counter that they are not defending a global version of relativism regarding all truths and justification but local versions concerning the ethics and politics of belief and the usefulness of relativism in our attempt to become better, or at least more flexible and less dogmatic, thinkers and more tolerant citizens (e.g., Feyerabend 1978: 82–84). The anti-relativists counter-argue that even if we grant that political tolerance is an important value, and that accepting relativism would promote it, we should never adopt philosophical views about the nature of truth or justification simply because of their assumed good moral or political consequences. Second, and more importantly: political toleration does not require the strong doctrine of philosophical relativism. Increased awareness of diversity together with an awareness of the historical contingency of one’s own convictions will promote political toleration just as effectively. As Knobe and Nichols point out, simply being made aware of radically different view points can lead to a:

…crisis akin to that of the [Christian] child confronted with religious diversity… For the discovery of religious diversity can prompt the thought that it’s in some sense accidental that one happens to be raised in a Christian household rather than a Hindu household. This kind of arbitrariness can make the child wonder whether there’s any reason to think that his religious beliefs are more likely to be right than those of the Hindu child (Knobe & Nichols 2007: 11)

A separate strand of argument connecting tolerance and relativism has appealed to the claimed virtues of relativism as a kind of philosophical stance (e.g., Bloor 2011; Baghramian 2019), one that is characterised by anti-absolutist intellectual virtues such as curiosity and anti-dogmatism. The idea that a relativistic stance involves the manifesting of intellectually beneficial attitudes has been championed by, along with Bloor, Feyerabend (1975) and Code (1995), the latter of whom have emphasised the value of emancipatory thinking, e.g., thinking that is not artificially constrained by attempts to “enforce a universalist truth”.

However, critics of relativism as a stance have countered such arguments from ‘relativist virtues’ with arguments from vice. Baghramian (2019), for instance, has suggested that even if we grant that a relativist stance aligns with a cluster of intellectually virtuous dispositions in thinking, the stance also has the consequence of encouraging several corresponding vices, including intellectual insouciance (e.g., Cassam 2019), and lack of conviction (Baghramian 2019: 265; cf., Kusch 2019 for replies).

The English term “relativism” came into usage only in the 19 th Century. John Grote was probably the first to employ it when in Exploratio Philosophica (1865) he wrote:

The notion of the mask over the face of nature is…. what I have called “relativism”. If “the face of nature” is reality, then the mask over it, which is what theory gives us, is so much deception, and that is what relativism really comes to. (Grote 1865: I.xi, 229).

Its German counterpart, “ Relativismus ”, has a longer history. Wilhelm Traugott Krug, who succeeded Kant in the University of Königsberg in his philosophical lexicon, defines it as

the assumption that everything which we experience and think (the self, the idea of reason, truth, morality, religion etc.) is only something relative, and therefore has no essential endurance and no universal validity. (Krug 2010 [1838]: 224)

Although the term “relativism” is of recent coinage, doctrines and positions, with some of the hallmarks of contemporary relativism, date back to the very beginnings of Western philosophy. Protagoras of Abdera (c. 490–420 BC) is often considered the first overt champion of relativism, and his dictum

Man ( anthrôpos ) is the measure ( metron ) of all things ( chrêmatôn ), of the things which are, that they are, and of the things which are not, that they are not ( tôn men ontôn hôs esti, tôn de mê ontôn hôs ouk estin ) (from Plato’s Theaetetus 152a 2–4)

its first battle-cry. According to Plato, Protagoras thought:

Each thing appears ( phainesthai ) to me, so it is for me, and as it appears to you, so it is for you—you and I each being a man. ( Theaetetus 152a 6–8)

For instance, the same wind could be cold to one person and hot to another. The extent to which Protagoras’s view, or at least what comes down to us from Plato, amounts to genuine relativism remains somewhat controversial. As Burnyeat (1976b: 172) notes, Sextus Empiricus thought—though Burnyeat thinks mistakenly—that the Protagorean measure doctrine was to be understood as the subjectivist thesis that every appearance is true ( simpliciter ). This kind of radical subjectivism, though, quickly can be shown to turn on itself: it can appear that the thesis that “every appearance is true” is false. And so this radical subjectivist interpretation, regardless of whether it is accurate, is as Sextus had thought, untenable. However, Plato also ascribes a social or ethical dimension to Protagorean relativism which seem to go beyond individualistic subjectivism. In Theaetetus 172a 2–6 he says

what may or may not fittingly be done, of just and unjust, of what is sanctioned by religion and what is not; and here the theory may be prepared to maintain that whatever view a city takes on these matters and establishes as its law or convention, is truth and fact for that city . In such matters, neither any individual nor any city can claim superior wisdom. [emphasis added]

Plato’s attempted refutation of Protagoras, known as peritrope or “turning around”, is the first of the many attempts to show that relativism is self-refuting.

Protagorean relativism directly influenced the Pyrrhonian Skeptics, who saw the “man is the measure” doctrine as a precursor to their brand of skepticism. Sextus Empiricus, for instance, in his “Relativity Mode” states that judgments and observations are relative to the person who makes them, to their context as well as the object being observed and goes on to say,

since we have established in this way that everything is relative ( pros ti ), it is clear then that we shall not be able to say what an existing object is like in its own nature and purely, but only what it appears to be like relative to something. (Sextus Empiricus PH I 140)

But the conclusion he draws favors skepticism rather than relativism as understood in modern philosophy, for he concludes, “It follows that we must suspend judgment about the nature of objects” (ibid.).

Glimpses of relativistic thinking were in evidence in Boethius (480–524) (see Marenbon 2003) as well as in the double truth doctrine, or the view that religion and philosophy are separate and at times conflicting sources of truth, originally found in Averroes (1126–1198) and the 13 th century Latin Averroists. However, the dominant belief in a singular and absolute revealed truth within a Christian framework, on the whole, made the medieval period inhospitable to relativism. There was a renewed interest in both relativism and skepticism at the inception of modern philosophy inspired, in part, by Latin translations of Sextus Empiricus in the 16 th century. Michel de Montaigne’s work (1533–1592), in common with others sympathetic towards relativism, ancient or contemporary, relies on accounts of faraway cultures to argue that “we have no other criterion of truth or right-reason than the example and form of the opinion and customs of our own country” (Montaigne 1580 [1991: 152]) (but also see Fricker 2013 for a dissenting view). His advocacy of toleration, even for the cannibal, paved the way for not only the acceptance but the valorization of idealized versions of alien creeds and distant cultures by Enlightenment figures such as Rousseau (1712–1778), Voltaire (1694–1778), Diderot (1713–1784), Montesquieu (1689–1755) and Condorcet (1743–1794), who in turn, were instrumental in establishing an intellectual climate hospitable to cultural relativism. These authors were also the first to explore the idea of viewing one’s culture from an outsider’s point of view and using this external perspective as a vehicle to criticize local customs and norms. To take just one example, Diderot, in his “Supplement to the Voyage of Bougainville”, tells us that the Tahitian is mild, innocent, and happy while civilized people are corrupt, vile, and wretched; the natives live according to customs and rules that vary greatly from the Western ones. They do not possess private property or operate their affairs based on egalitarian principles, and they exercise sexual freedom not accepted in “civilized societies”. Diderot accordingly opposes the European mission of civilizing the natives, and despite his belief in a common human nature, he advocates the relativistic sounding maxim to

be monks in France and savages in Tahiti. Put on the costume of the country you visit, but keep the suit of clothes you will need to go home in. (Diderot 1956 [1772]: 228 in Baghramian 2010: 37)

Discussions of relativism in the 19 th century had two sources (see Gardiner 1981). On the one hand, figures from the so-called Counter-Enlightenment, a philosophical movement which arose in the late 18 th century and the early 19 th century in opposition to the Enlightenment, Johann Georg Hamann (1730–1788), Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803), Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767–1835) emphasized the diversity of languages and customs and their role in shaping human thought. Hamann’s views on language, for instance, foreshadow contemporary conceptual and epistemic relativism. He maintained that language is the “instrument and criterion of reason” as well as the source of all the confusions and fallacies of reason. Furthermore, the rules of rationality are embedded within language, which in turn, is governed by local norms of custom and use (Hamann 1967 [1759]). Relativism ensues because languages and their rules of rationality vary a great deal. Herder, on the other hand, not only railed against the rational, universalizing and science-oriented ethos of the Enlightenment but, much like later relativists, also argued that different nations and epochs have their distinct preferences in ethical and aesthetics matters as well as their varied conceptions of truth and we are not in a position to adjudicate between them (Herder 1774 [2002: 272–358]).

The Counter Enlightenment had a significant influence on Hegel, Nietzsche, and Dilthey, who in turn have shaped relativistic thinking in certain strands of continental philosophy, postmodernism and cultural studies. Hamann’s rejection of objectivism was central to Nietzsche’s even more profound recoil from objectivity. And indeed, Nietzsche is possibly the single most influential voice in shaping relativistic sensibilities in 20 th century continental philosophy. His declaration that all human conceptions and descriptions, including those advanced by scientists, are

only an interpretation and arrangement of the world (according to our own requirements, if I may say so!)—and not an explanation of the world. (Nietzsche 1886a [1996]: §14)

and that “there is only a perspective seeing, only a perspective knowing” (Nietzsche 1886b [1968]: §540), irrespective of how Nietzsche himself intended them, have been taken to express a core contention of relativism that no single account of truth or reality can occupy a privileged position, for such accounts are only one of many perspectives that prevail at a given time in history. We cannot appeal to any facts or standards of evaluation independently of their relation to the perspectives available to us; we can do little more than to insist on the legitimacy of our own perspective and try to impose it on other people through our “will to power”.

A second source was the German post-Kantian and British Idealist discussions of the “relativity of knowledge” taking place in the context of the distinction between being-for-other ( für anderes sein ) and being-for-itself ( fürsichsein )—a distinction influenced by the Kantian idea that all knowledge is ultimately relational because knowledge of the Real or “the thing in itself” is impossible. John Stuart Mill, for instance ascribes to the Kantian William Hamilton the “doctrine of relativity of our human knowledge” because Hamilton, according to Mill, believed that there could be no unconditional or absolute knowledge for all knowledge is dependent on the knowing mind (Mill 1884: 8).

The end of the 19 th century witnessed the emergence of yet another strand of relativism motivated by empirical-psychological and physiological interpretations of Kantian categories. The view, known as species relativism , and defended by neo-Kantian psychologists such as Theodore Lipps (1851–1914), holds that the rules of logic are products of the human mind and psychology and therefore may be unique to the human species; different species could have and use different logical principles. The view was vehemently, but quite effectively, attacked by Frege and Husserl as part of their arguments against what they called “psychologism” and “speciesism” (Kusch 1995: 47). Logic in this approach is identified with the actual thinking processes of individuals or communities and its authority is seen to be local, or relative to the practices of particular epistemic groupings. But Frege and Husserl argued that with such relativization we would lose the ability to distinguish between reasoning correctly and merely seeming to do so.

Finally, the popularity of the very idea of relativism in the 20 th century owes something to Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity (1905) which was to be used both as model and as well as a vindication for various relativistic claims. Gilbert Harman is among the philosophers to use Einsteinian relativity as a model for philosophical versions of relativism. He says:

According to Einstein’s Theory of Relativity even an object’s mass is relative to a choice of spatio-temporal framework. An object can have one mass in relation to one such framework and a different mass in relation to another. …. I am going to argue for a similar claim about moral right and wrong. … I am going to argue that moral right and wrong …. are always relative to a choice of moral framework. (Harman 1996: 3)

The Sapir-Whorf theory of linguistic relativity (see §4.1 ) is also thought to have been inspired by the Relativity Theory. It is however worth noting that Einstein did not think that the Theory of Relativity supported relativism in ethics or epistemology because, although in his model simultaneity and sameness of place are relative to reference frames, the physical laws expressing such relativity are constant and universal and hence in no sense relative.

The different strands of the intellectual genealogy of relativism have shaped a variety of relativistic doctrines.

4. Varieties of Relativism

Relativism is discussed under a variety of headings some of which have been more prominent in recent philosophical and cultural debates.

Public debates about relativism often revolve around the frequently cited but unclear notion of cultural relativism . The idea that norms and values are born out of conventions can be traced back to the Greek historian Herodotus (c. 484–425 BC), but it is only in the 20 th century, and particularly with the advent of social anthropology, that cultural relativism has gained wide currency. Franz Boas, responsible for the founding of social anthropology in the U.S., claimed that

The data of ethnology prove that not only our knowledge but also our emotions are the result of the form of our social life and of the history of the people to whom we belong. (Boas 1940: 636)

Boas’s views became the orthodoxy of anthropology through M. J. Herskovits’ “principle of cultural relativism” stating: “Judgments are based on experience, and experience is interpreted by each individual in terms of his own enculturation” (Herskovits 1955:15).

Since those early days, social anthropologists have come to develop more nuanced approaches to cultural relativism (see for instance Geertz 1993); however, its core tenet, a claim to the equal standing of all cultural perspectives and values which co-vary with their cultural and social background, has remained constant.

Cultural relativists justify their position by recourse to a combination of empirical, conceptual and normative considerations:

Claims (a)–(d) are open to a variety of objections. Some anthropologists and biologists have argued against the empirical assumption of the variability of cultures and have disputed its extent. Kinship, death and its attendant rituals of mourning, birth, the experience of empathy, expressions of sympathy and fear, and the biological needs that give rise to these, are some of the constant elements of human experience that belie the seeming diversity reported by ethnographers (Brown 2004). (c) has also been challenged by naturalistically inclined social scientists who believe that an evolutionary or a biologically informed approach can provide a context-independent, universally applicable theoretical framework for explaining what is common to all cultures, despite their superficial differences. Moreover, Moody-Adams (1997), among others, has argued that cultures are not integrated wholes that could determine uni-directionally the beliefs and experiences of their members; they are porous, riddled with inconsistencies and amenable to change. Finally, (d) is under pressure from the very relativism it advocates. Other critics, Pope Benedict XVI for instance, in his very first homily delivered upon election (18 April 2005), reject and condemn prescriptive cultural relativism as a harbinger of nihilism and an “anything goes” extreme permissiveness.

An influential form of descriptive cultural relativism owes its genesis to linguistics. Benjamin Whorf, inspired by his teacher Edward Sapir, who in turn was supervised by the social anthropologist Franz Boas, used ethnographic evidence from American Indian languages, such as Hopi, to argue that languages mold our views of the world and different languages do so differently, because “we dissect nature along lines laid down by our native languages” (Whorf 1956: 213). In the case of the Hopi, the claim was that their language imposes a conception of time very different from that of the speakers of the Indo-European languages. The so-called Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, and the position known as “linguistic relativity”, became popular in both psychology and social anthropology in the mid 20 th century. However, the empirical work by the psychologists Berlin and Key (1969) and later by Eleanor Rosch (1974) pointed to the universality of color terms. The linguistic theories of Noam Chomsky regarding the universality of grammar were also widely taken to have discredited linguistic relativity. Moreover, Malotki (1983) had argued that, contrary to Whorf’s claim, the Hopi language does indeed have tense, as well as units of time, such as days, weeks, months and seasons, and terminology for yesterday and tomorrow. Things have changed recently and there has been a slight swing of the pendulum back in favor of linguistic relativity on the part of so called “neo-Whorfians”. Stephen Levinson, for instance, drawing on experimental evidence, has argued that the frame of reference that underlies any given language shapes our spatial experiences and perceptual modalities (see Gumperz & Levinson 1996). Similar claims have been made about emotions, object representation, and memory. But the claims of linguistic relativity in all these cases are much more modest than Whorf’s original thesis.

Historical relativism, or historicism, is the diachronic version of cultural relativism. As Clifford Geertz points out, cultural and historical relativism are in effect the same doctrine with a core claim that “we cannot apprehend another people’s or another period’s imagination neatly, as though it were our own” (1993: 44). Historicism originated in reaction to the universalist tendencies of the Enlightenment but proved most influential in the social sciences, particularly in the hands of 19 th century theorists such as Karl Marx and Max Weber. Oswald Spengler, the then-influential turn-of-the-century German historian and philosopher, also declared that: “There are no eternal truths. Every philosophy is an expression of its time” (Spengler 1918: 58). Karl Mannheim, to whom we owe the sub-discipline of sociology of knowledge, pronounced that historicism is a significant intellectual force that epitomizes our worldview ( Weltanschauung) .

The historicist principle not only organizes, like an invisible hand, the work of the cultural sciences ( Geisteswissenschaften ), but also permeates everyday thinking. (Mannheim 1952 [1924]:84)

As we will see ( §4.4.3 ), in more recent times historicist interpretations of science, chiefly those espoused by Thomas Kuhn and Paul Feyerabend, have played a major role in popularizing relativistic interpretations of scientific knowledge.

Conceptual relativism is a narrowly delineated form of relativism where ontology, or what exists, rather than ethical and epistemic norms, is relativized to conceptual schemes, scientific paradigms, or categorical frameworks. In this sense, conceptual relativism is often characterized as a metaphysical doctrine rather than as variant of epistemic or cultural relativism. The underlying rationale for this form of relativism is the anti-realist thesis that the world does not present itself to us ready-made or ready-carved; rather we supply different, and at times incompatible, ways of categorizing and conceptualizing it. Reflection on the connections between mind and the world, rather than empirical observations of historic and cultural diversity, is the primary engine driving various forms of conceptual relativism, but data from anthropology and linguistics are also used in its support. The thought, at least since Kant, is that the human mind is not a passive faculty merely representing an independent reality; rather, it has an active role in shaping, if not constructing, the “real”. The conceptual relativist adds, as Kant did not, that human beings may construct the real in different ways thanks to differences in language or culture.

In the 20 th century, a variety of positions sympathetic to conceptual relativism were developed. Quine’s ontological relativity, Nelson Goodman’s “irrealism” with its claim of the plurality of “world-versions” and Hilary Putnam’s conceptual relativity are prominent examples. What these authors have in common is an insistence that there could be more than one “right” way of describing what there is, that incompatible “manuals of translation” and “world-versions” can be equally correct or acceptable.

Quine’s thesis of ontological relativity, probably the most influential of 20 th century approaches to conceptual relativity, is expressed both in an epistemic as well as in a stronger metaphysical form. Quine supports an epistemic thesis when he claims that incompatible scientific theories can account equally adequately for the data available to us (his underdetermination thesis) and that “there are various defensible ways of conceiving the world”, (Quine 1992: 102). But his thesis of the indeterminacy of translation makes the stronger claim that different incompatible manuals of translation, or conceptual schemes, can account for one and the same verbal behavior and the indeterminacy resides at the level of facts rather than our knowledge, a position that leads to unavoidable ontological relativity.

Nelson Goodman’s irrealism is an even more radical claim to the effect that the existence of many adequate, and indeed correct, but irreconcilable descriptions and representations of the world shows that there is no such thing as one unique actual world; rather there are many worlds, one for each correct description (e.g., Goodman 1975; cf. Sider 2009). Hilary Putnam disagrees with Goodman’s formulation of relativity with its radical talk of “world-making” but relies on arguments from conceptual plurality to reject metaphysical realism, the view that there is one single correct account of what the world is like (cf., Arageorgis 2017). According to Putnam, our most basic metaphysical categories, e.g., objecthood and existence, could be defined variously depending on what conceptual scheme we use. What counts as an object itself, he argues, is determined by and hence is relative to the ontological framework we opt for.

Thomas Kuhn’s highly influential discussion of the governing role of paradigms in science (see §4.4.3 ) has also been interpreted as a form of conceptual relativism by friends (Kusch 2002) and critics (Davidson 1974) of relativism alike.

The key difficulty facing conceptual relativism is that of formulating the position in a coherent but non-trivial manner. Trivial versions allow that the world can be described in different ways, but make no claims to the incompatibility of these descriptions. The charge of incoherence arises from the claim that there could be genuinely conflicting and equally true accounts or descriptions of one and the same phenomenon. To use an example that is the corner-stone of Hilary Putnam’s conceptual relativity, Putnam claims that the simple question how many objects there are (say on a given table) could be answered variously depending on whether we use “a mereological or a Carnapian, common-sense, method of individuating objects”. In circumstances where a Carnapian counts three objects A , B and C , a mereologist will count seven: A , B , C , plus the mereological sum objects A + B , A + C , B + C , A + B + C . As Putnam puts it:

The suggestion … is that what is (by commonsense standards) the same situation can be described in many different ways, depending on how we use the words. The situation does not itself legislate how words like “object”, “entity”, and “exist” must be used. What is wrong with the notion of objects existing “independently” of conceptual schemes is that there are no standards for the use of even the logical notions apart from conceptual choices. (Putnam 1988: 114)

The puzzle is to explain how both the Carnapian and mereological answers to the one and same question could be correct and yet mutually incompatible, for unless we abandon the most fundamental law of logic, the law of non-contradiction, we cannot deem one and the same proposition true and not true. Relativists respond that both answers are correct, each relative to the conceptual scheme it invokes . So, once we accept the insight that there is no Archimedean vantage point for choosing among conflicting frameworks, we no longer face a genuine contradiction. The response invokes, often implicitly, a relativized conception of truth, which as we shall see below, faces its own difficulties.

4.3 Relativism about truth or alethic relativism

Relativism about truth, or alethic relativism , at its simplest, is the claim that what is true for one individual or social group may not be true for another, and there is no context-independent vantage point to adjudicate the matter. What is true or false is always relative to a conceptual, cultural, or linguistic framework.

Alethic relativism is the most central of all relativistic positions since other subdivisions of the philosophical theses of relativism—with the possible exception of some narrowly defined versions of conceptual relativism such as Nelson Goodman’s irrealism (see §4.2 )—are in principle, reducible to it (Baghramian 2004: 92). For instance, relativism about logic may be restated as a view according to which the standing of logical truths (including truths about consequence relations) is relative to cultures or cognitive schemes. Ethical relativism can be seen as the claim that the truth of ethical judgments, if such truths exist, is relative to context or culture. If truth is to be seen as equally applicable to all areas of discourse and also unitary, rather than domain specific or plural, then alethic relativism is not only a strong form of global relativism but it also entails the denial of the possibility of more local forms of relativism because all localized relativistic claims are also attempts at relativizing truth (seemingly in a particular domain of discourse).

The central claim of alethic relativism is that “is true”, despite appearances to the contrary, is (at least, in some relevant domains of discourse) not a one-place but a two-place predicate such that “ P is true” should correctly be understood as ( modulo differences in particular ways of developing this idea) shorthand for “ P is true for X ”, where X is a culture, conceptual scheme, belief framework, etc. And within the broad camp of alethic relativists, the matter of how it is that which we should opt for “ P -is-true-for- X ”, rather than “ P is true”, simpliciter, is developed in different ways (e.g., see Meiland 1977; MacFarlane 2014: ch. 5; Egan 2007; Ferrari & Moruzzi 2018). One shared commitment of relativizing the truth predicate is that claims such as “misfortune is caused by witchcraft” could be true according to the Azande cultural framework and false in the Western scientific framework. One major difficulty facing alethic relativists is to explain what “true for” actually means, and how “true for” should be understood as related to the more familiar absolutist truth predicate. For instance, should relative truth be understood as a modification on an already familiar strategy for thinking about truth (e.g., the correspondence, pragmatic or epistemic model) or in some different way, entirely? (MacFarlane 2014: ch. 2). Much of the work of New Relativists such as John MacFarlane (see §5 ) can be see as an attempt to clarify this thorny issue.

The strongest and most persistent charge leveled against all types of relativism, but (global) alethic relativism in particular, is the accusation of self-refutation. Here is for instance Harvey Siegel:

This incoherence charge is by far the most difficult problem facing the relativist. It is worth noting that attempts to overcome the problem by appealing to the notion of relative truth appear not to succeed. Many versions of relativism rely on such a notion, but it is very difficult to make sense of it. An assertion that a proposition is “true for me” (or “true for members of my culture”) is more readily understood as a claim concerning what I (or members of my culture, scheme, etc.) believe than it is as a claim ascribing to that proposition some special sort of truth. Constructing a conception of relative truth such that “ p is relatively true” (or “ p is true for S ”, or “ p is true for members of culture C ”) amounts to something stronger than “ S believes that p ” (or “members of culture C believe that p ”), but weaker than “ p is true ( simpliciter )”, has proved to be quite difficult, and is arguably beyond the conceptual resources available to the relativist. (Siegel 2011: 203)

The original argument goes back to Plato’s criticism of Protagoras in the Theaetetus where he argues:

Most people believe that Protagoras’s doctrine is false. Protagoras, on the other hand, believes his doctrine to be true. By his own doctrine, Protagoras must believe that his opponents’ view is true. Therefore, Protagoras must believe that his own doctrine is false (see Theaetetus : 171a–c)

Plato’s argument, as it stands, appears to be damaging only if we assume that Protagoras, at least implicitly, is committed to the universal or objective truth of relativism. On this view, Plato begs the question on behalf of an absolutist conception of truth (Burnyeat 1976a: 44). Protagoras, the relativists counter, could indeed accept that his own doctrine is false for those who accept absolutism but continue believing that his doctrine is true for him . He could also try to persuade others to become the sort of thinker for whom relativism is true without being entangled in self-contradiction. Such an effort at persuasions, however, could involve Protagoras in a performative contradiction as the relativist cannot assume that her arguments are good for persuading others. Ordinarily, the very act of defending a philosophical position commits us to the dialectical move of attempting to convince our interlocutors of the superior value of what we are arguing for. The relativist cannot make such a commitment and therefore his attempts to persuade others to accept his position may be pragmatically self-refuting. The relativist can avoid the standard charge of self-refutation by accepting that relativism cannot be proven true in any non-relative sense— viz., that relativism itself as a philosophical position is at best true only relative to a cultural or historical context and therefore could be false in other frameworks or cultures. But such an admission will undermine the relativist’s attempt to convince others of her position, for the very act of argumentation, as it is commonly understood, is an attempt to convince those who disagree with us of the falsehood of their position. In other words, if Protagoras really believes in relativism why would he bother to argue for it?

It may be argued that Protagoras could have opted for a more sensible form of alethic relativism where a person’s beliefs are not automatically true relative to the framework she accepts. Rather a belief p is true according to X ’s framework iff (roughly) X would believe that p if she were to reason cogently by her own standards on the basis of full relevant information. This form of alethic relativism allows for argument and persuasion among people who initially disagree, for despite their disagreement they may share or come to share a framework. Protagoras may, on this reinterpretation, be trying to persuade his interlocutor that if she were to reason cogently by her own standards from their shared framework, she would accept relativism. However, it is not clear how the relativist could share a framework with the absolutist on the nature of truth or what argumentative strategies he can use to convert the absolutist without presupposing a shared (relativist or absolutist) conceptions of truth. In particular, a consistent relativist will have only a relativized criteria of what counts as “true” information, which presumably will not be shared by the absolutist.

A second strand of the self-refutation argument focuses on the nature and role of truth. J.L. Mackie, for instance, has argued that alethic absolutism is a requisite of a coherent notion of truth and that a claim to the effect that “There are no absolute truths” is absolutely self-refuting (Mackie 1964: 200). But the relativists reject the quick move that presupposes the very conception of truth they are at pains to undermine and have offered sophisticated approaches of defense. A good example of such a defense is Hales’ (1997)—who uses a “u” operator to represent “It is true in some perspectives that” and a “n” operator to represent “It is true in all perspectives that”—in order to establish that there could indeed be a consistent relativist logic which avoids the charge of self-refutation. Key to this approach, according to Hales, is that we abandon a conception of global relativism on which the lose thesis “everything is relative” is embraced—a thesis Hales concedes to be inconsistent—for the thesis “everything that is true is relatively true”, which he maintains is not ( cf. Shogenji 1997 for a criticism of Hales on this point).

It has also been claimed that alethic relativism gives rise to what J.L. Mackie calls “operational” (Mackie 1964: 202) and Max Kölbel “conversational” self-refutation (Kölbel 2011) by flouting one or more crucial norms of discourse and thereby undermines the very possibility of coherent discourse. One version of the argument, advanced most notably by Gareth Evans (1985: 346–63), begins with the premise that a publicly shared distinction between correct and incorrect, and hence true and false, assertion is a necessary condition for coherent assertoric discourse. As Evans puts it, a theory that

permits a subject to deduce merely that a particular utterance is now correct but later will be incorrect … cannot assist the subject in deciding what to say, nor in interpreting the remarks of others. What should we aim at, or take others to be aiming at?. (1985: 349)

And if truth is relative, then there is no single shared definite aim for any given assertion (see MacFarlane 2014: ch. 12 for a discussion). The relativists however, could respond that truth is relative to a group (conceptual scheme, framework) and they take speakers to be aiming a truth relative to the scheme that they and their interlocutors are presumed to share. The difficulty with this approach is that it seems to make communication across frameworks impossible.

Such a response, however, will be answerable to the charge of incoherence raised by Donald Davidson against both alethic and conceptual relativism. According to Davidson, the principle of charity—the assumption that other speakers by and large speak truly (by our lights)—is a pre-requisite of all interpretation. He takes this to imply that there could not be languages or conceptual schemes that we cannot in principle understand and interpret, in other words, if a system of signs L is not recognizable as a language by us then L is not a language. Languages are either inter-translatable and hence not radically different from ours, or incommensurable and beyond our ability to recognize them as languages (Davidson 1974). The relativist, in effect, places other speakers and their languages beyond our recognitional reach and thereby undermines the initial claim that they could be radically different or incommensurable.

New Relativism, as we shall see, offers a novel take on the old question of alethic relativism and gives weight to Alasdair MacIntyre’s observation that relativism may have been refuted a number of times too often, whereas genuinely refutable doctrines only need to be refuted once (MacIntyre 1985: 5).

4.4 Epistemic relativism

Claims to knowledge and justification have proven receptive to relativistic interpretations. Epistemic relativism is the thesis that cognitive norms that determine what counts as knowledge, or whether a belief is rational, justifiable, etc. could vary with and are dependent on local conceptual or cultural frameworks and lack the universality they aspire or pretend to. The three key assumptions underlying epistemic relativism are:

The epistemic relativist, as Paul Boghossian in developing his trenchant criticisms of relativism points out, is committed to a “doctrine of equal validity”, the view that “there are many radically different, incompatible, yet, ‘equally valid’ ways of knowing the world, with science being just one of them” (Boghossian 2006a: 2). The relativist’s key claim is that either we can chauvinistically maintain that our epistemic system is superior to all or accept the equal legitimacy of varying epistemic systems.

One crucial question facing epistemic relativism is how to identify and individuate alternative epistemic systems. The intuitive idea is that varying and possibly incompatible cognitive principles, ground-level beliefs and presuppositions, or what Wittgenstein calls “hinge” and “bedrock” propositions (Wittgenstein 1969: §§341–343) separate non-convergent epistemic schemes. A simple and quite commonly used example is the contrast between scientific and religious belief systems. Boghossian, for instance, uses the debate between Galileo and Cardinal Bellarmine as a case study of an encounter between antagonists operating within putatively different epistemic frameworks, who use different frameworks, or as Rorty (1979) put it “grids”, for determining what would count as appropriate evidence on planetary movements. The relativist claims that there is no fact of the matter about whether the Copernican theory or the geocentric view is justified by the evidence, “for there are no absolute facts about what justifies what” (Boghossian 2006a: 62) while the anti-relativist attempts to show the unintelligibility or the implausibility of such a claim.

Boghossian has been criticized however for his characterization of epistemic relativism. One notable such criticism has been advanced by Crispin Wright (2008), who takes issue with Boghossian’s attributing to the epistemic relativist a version of (a) above , what Boghossian calls epistemic relationism , or the thesis that any claim of the form “Evidence E justifies belief B ”, if it is to have any prospect of being true, must be construed as expressing the claim According to the epistemic system C, that I, S accept, information E justifies belief B (Boghossian 2006a:73). Having characterized the relativist’s position in this fashion, Boghossian suggests—after considering various ways of articulating what the relativist might say about the untruth of claims of the form “Evidence E justifies belief B ”—that the relativist is left, ultimately, with no coherent way to account for how she should count as accepting or adhering to a given epistemic system. And on this basis, Boghossian concludes that there is no coherent way to formulate the position because the relativist in formulating his position and setting up the opposition between two or more alternative non-convergent epistemic systems cannot but assume the universality of at least some epistemic principles, including deduction, induction, warrant through empirical evidence, etc. (see Boghossian 2006a).

As Wright sees it, however, Boghossian’s attributing the relationist clause to the epistemic relativist is to simply

fail to take seriously the thesis that claims such as [Evidence E justifies belief B ] can indeed by true or false, albeit only relatively so . (Wright 2008: 383, our italics)

Moreover, Wright argues, the epistemic relationist clause Boghossian includes in the kind of epistemic relativism he challenges betrays a failure to distinguish between (i) making a judgment in the light of certain standards and (ii) judging that those standards mandate that judgment. (See also MacFarlane (2008b and Carter & McKenna forthcoming for different critiques of Boghossian’s argument against the epistemic relativist.)

Conceptions of rationality, and its key components of logic and justification, are some of the principles that are often used to differentiate between epistemic systems. Below we look at attempts at relativizing each.

Earlier defenses of epistemic relativism centered on the idea of alternative rationalities and were often developed as a reaction to the charge of irrationality leveled at non-Western tribal people. Rationality traditionally is seen as a cognitive virtue as well as a hallmark of the scientific method. The complex notion of rationality is intimately tied to requirements of consistency, justification, warrant and evidence for beliefs. Relativists about rationality cast doubt on the universal applicability of one or more of these features of rational thought, and deem them merely local epistemic values. Peter Winch’s treatment of E.E. Evans-Pritchard’s account of the Azande tribe’s beliefs in witchcraft and magic is now a classic of the “rationality wars” of the 1960s and 70s. Winch had argued that since standards of rationality in different societies do not always coincide, we should use only contextually and internally given criteria of rationality in our assessment of the systems of belief of other cultures and societies. Under the influence of the later Wittgenstein, he maintained that it does not make sense to speak of a universal standard of rationality because what is rational is decided by a backdrop of norms governing a given language and form of life. As outside observers, we are not in a position to impute irrationality or illogicality to the Azande or any other group whose practices and language-games may differ from ours. Critics of Winch, Steven Lukes, for instance, using considerations reminiscent of Davidson’s principle of charity, have argued that we will not be in a position to understand a language or culture with standards of rationality radically different from ours, and that we must have at least some core principles, or what Martin Hollis had called a “bridgehead” with elements such as consistency and the goal of truth, in common with the Azande in order to understand them (Hollis 1968; Lukes 1970). They, thereby, conclude that an all-out or strong relativism about rationality is not tenable. The weaker claim is that some elements of rationality, for instance what counts as good evidence or a better style of reasoning, could vary with historic conditions and traditions of enquiry and therefore a degree of relativization of such norms, without succumbing to irrationalism, is acceptable (see Hacking 1982 and MacIntyre 1988).

Being rational also means having warrant, in the form of good reasons and justification for one’s beliefs. Epistemic relativists maintain that the legitimacy of a justificatory system and the presumed strength of epistemic warrants are decided locally. Richard Rorty has made the influential claim that

there is nothing to be said about either truth or rationality apart from descriptions of the familiar procedures of justification which a given society— ours —uses in one or another area of inquiry. (Rorty 1991: 23)

For Rorty, warrant is a “sociological matter, to be ascertained by observing the reception of [a speaker’s] statement by her peers” (1993: 449). Rorty also claims that knowledge and truth are compliments “paid to beliefs which we think so well justified that, for the moment, further justification is not needed” (Rorty 1991: 24) where the “we” is a historically conditioned community of enquirers. Rorty rejects the label “relativist” because he insists that, unlike the relativists, he does not subscribe to the view that all beliefs are equally true or good. He calls his position “ethnocentrism”, because the only form of warrant available to any of us is the one provided through solidarity with our peers. His rejection of the label “relativist” has had little effect on critics such as Hilary Putnam (1999) or Paul Boghossian (2006a) who do not see the distinction Rorty wishes to draw between his brand of ethnocentrism and relativism

Debates about the scope and authority of logic are also focal to discussions of rationality. The argument for relativism about logic is usually traced to the French anthropologist Lucien Lévy-Bruhl (1857–1939) who claimed that tribal or “primitive” cultures did not subscribe to universal laws of logic such as the principles of non-contradiction and identity and were in a pre-logical stage of thinking (Lévy-Bruhl 1922/1923). In a posthumous publication, Lévy-Bruhl renounced his earlier views, finding them “simplistic and rather crude” (Lévy-Bruhl 1949/1975: 48) but he remains the standard bearer for relativism about logic.

Peter Winch’s interpretation of the Azande material became the impetus for a new wave of arguments for relativism about logic. Barry Barnes and David Bloor, for instance, have argued that different societies may have incompatible but internally coherent systems of logic because validity and rules of inference are defined by, and hence are relative to, the practices of a given community, rather than a priori universal restrictions on all thought. According to Bloor,

The Azande have the same psychology as us but radically different institutions. If we relate logic to the psychology of reasoning we shall be inclined to say that they have the same logic; if we relate logic more closely to the institutional framework of thought then we shall incline to the view that the two cultures have different logics. (Bloor 1976: 129–130)

Even the status of “contradictions” is at times seen as culturally relative and the Azande’s application of witchcraft in determining guilt is cited as an example. The Azande, according to Evans-Prichard, believe that it is possible to identify a witch by examining the contents of his intestine (through the use of a poison oracle). They also believe that Witchhood is inherited patrilineally. Since the Azande clan members are related to each other through the male line, it follows that if one person is shown to be a witch, then all the members of his clan must also be witches. Evans-Pritchard tells us that although the Azande see the sense of this argument they do not accept the conclusion; they seem to side-step the contradiction in their belief-system. Relativistically inclined commentators have argued that the Azande both do and do not contradict themselves depending on, or relative to, the culture that is being taken as the vantage point (Bloor 1976: 124 and Jennings 1989: 281). See Seidel (2014) for a sustained critique.

More recently, Peng and Nisbett, using experimental data, have argued that Chinese and American students have different attitudes towards the Law of Non-Contradiction. The Chinese, they claim, are more willing to accept that conflicting views may be compatible and therefore are less disposed to recognize or condemn contradictions (Peng & Nisbett 1999). In his The Geography of Thought (2003), Nisbett has generalized his results to claim that Asian and European structures of thinking, including perception and conceptualization, differ significantly.

Nisbitt’s data, as well as the claims by Barnes and Bloor, are contributions to a long-standing debate about the status of logic. Their approach attempts to naturalize logic by tying it to actual practices of the human subjects. The relativistically inclined, however, argue that to think of logic as singular, a priori, and universal speaks of a philosophical prejudice and does not sit well with a naturalistic and scientific attitude. As to the claim by Quine and Davidson, that an allegedly illogical culture is in fact a misinterpreted or badly interpreted culture—that if the speakers of a language seem to accept sentence of the form “ P and not- P ”, this is conclusive evidence that “and” and “not” in their language do not mean what these words mean in English (Quine 1960)—the relativists and their sympathisers point out that reasoning in deviant ways is quite common and is not an impediment to understanding or translating others (e.g., Stich 2012). They further argue that such diversity is better explained by the relativist’s claim that the correctness of the principles of reasoning is relative to their cultural background rather than by the absolutist approach that attributes wholesale error to alternative epistemic systems or to the members of other cultures.

A different line of support for relativism about logic starts with pluralism about logic, the view that there can be a multitude of correct but not fully compatible conceptions of logic where differing accounts of logical consequence, logical connectives or even validity are on offer. Relativism ensues if we also assume that there is no neutral framework for adjudicating between the differing accounts. What counts as a correct account of logical consequence and validity or even the choice of logical vocabulary are relative to the system of logic that embed and justify these accounts and choices. (See Steinberger 2019 for a useful survey.)

Stewart Shapiro (2014) is probably the most vocal defender of this approach. His argument for relativism about logic is similar to defences of relativism in other areas where intractable differences in a particular domain and an inability to reconcile them are used as the motivators for relativism. Shapiro advocates what, following Crispin Wright, he calls “folk-relativism” and its slogan that “There is no such thing as simply being Φ” (Shapiro, 2014: 7; Wright 2008a: 158) and applies it to validity and logical consequence. The claim is that there are different conceptions of logical consequence. in classical and non-classical logic, which although not compatible can still capture correct accounts of the idea of logical consequence. Therefore, it does not make sense to think that there is a uniquely correct conception of validity and logical consequence. Different conceptions can be legitimate in so far as each is (internally) consistent and also non-trivial in the sense that it is the basis a workable mathematical systems, i.e., the means of making sense of “the practice of pursuing and applying mathematics” (Shapiro 2014: 81). Intuitionism and fuzzy logic are notable examples. Choices between different logical vocabularies also can lead to a relativized conception of logic in so far a these vocabularies play a decisive role in generating different relations of logical consequence.

For further discussion, see the entry on logical pluralism .

Discussions of relativism about science gained currency with the publication of Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962) and the emergence of a historicist approach to question of change and progress in science. Pronouncements such as

In so far as their only recourse to [the] world is through what they see and do, we may want to say that after a revolution scientists are responding to a different world (Kuhn 1970 [1962]: 111)

The very ease and rapidity with which astronomers saw new things when looking at old objects with old instruments may make us wish to say that, after Copernicus, astronomers lived in a different world (Kuhn 1970 [1962]: 117)

were taken to suggest that not only standards of epistemic appraisal but even the data gathered by scientists were, to a significant extent, determined by governing paradigms and hence relative to them. Although Kuhn stepped back from such radical relativism, his views gave currency to relativistic interpretations of science (though see Sankey 2018).

Relativism about science is motivated by considerations arising from the methodology and history of science (Baghramian 2007). As we saw in §4.2 , Quine has argued that

Physical theories can be at odds with each other and yet compatible with all possible data even in the broadest possible sense. In a word, they can be logically incompatible and empirically equivalent. (1970: 179)

Relativists about science have argued that only with the addition of auxiliary hypotheses could the scientist choose between various theories and that such auxiliary hypotheses are colored by socially and historically grounded norms as well as by personal and group interests. Paul Feyerabend’s “democratic relativism”—the view that different societies may look at the world in different ways and regard different things as acceptable (1987: 59) and that we need to give equal voice to these differing perspectives—is one instance of the use of the underdetermination thesis in support of relativism. According to Feyerabend, underdetermination ultimately demonstrates that

for every statement, theory, point of view believed (to be true) with good reason there exist arguments showing a conflicting alternative to be at least as good, or even better. (1987: 76)

Larry Laudan usefully lists the ways underdetermination is used to motivate relativism or its proximate doctrines. He says:

Lakatos and Feyerabend have taken the underdetermination of theories to justify the claim that the only difference between empirically successful and empirically unsuccessful theories lies in the talents and resources of their respective advocates (i.e., with sufficient ingenuity, more or less any theory can be made to look methodologically respectable). Hesse and Bloor have claimed that underdetermination shows the necessity for bringing noncognitive, social factors into play in explaining the theory choices of scientists (on the grounds that methodological and evidential considerations alone are demonstrably insufficient to account for such choices). H. M. Collins, and several of his fellow sociologists of knowledge, have asserted that underdetermination lends credence to the view that the world does little if anything to shape or constrain our beliefs about it. (Laudan 1990: 321)

Laudan even connects Derrida’s deconstructionism and the view that texts do not lend themselves to determinate readings with underdetermination (ibid.). He also believes that an appropriately modest understanding of what underdetermination entails will distance it from relativism, but most relativistically inclined advocates of underdetermination are not willing to follow Laudan’s advice to circumscribe its scope. The key issue is that both the relativists and the anti-relativists could agree that the totality of evidence available does not prove the truth of any given theory. But the anti-relativists responds to this fact of underdetermination by pointing out that the we have good reasons for embracing the best theory available and moreover that there are indeed objective facts about the world, even if we are not in possession of them. The relativist, in contrast, argues that there are many, equally acceptable principles for accepting theories, all on the basis of evidence available, but such theories could result in very different verdicts. They also argue that in the absence of any strong epistemic grounds for accepting the existence of absolute facts in any given domain, we have no grounds, other than some kind of metaphysical faith, for thinking that there are such facts.

Relativism about science is also influenced by the related doctrine that all observations are theory-laden. Even anti-relativists such as Karl Popper admit that the idea that observations are not in some way tinted by theoretical assumptions is naïve. But some relativists about science offer a particularly extreme form of the doctrine of the widely accepted thesis of theory-ladenness. Feyerabend, for instance, goes so far as to argue that different systems of classification can result in perceptual objects that are not easily comparable.

Relativists about science also point to the prevalence of both synchronic and diachronic disagreement among scientists as a justification of their view. Looking at the history of science, Kuhn and his followers argued that Aristotelian physics presupposes a totally different conception of the universe compared to Newtonian physics; the same is true of Einsteinian physics compared to its predecessors. Moreover, these differing conceptions may be incommensurable in the sense that they are not readily amenable to comparison or inter-theoretical translation. There are also strong and unresolved disagreements between scientists working contemporaneously. The many different interpretations of quantum mechanics are a case in point.

Anti-relativist philosophers of science are often willing to concede all three points above, but insist that they do not, singly or jointly, justify the claim that scientific knowledge, in any philosophically interesting sense, is relative to its context of production. The success of science, both theoretical and applied, indicates that progress does take place. Fallibilism, the view that all scientific claims are provisional and liable to fail, they argue, is sufficient for dealing with difficulties arising from considerations of underdetermination and theory-ladenness of observations. Relativism, with its attendant denial that there could be objective and universal scientific truths or knowledge exacts too high a price for dealing with these allegedly troublesome features of the methodology and history of science.

Social constructionism is a particularly radical form of conceptual relativism with implications for our understanding of the methodology and subject matter of the sciences. According to social constructionism, nature as studied by scientists does not come carved at its joints (to use Plato’s metaphor from Phaedrus : 265d–266a). Reality—with its objects, entities, properties and categories—is not simply “out there” to be discovered only by empirical investigation or observation; rather, it is constructed through a variety of norm-governed socially sanctioned cognitive activities such as interpretation, description, manipulation of data, etc. Social constructionism has relativistic consequences insofar as it claims that different social forces lead to the construction of different “worlds” and that there is no neutral ground for adjudicating between them. The “Science Studies” approach of Bruno Latour is a prime example of constructionism with relativistic consequences. Latour and Woolgar (1986) have argued that so-called “scientific facts” and the “truths” of science emerge out of social and conceptual practices and inevitably bear their imprints. This is because the very idea of a mind-independent reality open to scientific study, or as they call it “out-there-ness”, itself is the consequence of scientific work rather than the cause. A crucial difference between scientific realists and constructionists is that whereas the realists see nature and society as the causes that explain the outcomes of scientific enquiry, for the constructionists the activity of

scientists and engineers and of all their human and non-human allies is the cause, of which various states of nature and societies are the consequence. (Callon & Latour 1992: 350–1)

Scientific theories are also products of socially constituted practices. They are

contextually specific constructions which bear the mark of the situated contingency and interest structure of the process by which they are generated. (Knorr-Cetina 1981: 226)

So called “scientific facts” and “natural kinds”, the primary subjects of scientific investigation are, at least in part, the products of the contingent social and epistemic norms that define the very subject matter of science. It may be argued that the view, if taken literally, entails a counter-intuitive form of backward causation to the effect that, for instance, the scientific facts about dinosaur anatomy 50 million years ago were caused in the 20 th century when a scientific consensus about dinosaur anatomy was formed (see Boghossian 2006a). But constructionism, at least in its most extreme form, accepts this consequence, insisting that there are indeed no facts except for socially constructed ones, created and modified at particular times and places courtesy of prevailing theoretical and conceptual frameworks.

Moral or ethical relativism is simultaneously the most influential and the most reviled of all relativistic positions. Supporters see it as a harbinger of tolerance (see §2.6 ), open-mindedness and anti-authoritarianism. Detractors think it undermines the very possibility of ethics and signals either confused thinking or moral turpitude.

Briefly stated, moral relativism is the view that moral judgments, beliefs about right and wrong, good and bad, not only vary greatly across time and contexts, but that their correctness is dependent on or relative to individual or cultural perspectives and frameworks. Moral subjectivism is the view that moral judgments are judgments about contingent and variable features of our moral sensibilities. For the subjectivist, to say that abortion is wrong is to say something like, “I disapprove of abortion”, or “Around here, we disapprove of abortion”. Once the content of the subjectivist’s claim is made explicit, the truth or acceptability of a subjectivist moral judgment is no longer a relative matter. Moral relativism proper, on the other hand, is the claim that facts about right and wrong vary with and are dependent on social and cultural background. Understood in this way, moral relativism could be seen as a sub-division of cultural relativism. Values may also be relativized to frameworks of assessment, independent of specific cultures or social settings.

Moral relativism, like most relativistic positions, comes in various forms and strengths. It is customary to distinguish between descriptive or empirical, prescriptive or normative, and meta-ethical versions of moral relativism. These views in turn are motivated by a number of empirical and philosophical considerations similar to those introduced in defense of cultural relativism. The purported fact of ethical diversity, the claim that there are no universally agreed moral norms or values, conjoined with the intractability of the arguments about them, are the core components of descriptive moral relativism. The anti-relativists counter-argue that the observed diversity and lack of convergence in local norms can in fact be explained by some very general universal norms, which combine with the different circumstances (or false empirical beliefs) of the different groups to entail different particular norms. The objectivist thereby can accommodate diversity and lack of agreement at this higher level of generalization (see Philippa Foot (1982) for this type of argument).

As in the case of cultural relativism, the imperative of tolerance is often seen as a normative reason for adopting moral relativism. Moral relativism, it is argued, leads to tolerance by making us not only more open-minded but also alerting us to the limitations of our own views. Edward Westermarck, for instance, in his early classic defense of relativism writes:

Could it be brought home to people that there is no absolute standard in morality, they would perhaps be on the one hand more tolerant and on the other more critical in their judgments. (Westermarck 1932: 59)

Critics however point out that for the consistent relativist tolerance can be only a framework-dependent virtue, while Westermarck, and others, seem to recommend it as a universal desideratum. A second problem with arguing for normative moral relativism on the grounds of tolerance is known as the Argumentum ad Nazium . Relativists, as this argument goes, are not in a position to condemn even the most abhorrent of worldviews as they are forced to admit that every point of view is right (relative to the perspective of its beholder). W.T. Stace, arguing against Westermarck’s relativism gives an early example of this type of criticism:

Certainly, if we believe that any one moral standard is as good as any other, we are likely to be more tolerant. We shall tolerate widow-burning, human sacrifice, cannibalism, slavery, the infliction of physical torture, or any other of the thousand and one abominations which are, or have been, from time approved by moral code or another. But this is not the kind of toleration that we want, and I do not think its cultivation will prove “an advantage to morality”. (Stace 1937: 58–59)

More moderate forms of normative moral relativism, positions that sometimes are characterized as moral pluralism, have been defended by David Wong (2006) and David Velleman (2013). Moderate moral relativists endorse the idea of diversity and plurality of ethical values and accept that such values are justified according to differing local normative frameworks, but they avoid a full blown “anything goes” relativism by maintaining that all such frameworks are ultimately answerable to conditions for human flourishing and other overarching universal constraints such as the value of accommodation (Wong 2006). (It should however be noted that while theses under the description of pluralism needn’t entail a commitment to relativism, some formulations of relativism (such as Boghossian’s 2006b), include, as an essential ingredient, a “pluralist” clause. Whether particular instances of moral pluralism entail moral relativism depends entirely on the details of relevant claim to pluralism).

Metaethical versions of moral relativism are often motivated by the thought that ethical positions, unlike scientific beliefs, are not apt for objective truth-evaluation. Strong realists about science such as Gilbert Harman have argued that the intractability of moral disagreements, the absence of convergence in ethics as opposed to the natural sciences and mathematics, point to fundamental differences between natural facts and ethical values (Harman & Thompson 1996). This is a metaethical, rather than a descriptive or normative position, because it is a theory about the nature of ethics or morality. The ethical domain, Harman argue, is such that all relevant evaluations could be undertaken only in the context of social norms or personal preferences and commitments. Values are not objective—they are not part of the fabric of the universe. Rather they always arise from some form of convention and agreement among people. Therefore, there can be no objective or externally justified ethical knowledge or judgment (Harman 1975). In this sense, metaethical relativism shares common concerns with non-cognitivist approaches to ethics. What distinguishes it, however, is the insistence on the part of metaethical relativists that moral judgments contain an implicit relativization to the speaker’s moral outlook (Dreier 2006: 261). It is possible to talk about the truth or falsity of a moral judgment but only in the context of pre-existing standards or value systems. For instance, we can ask questions about just actions or judgments in the context of standards of justice prevalent in a society at a given time; but questions about the objective standing of these standards do not make sense (cf., Boghossian 2017). (For further discussion of moral relativism see the separate entry on this topic. What has become known as New Moral Relativism will be discussed below).

5. New Relativism

There is a recent version of relativism according to which some of the views considered so far—for instance, Harman’s (1975) variety of moral relativism—will be regarded varieties of contextualism as opposed to bona fide relativism. This recent version—sufficiently distinct from the relativisms so far considered that it is deserving of attention in its own right—we are calling “New Relativism”, a variety of relativism that has arisen out of work in the philosophy of language in the analytic tradition, and for which the leading proponents have included Max Kölbel (2003, 2004), Peter Lasersohn (2005), Crispin Wright (2006) and, in particular, John MacFarlane (2005b, 2007, 2014); cf., Marques (2019). In this section we aim to (i) outline several features that individuate New Relativism; (ii) consider in turn motivations for (and objections to) several prominent strands of it; and, finally, (iii) conclude with some philosophical problems that face New Relativism more generally.

It is a commonplace that the truth-value of an utterance can depend on the context in which it is uttered. If you say “I’m happy” and I say the same sentence, your utterance may be true and mine false. In such cases, the context of utterance plays a role in determining which proposition the sentence expresses. This can happen even when the sentence does not contain an overtly indexical expression. Thus Harman and Dreier hold that a statement of the form “ A is wrong” is roughly equivalent to “ A is wrong according to the moral system I accept”. So two utterances of (say) “Torture is wrong” can differ in truth-value if they are uttered by speakers who accept very different moral systems. Contextualists about (for instance) moral, aesthetic and epistemic discourse will view moral, aesthetic and epistemic expressions likewise as indexical expressions but (as we’ll see) with some difficulty explaining apparent genuine disagreement in these areas of discourse. On this point, New Relativists claim an important advantage over contextualists. New relativism , by contrast with contextualism, aims to achieve this advantage via a much less familiar form of context dependence.

Truth-relativism with respect to utterances in area of discourse D is the claim that, following MacFarlane’s notable version of the view: the truth of S ’s D -utterance u depends (in part) on a context of assessment ; that is (and in short) what S asserts, u , gets a truth value—according to the truth-relativist’s D -semantics—only once the D -standard of the assessor is specified. Independent of the specification of such a standard, S ’s u assertion lacks a truth-value much as, by comparison, indexical expressions such as “The barn is nearby” do not get a truth-value independent of contextual facts about the context of use (i.e. the context in which the utterance is made). And, as a further point of clarification here: while the contextualist can, no less than the relativist, recognize a “standards” or “judge” parameter, for the contextualist, its value will be supplied by the context of use , whereas the relativist takes it to be supplied completely independently of the context of use, by the context of evaluation (or, as MacFarlane calls it, the context of assessment ).

To see how this view is claimed to offer a satisfying take on disagreement in types of discourse (see Beddor 2019), consider a simple example, concerning predicates of personal taste. A utters, “Pretzels are tasty”, and B utters, “Pretzels are not tasty”. While the semantic invariantist (for whom the truth-value of taste predications is in no way context sensitive) will insist that the above exchange constitutes a genuine disagreement about whether pretzels are tasty and that at least one party is wrong , contextualists and truth-relativists have the prima facie advantageous resources to avoid the result that at least one party to the apparent disagreement has made a mistake.

The contextualist claims that the truth-evaluable content expressed by A ’s utterance encodes A ’s standards ( cf. non-indexical contextualism). Thus, in this apparent disagreement, the proposition expressed by A is “Pretzels are tasty relative to my [ A ’s] standards” while B expresses the proposition “Pretzels are not tasty relative to my [ B ’s] standards”. This maneuver avoids the result that at least one of the two parties has uttered something false, but (as the new relativist points out) this result comes at the price of being unable to offer a clear explanation of our intuition that there is some uniform content about which A and B disagree .

The new relativist, on the other hand, claims to be able to preserve both the apparent subjectivity of taste discourse and (and, unlike the contextualist) our intuition that exchanges of the form mentioned constitute genuine disagreements. They do this by first insisting (unlike the contextualist—though see Suikkanen 2019) that there is a single truth-evaluable proposition which A affirms and B denies. In the case where A says “Pretzels are tasty”, and B denies this, there is a uniform content that is affirmed by A ’s utterance and denied by B ’s, namely the proposition that pretzels are tasty , period. So we have a genuine disagreement. Unlike the truth-absolutist, however, the new relativist will add that the disagreement is faultless because the proposition affirmed in A ’s utterance has a truth value only relative to a judge or standards parameter, and in this case: A ’s standards, when A is the assessor, B ’s standards, when B is the assessor. Hence, the truth-relativist about predicates of personal taste will, by insisting that the truth of Pretzels are tasty depends on the context of assessment, allow a single proposition to be (at the same time):

New Relativist views, which endorse truth-relativism locally for some domain of discourse, stand in opposition to the more traditional view of propositional content (what Cappelen & Hawthorne call “The Simple View”) according to which propositions bear truth and falsity as monadic properties (cf. however, MacFarlane 2011a for some resistance to Cappelen & Hawthorne’s claim that this simple characterization should be regarded as the “received” view.)

A key source of philosophical motivation for relativizing truth in the fashion of New Relativism traces to Lewis’s (1980) and Kaplan’s (1989) foundational work in semantics, according to which sentence truth is to be understood as relative to a circumstance of evaluation that includes world, time and location. New Relativists inherit the formal apparatus of Lewis and Kaplan and add another parameter, but their reasons for doing so are quite different from the reasons that motivated the framework in the first place. While Lewis’s and Kaplan’s reasons for “proliferating” parameters were primarily based on considerations to do with intensional operators (though see Yli-Vakkuri et al. 2019), the more contemporary reasons for adding a judge or standard parameter are often to do with respecting (for instance) disagreement data. (For further discussion here, see Kölbel (2015)). (Note that “old-style contextualism” can also be stated in Kaplan’s framework; it involves variation in content with respect to the context of utterance rather than in truth value with respect to the circumstance of evaluation).

Kaplan’s view specifically was that the need for particular parameters in the circumstance of evaluation was a function of the non-specificity of certain propositional contents with respect to world, time and location (see Kaplan’s (1989) analysis of indexicals). On Kaplan’s view:

A circumstance will usually include a possible state or history of the world, a time, and perhaps other features as well. The amount of information we require from a circumstance is linked to the degree of specificity of contents and thus to the kinds of operators in the language…. (1989: 502)

John MacFarlane, a leading contemporary relativist, writes:

Taking this line of thought a little farther, the relativist might envision contents that are “sense-of-humor neutral” or “standard-of-taste neutral” or “epistemic-state neutral”, and circumstances of evaluation that include parameters for a sense of humor, a standard of taste or an epistemic state. This move would open up room for the truth value of a proposition to vary with these “subjective” factors in much the same way that it varies with the world of evaluation. (MacFarlane 2007: 6–7)

Similarly, Cappelen and Hawthorne write:

Contemporary analytic relativists reason as follows: ‘Lewis and Kaplan have shown that we need to relativize truth to triples of <world, time, location>[’]. … But, having already started down this road, why not exploit these strategies further? In particular, by adding new and exotic parameters into the circumstances of evaluation, we can allow the contents of thought and talk to be non-specific (in Kaplan’s sense) along dimensions other than world, time and location. (2009: 10; edited )

A question on which New Relativists are divided, however, is: what contents are non-specific along dimensions other than world, time and location? It is with respect to this general question that different families of New Relativism are generated.

The taxonomy we offer is that a view falls within the category of New Relativism if, and only if, the view endorses a truth-relativist semantics (as previously outlined) for utterance tokens in some domain of discourse, such as: discourse about predicates of personal taste (Lasersohn 2005; Kölbel 2003), epistemic modals (Egan 2007; Egan, Hawthorne & Weatherson 2005; MacFarlane 2011b; Stephenson 2007), future contingents (MacFarlane 2003), indicative conditionals (Weatherson 2009; Kolodny & MacFarlane 2010) gradable adjectives (Richard 2004), deontic modals (Kolodny & MacFarlane 2010 and MacFarlane 2014: ch. 11) and knowledge attributions (Richard 2004); MacFarlane 2005b, 2011c, 2014). The motivations for truth-relativism in each of these domains include various considerations unique to those domains. We consider some of the arguments for New Relativism in four of these domains in the following sections.

5.2 Truth Relativism and predicates of personal taste

One area of discourse that has been particularly fertile ground for New Relativism is discourse that concerns predicates of personal taste (e.g., “tasty” and “fun”.)

Take a case where Mary says: “The chili is tasty” and John says, “The chili is not tasty”. Lasersohn argues (much as Kölbel does) that only the truth-relativist can make sense of the nature of John and Mary’s disagreement: It is a genuine disagreement. One affirms what the other denies. And yet neither is wrong. Lasersohn argues that there is an elegant way to make sense of the idea that John and Mary are both (in some sense) right, even though John asserts the negation of what is expressed by Mary. What Lasersohn) suggests, more formally, is the introduction of a judge parameter.

Instead of treating the content of a sentence as a set of time-world pairs, we should treat it as a set of time-world-individual triples. We assume that the content will provide an individual to be used in evaluating the sentences for truth and falsity, just as it provides a time and world. (Lasersohn: 2005: 17)

Lasersohn adds (2005: 23) that in order to maintain an authentically subjective assignment of truth-values to sentences containing predicates of personal taste, we must allow that the objective facts of the situation of utterance do not uniquely determine a judge. But who is the judge? Typically, it is us , and when it is, the evaluation is from what Lasersohn calls an autocentric perspective . Importantly, Lasersohn allows that in certain circumstances we take an exocentric perspective when assessing predicates of personal taste: assessing these sentences for truth relative to contexts in which someone other than ourselves is specified as the judge ( cf. “Come on, it’ll be fun!” “Is this fun?” (2005: 26); cf. Stanley (2005: 10) for a response to Lasersohn’s program).

Kölbel’s (2003) faultless disagreement argument for relativism about predicates of personal taste features a “proof” that there is no faultless disagreement followed by a demonstration that the proof is indefensible. The proof proceeds from two premises: an equivalence schema

and an apparent truism about mistakes:

(ES) and (T) generate the conclusion that there is no faultless disagreement through the following proof (see also Wright 2001:52)

But because Kölbel takes (9) to be implausible in what Kölbel takes to be “discretionary” (non-objective, as Kölbel sees it) areas of discourse he contends that we should introduce a relativized version of (T) to avoid the conclusion that at least one party has made a mistake.

Kölbel claims further that, for reasons of uniformity, we should “relativize truth of all propositions across the board…” and he accordingly endorses the following version of truth relativism:

Kölbel (2003: 71) thinks that this position allows the possibility of maintaining that faultless disagreement is impossible in some non-discretionary (objective) areas, and this will depend on the relation of perspective possession (but see also Boghossian 2011 for the contrary view). An implication of the position is that Kölbel’s view will allow assertions of the form: “Pretzels are not tasty, though John believes they are. And yet John is not mistaken”. For other discussions of faultless disagreement, see Richard (2008), MacFarlane (2012, 2014: ch. 6), and Zeman (2019). For an attempt to countenance faultless disagreement within an absolutist framework, see Baker & Robson (2017).

There is a version of moral relativism (e.g., Kölbel 2004) that falls squarely within the New Relativist tradition. We can think of this relativism simply as a generalization of the position just discussed that treats moral terms (e.g., “right”, “good”) as assessment-sensitive along with predicates of personal taste.

Such an extension faces problems analogous to those faced by truth-relativists about predicates of personal taste (cf. Beebe (2010) for a helpful discussion of truth-relativist semantics versus varieties of contextualist competitors).

A broader kind of problem for this semantic thesis (as well as to moral relativists more generally), raised by Coliva and Moruzzi (2012) is that it succumbs to the progress argument , an argument that famously challenges, in particular, cultural relativists (as well as indexical contextualists) about moral judgments by insisting that moral progress is both evident and not something the relativist can countenance (e.g., Rachels 2009). A third and particularly important kind of worry, addressed by Capps, Lynch and Massey (2009), involves explaining the source and nature of moral relativity, on a truth-relativist framework. Specifically, they claim that

we ought to have some account of why it is that truth in the moral domain is such that it varies with a parameter set by the context of assessment. (Capps, Lynch & Massey 2009: 416)

An additional problem concerns the plausibility of simply extending disagreement based arguments for relativism about predicates of personal taste over to moral predicates like ‘right’ and ‘good’. As Wedgwood (2019) has suggested, moral disagreements, in a way that is disanalogous to disagreements about what’s tasty, implicate a kind of ‘inexcusable irrationality’ (2019: 97)—at least, if the moral truths that constitute moral principles are a priori knowable. To the extent that there is a difference in inexcusability across the two cases of disagreement, it would be contentious to think that an argument from ‘faultless disagreement’ to relativism in the arena of predicates of personal taste would extend, mutatis mutandis, to an analogous argument in the moral arena.

Epistemic modality (e.g., claims of the form “ S might be F ”) is another particularly fertile ground for New Relativists. A key reason for this is the dialectical force of Eavesdropper Arguments , which attempt to show the perils of contextualist treatments of utterances containing epistemic modals. Another prominent argument concerns metasemantic complexity. We will examine both of these argument strategies. But first, let’s distinguish epistemic modality from metaphysical modality . To say that p is metaphysically possible is to say that p might have been the case in the sense that: in some possible world, p is true. To say that p is epistemically possible is by contrast to say that p might be the case, or that p is the case for all we know (see the entry on Varieties of Modality ). A canonical example of a statement expressing an epistemic modal is the claim A might be F . The truth of claims of the form A might be F will depend on whether F is an epistemic possibility for some individual or group, which is to say, that F must not be ruled out by what some individual or group knows. But which individual or group ? This is not always clear. As Egan and Weatherson (2011: 4) remark:

…statements of epistemic possibility in plain English do not make any explicit reference to such a person, group, evidence set, or information state. One of the key issues confronting a semanticist attempting to theorize about epistemic modals is what to do about this lack of reference.

Eavesdropper-style cases highlight the difficulty of determining exactly which individual’s or group’s body of information is relevant to the truth of claims of epistemic possibility and are taken by defenders of truth-relativism about epistemic modals to motivate their position. A variety of different eavesdropper cases have been given by different proponents (and attempted refuters) of truth-relativism about epistemic modals in the literature. For ease of exposition, we will use an especially simple version of the case, from Hawthorne’s (2007), slightly amended:

EAVESDROPPER: [Sandra] is on the way to the grocery store. I hear her say: “Susan might be at the store. I could run into her”. No party to the conversation that I am listening in on knows that Susan is on vacation. But I know that she is. Despite the fact that it is compatible with what the conversants know that Susan is in the store and that the speaker will run into her, I am inclined to judge the speaker’s [Sandra’s] modal judgments to be incorrect. (Hawthorne 2007: 92)

Egan (2007), Egan, Hawthorne and Weatherson (2005) and MacFarlane (2011b) share a similar set of diagnoses here: (i) it seems that while Sandra and I disagree about the truth value of Sandra’s statement, neither she nor I have made a mistake; (ii) the contextualist can’t explain this; (iii) the truth-relativist can.

Why can’t the contextualist explain this? As noted, the truth of claims expressing epistemic modals must depend on what some individual or group knows. But in these cases the context of use does not pick out a single such individual or group. After all, if it did, then either Sandra or I would be wrong, but it seems that neither of us is. That the context of use does not uniquely pick out one relevant body of knowledge for determining the truth of epistemic modal statements is not, as MacFarlane notes, something that can be accommodated by “the framework of contextualism, which requires that the relevant body of knowledge be determined by features of the context of use”. (MacFarlane 2011c)

Additionally, as Egan and Weatherson (2011) suggest, any contextualist account of the semantics of epistemic modals that could handle eavesdropper-style cases in a principled way would be hideously complicated. This motivates a metasemantic argument against contextualism (and a corresponding argument for relativism): if contextualism about epistemic modals is correct, then the semantics for epistemic modals will be hideously complicated; the semantics is not hideously complicated on the truth-relativist’s proposal, therefore, ceteris paribus , truth-relativism for epistemic modals is more plausible than contextualism. However, Glanzberg (2007) notably denies that metasemantic complexity in this case must be problematic.

How can the relativist accommodate eavesdropper cases? MacFarlane (2011b) articulates the relativist solution: Sandra and I disagree about the truth-value of a single proposition , the proposition that Susan might be at the store. This proposition, even when fully articulated, makes no reference to any particular body of knowledge. But such propositions cannot be true or false simpliciter. They are true only relative to a context of assessment that includes a body of knowledge. In this case, the proposition is true relative to a context of assessment where what Sandra knows is operative—a context in which Sandra is the evaluator—and false relative to a context of assessment where what I know is operative because I am the evaluator. Thus: both disagreement and faultlessness are preserved ( cf. Ross & Schroeder 2013 for criticism and Kindermann & Egan (2019) for an alternative proposal).

Along with MacFarlane, Egan (2007) and Stephenson (2007) have also offered positive defenses of truth-relativism about epistemic modals; their defenses share MacFarlane’s view that propositions expressing epistemic modals are non-specific along dimensions that include the body of information possessed by a judge or assessor.

More recently, experimental philosophy has contributed to this debate. Empirical studies reported by Knobe & Yalcin (2014) and Khoo (2015) indicate that folk judgments about the truth of claims featuring epistemic modals aligns more closely with what contextualism rather than relativism would predict. However, see Beddor and Egan (2019) for experimental results that are argued to better support (a version of) relativism than contextualism.

Propositions termed “future contingents” are about the future and their truth-values are not settled by the state of the world in the past or present (see entry on Future Contingents , and MacFarlane 2014: ch. 9). In a deterministic world there are no future contingent statements in this sense. But in an indeterministic world, statements partly about the future will often satisfy these conditions. Consider Aristotle’s oft-cited example: the proposition There will be a sea battle tomorrow , uttered at t . Contrast now two intuitions: the determinacy intuition that utterances that “turned out true” were true at the time of utterance; and the indeterminacy intuition that, at the time of the utterance, multiple histories are possible, including one where there was a sea battle and the proposition is true, and one where there was not, and the proposition is false. The indeterminacy intuition leads us to think the truth-value of future contingents is indeterminate at the time of utterance, and either true or false at a later time ( cf. MacFarlane 2003; Carter 2011).

John MacFarlane (2003) thinks that both the indeterminacy intuition and the determinacy intuition should be taken at face value and that the only way to account for the semantics of future contingents is to allow the truth of future contingent statements to be, as he puts it, doubly relativized: to both the context of utterance and the context of assessment. When we evaluate a single token utterance of “There will be a sea battle tomorrow” produced on (say) Monday, this counts as neither true nor false when the context of assessment is the context in which the utterance is being made (as multiple possible histories are open at this point). However the very same statement will have a determinate truth-value relative to the context of assessment of the following day. So we can have faultless transtemporal disagreement about the truth-value of a single utterance (MacFarlane 2003: 36; cf. Carter 2011).

MacFarlane (2005b) argues that “know” is sensitive to the epistemic standards at play in the context of assessment; that is, the extension of “know” varies with the context of assessment. Much as the relativist about future contingents aimed to accommodate both the determinacy and indeterminacy intuitions, the relativist about knowledge attributions can be viewed as offering an attempted synthesis between the contextualist and both sensitive and insensitive varieties of invariantist (see entry on Epistemic Contextualism ). As MacFarlane (2014: 190) puts it:

Invariantism is right that there is a single knowledge relation, and that the accuracy of knowledge ascriptions does not depend on which epistemic standard is relevant at the context of use . But contextualism is right that the accuracy of such ascriptions depends somehow on contextually relevant standards. Relativism seeks to synthesize these insights into a more satisfactory picture.

To apply this view, suppose George says, “Bill knows that his car is in the driveway”, while Barry says, “Bill doesn’t know that his car is in the driveway”. According to the relativist, the assessment of the truth-values of Bill’s and Barry’s statements depends also on the specification of some epistemic standard. For the truth-relativist, the standard will be the operative standard in the context of assessment. George’s utterance may be true (and Barry’s false) relative to a context of assessment in which ordinary “low” standards are in place, whereas Barry’s may be true (and George’s false) relative to a context of assessment in which high “Cartesian” standards are in place. See Stanley (2005: ch. 7) for a detailed criticism of this position, though see also MacFarlane (2014: §8.5 for a reply). See also Richard (2004), for another version of truth-relativism for knowledge attributions. In MacFarlane’s more recent (2014) defense of a truth-relativist semantics for “knows”, the context of assessment is taken to fix which alternatives count as relevant. See, however, Carter 2015 for an argument that MacFarlane’s more recent view generates counterintuitive results in cases of environmental epistemic luck (e.g., barn façade-style cases) and normative defeaters.

5.6 General Objections to New Relativism

We turn now to two general arguments against New Relativism in all its forms. The first is an argument from assertion , the second an argument from simplicity .

Two assertion-related objections to New Relativism arise from work by Gareth Evans (1985) and Robert Stalnaker (1978), respectively. Greenough (2010: 2) concisely captures Evans’s challenge to truth-relativism on assertoric grounds as follows:

The relativist must plausibly take issue with (2) or (3), (or both). For an attempt to meet Evans’ challenge, MacFarlane has defended a way to effectively reject (2) via what Marques has called a “meet-the-challenge” norm of assertion ( cf. MacFarlane 2003; though see also his 2014: ch. 5; cf., Stanley 2016: 181–2)—according to which ( à la Brandom 1983), in asserting p one undertakes a commitment to either defending p or giving up p if the challenge cannot be met satisfactorily (see Kölbel (2004: 308) for some other discussions of this objection).

A related assertion-based challenge to truth-relativism emerges by appeal to Stalnaker’s (1978) belief transfer model of assertion ( cf. 2011). The idea here is to appeal to a plausible view of the purpose of assertion—to “transfer beliefs from assertor to members of her audience” (Egan 2007: 15) and then to object that what is asserted, according to the truth-relativist, cannot play this characteristic role; specifically, this will be because, for the truth-relativist, the asserted contents are liable to be true relative to the speaker but false relative to the audience. For instance, Sam hardly (on the truth-relativist’s program) seems to “transfer” to Dean his belief Apples are tasty (which is true) by asserting this to Dean, when what Dean comes to believe Apples are tasty is something (on the assumption that Dean doesn’t like apples) that will be false. Thus, and more generally, it’s not clear what, exactly, could be said to be transferred and a fortiori asserted. See Egan (2007) and Dinges (2017) for attempts to reconcile truth-relativism (about epistemic modals) with Stalnaker’s belief-transfer model of assertion.

Cappelen and Hawthorne (2009) assess the merits of New Relativism as it stands to challenge what they take to be the received view of the objects of thought and talk, “Simplicity”, the core tenets of which are:

Cappelen and Hawthorne understand New Relativism (what they call analytic relativism ) as a direct challenge to (T1) and that, if this challenge were successful, it would consequently bring down the more general picture they call “simplicity” (cf., Ferrari & Wright 2017). Accordingly, Cappelen and Hawthorne’s central objective is to show that truth-relativist’s arguments aimed at undermining (T1) are ultimately unsuccessful; more specifically, their broad strategy is to insist that the arguments adduced in favor of truth-relativism—when thoroughly understood—constitute a presumptive case for contextualism (in the domains where relativism was defended, and in particular, in the domain of predicates of personal taste).

Relativism comes in a plethora of forms that are themselves grounded in disparate philosophical motivations. There is no such thing as Relativism simpliciter, and no single argument that would establish or refute every relativistic position that has been proposed. Despite this diversity, however, there are commonalities and family resemblances that justify the use of the label “relativism” for the various views we have discussed. Relativism remains a hotly disputed topic still surviving various attempts to eliminate it from philosophical discourse. What is most surprising, however, is the recent popularity of some versions of the doctrine in at least some circles of analytic philosophy.

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• Swoyer, Chris, “Relativism”, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2015 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = < https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2015/entries/relativism/ >. [This was the previous entry on relativism in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy — see the version history .]
• Carter, J. Adam, “ Epistemology and Relativism ”, Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy .
• Epistemic Relativism , edited bibliography at PhilPapers.

contextualism, epistemic | Davidson, Donald | feminist philosophy, interventions: epistemology and philosophy of science | Feyerabend, Paul | future contingents | Herder, Johann Gottfried von | Kuhn, Thomas | logical pluralism | modality: varieties of | moral realism | moral relativism | reflective equilibrium | Rorty, Richard | Zhuangzi

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Paul Boghossian, Annalisa Coliva, Steven Hales, Max Kölbel, Martin Kusch, John MacFarlane, Michela Massimi, Brian Morrissey, Brian Rabern, Tim Williamson and two anonymous referees for their valuable comments on various earlier drafts of this paper.

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Ethnocentrism and Cultural Relativism

Ethnocentrism is the tendency to look at the world primarily from the perspective of one’s own culture. Part of ethnocentrism is the belief that one’s own race, ethnic or cultural group is the most important or that some or all aspects of its culture are superior to those of other groups. Some people will simply call it cultural ignorance.

Ethnocentrism often leads to incorrect assumptions about others’ behavior based on your own norms, values, and beliefs. In extreme cases, a group of individuals may see another culture as wrong or immoral and because of this may try to convert, sometimes forcibly, the group to their own ways of living. War and genocide could be the devastating result if a group is unwilling to change their ways of living or cultural practices.

Ethnocentrism may not, in some circumstances, be avoidable. We often have involuntary reactions toward another person or culture’s practices or beliefs but these reactions do not have to result in horrible events such as genocide or war. In order to avoid conflict over culture practices and beliefs, we must all try to be more culturally relative.

Cultural relativism is the principle of regarding and valuing the practices of a culture from the point of view of that culture and to avoid making hasty judgments. Cultural relativism tries to counter ethnocentrism by promoting the understanding of cultural practices that are unfamiliar to other cultures such as eating insects, genocides or genital cutting. Take for example, the common practice of same-sex friends in India walking in public while holding hands. This is a common behavior and a sign of connectedness between two people. In England, by contrast, holding hands is largely limited to romantically involved couples, and often suggests a sexual relationship. These are simply two different ways of understanding the meaning of holding hands. Someone who does not take a relativistic view might be tempted to see their own understanding of this behavior as superior and, perhaps, the foreign practice as being immoral.

D espite the fact that cultural relativism promotes the appreciation for cultural differences, it can also be problematic. At its most extreme, cultural relativism leaves no room for criticism of other cultures, even if certain cultural practices are horrific or harmful. Many practices have drawn criticism over the years. In Madagascar, for example, the famahidana funeral tradition includes bringing bodies out from tombs once every seven years, wrapping them in cloth, and dancing with them. Some people view this practice disrespectful to the body of the deceased person. Today, a debate rages about the ritual cutting of genitals of girls in several Middle Eastern and African cultures. To a lesser extent, this same debate arises around the circumcision of baby boys in Western hospitals. When considering harmful cultural traditions, it can be patronizing to use cultural relativism as an excuse for avoiding debate. To assume that people from other cultures are neither mature enough nor responsible enough to consider criticism from the outside is demeaning.

The concept of cross-cultural relationship is the idea that people from different cultures can have relationships that acknowledge, respect and begin to understand each other’s diverse lives. People with different backgrounds can help each other see possibilities that they never thought were there because of limitations, or cultural proscriptions, posed by their own traditions. Becoming aware of these new possibilities will ultimately change the people who are exposed to the new ideas. This cross-cultural relationship provides hope that new opportunities will be discovered, but at the same time it is threatening. The threat is that once the relationship occurs, one can no longer claim that any single culture is the absolute truth.

Culture and Psychology Copyright © 2020 by L D Worthy; T Lavigne; and F Romero is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Understanding Cultural Relativism: A critical Appraisal of the Theory

2017, International Journal of Multicultural and Multireligious Understanding

The aim of this review article is to reveal the cons and pros of ethical relativism, especially conventionalism. This article is written with the intention of showing some of the practical upshots of conventionalism without totally denying some of its virtues in a world where diversity of cultures and customs is apparent. The article inquires the question: Is ethical relativism tenable? The review article relies on reviewing secondary sources. What I am arguing in this article is that despite the attraction of ethical relativism as an intellectual weapon to fight against ethnocentrism and cultural intolerance, the view still goes against the idea of intercultural comparison, criticism and moral argumentation, so that it would have serious disastrous implication on practice, especially on the universal character of human rights and shutters all together any sort of moral progress and reform. The article concludes that we can set forth certain objective moral codes, discovered through...

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Cultural Relativism and Ethics: Ethical Issues and Context Essay

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Cultural Relativism Theory

The cultural differences argument, the criticisms of the cultural difference argument.

Cultural relativism theory is the view that moral and ethical structures which differ from culture to culture are similarly effective. This denotes that there is no cultural structure that is superior to the other. The theory is based on the idea that there is no decisive standard considered good or evil. Therefore, every judgment about right and wrong is a product of the society. This means that we cannot learn or adopt another cultural code of standard (Rachels, 2006).

It is also imperative to use an individual’s culture to determine whether our actions are ethical or unethical. Ethics is relative because what one culture perceives as bad might be good to the other society (Rachels, 2006). This theory of culture also points out that there is no universal truth in ethics. Indeed, this implies that ethical issues are out of bounds to outsiders in a given culture and it can only be analyzed within the context of the culture in question.

It would then be wrong to judge cultural actions as unethical since no culture is better than the other and every cultural standard is guaranteed to a specific culture. Ethical subjectivism further explains cultural relativism. It states that there is no neutral truth in principles, no correct answers to ethical questions and that there are no moral queries with the right answers.

The notion of cultural relativism and culture specificity is exemplified by different life cases appertaining to various cultures that exhibit tendencies of what we might term unethical. Cultural relativism hence acts like a shield against criticism of actions emanating from a particular culture (Rachel, 2006).

Among the Eskimos, regulation of births via birth control method was not possible. As a result, the birth rate was high. This phenomenon is mostly observed in communities where food supply is unable to support a vast population. The Eskimos practiced infanticide as a way of regulating birth and the population (Rachel, 2006). Infanticide was mostly done to female children after birth to lessen the burden of providing food for the men.

Killing of children is unethical but in the Eskimo case it was a way of ensuring survival for some members. Among the Greeks it was normal for them to bury their dead fathers. In Galatians, cannibalism was practiced. They ate their dead fathers instead of burying them. In the modern American society such cases would be morally wanting and some would be considered unethical.

These similar but differently performed and interpreted cases show how ethical issues remain muddled in cultural activities. Although, these cultural differences occur, some similarities in cultures are also observed.

The cultural differences argument holds that each culture has its unique customs, worldviews and moral codes that the members of the society abide by. Cultures are imperatively understood as unique entities that can only be comprehended within their context and not from outsiders’ views. In support of these argument is the notion that there exists no bad or good culture. Cultural activities are coined to suit the demands of a certain society in a given geographical setting.

For example, infanticide among the Eskimos is a way of controlling the population due to scarcity of food resources (Rachels, 2006). This argument also states that there are no universal standards to judge what is wrong or right. Objectively, there neither radiate any good or evil nor bad or wrong since all acts within a society are restricted to the moral codes of cultures.

Therefore, there are no objectives truths in morality, no right answers to moral questions, right or wrong are mere matters of opinion that vary between cultures or groups. Rachels (2006) argues that this cultural differences argument is invalid in the sense that it lacks deductive validity and therefore cannot be proven.

Although, sociology and anthropological studies provide ample evidence about the differences in moral codes among different societies, the argument still holds no deductive validity and therefore cannot be concluded as right. Rachels also stated that the argument cannot be true due to existence of universal moral codes.

For example, different communities have different ideas about the shape of the earth. Thus, the argument holds that there is no independent truth about the shape of the earth and that the notions are views that vary from culture to culture but this does not state that the earth has no definite shape.

Rachel criticizes the cultural differences argument by stating that the argument cannot be deductively validated, although, sociology and anthropological studies among communities has provided evidence of different moral codes. Another criticism stems from the fact that the different cultures share some moral and ethical values in common; the cultural universals.

For example, all societies do not condone murder; take care of their young ones and places significance on expressing the truth. Further, the argument tries to drift away from the fact that cultures have different opinions regarding a certain issue and the conclusion that such an issue has an objective truth. The argument also discards the presence of any collective ethical values, ideals or facts that may strengthen the basis for inter-cultural comparative judgments.

For that reason, this does not mean that there are no inferior cultures in existence. It also implicates the notion that other societies are not entitled to having an ethical stand over the actions of other societies deemed unethical. Genocide and slavery practices in societies serve as good illustrations that cannot be termed as ethical within the context of other cultures.

Rachels, J. & Rachels, S. (2006). The Elements of Moral Philosophy . New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Companies.

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16 Cultural Relativism Advantages and Disadvantages

If there is one universal truth to be found in life, it is that people are continually changing. Humanity is continually evolving and adapting to new circumstances. This evolutionary process allows us to develop in ways that our ancestors never thought possible.

Cultural relativism is a process which encourages the individual to define the rightness or wrongness of their ethics and morality on their own circumstances. It gives people an opportunity to change who they are at a core level without suffering consequences because of those actions. It eliminates the rigid rules that societies often create, sometimes unwritten, that require people to think, speak, and act in specific ways.

In the process of cultural relativism removes all definitions from a society. It always promotes an individualistic perspective. Every person must have their own moral code which they choose to follow.

There are specific advantages and disadvantages to review when looking at a society that is based on this concept. These are the critical cultural relativism pros and cons to consider.

List of the Pros of Cultural Relativism

1. Cultural relativism removes the power of societal conditioning. There is no longer a need to conform to society as an individual when cultural relativism is the driving force. You are no longer required to adapt to the beliefs, thoughts, or attitudes of the groups that surround you. It is up to you to charge your own course through life. This process stops the slow degradation that all societies face when everyone tries to be just like anyone else.

2. Cultural relativism allows for the creation of individual moral codes. The structures of cultural relativism allow each person to consult with the expectations of their culture or society to determine what they believe is right or wrong. This process creates a simple test which dictates how each individual reacts when they counter specific circumstances. You are always in charge of what you believe is a moral choice. You decide of actions are permitted or disallowed. Although this structure can define morality outside of what would be considered traditional rules, societies create a culture which invites inclusion over structure exclusion in almost every circumstance.

3. Cultural relativism does not rely on moral relativism. The theory of cultural relativism treats each culture as an individual. The moral codes of each person, along with each expectation, are implemented by those who defined themselves through that individuality. Some cultures may prefer restrictions. Others might prefer full inclusion. It is a process which encourages each person to do what makes the most sense for them to achieve their definition of ethics and morality in each situation.

4. Cultural relativism creates a society which is free from judgment. One of the primary advantages of cultural relativism is that it completely removes negative judgments from individual interaction. We’ve become so trained as humans to judge others when we see something different that half the time we don’t even think about it. Anytime we push someone down to lift ourselves up, we have judged that person to be inferior to our superiority.

Cultural relativism takes this all the way. Even if someone disagrees with how you define your moral code in the structure, your morality equates to their morality exactly. You both have the opportunity to define the expectations of life that you follow.

5. Cultural relativism preserves human culture. When you trace the history of humanity through time, you find that societies are diverse in their ideas, traditions, and practices. We often set aside this history because we’re attempting to conform to the expectations that third parties place upon us. This structure does not require anyone to trade any of their culture at any time. You decide, just like everyone else chooses, what is the best course of action to take in every situation.

6. Cultural relativism encourages respect. Even though there is a focus on individuality within a society that practice is cultural relativism, there is also respect for their diversity. Different ideas and ethnicities are frequently celebrated. This system promotes individual definitions instead of group definitions as an evolutionary process, which allows each person to pursue goals through their own perspective while focusing on their natural strengths. No one is ever forced to conform to a specific set of rules or values as a way to achieve success.

7. Cultural relativism promotes cooperation. Humanity is strong because we are diverse. Each person offers a different perspective on life that is based on their thoughts, education, and experiences. These differences should not be a foundation for fear. They ought to be the basis of cooperation. We are able to do more as a team then we are as individuals. By combining each unique set of values with individualized moral descriptions, productivity levels quickly rise.

8. Cultural relativism creates a society which is authentically equal. The traditional society forces people to rise to the top by climbing over other people along the way. You are encouraged to discriminate against anyone if success as your primary goal. Cultural relativism prevents this because it encourages each person to define the path they must follow. There will still be people who choose a skin color preference, or a gender preference, or a sexual orientation preference over others. What you will find with the structure, however, is that the plethora of individual perspectives melts into a society which is able to create great things.

List of the Cons of Cultural Relativism

1. Cultural relativism creates a society that is fueled through personal bias. People grow up in specific environments where different truths are taught. Some families are incredibly inclusive, while others focus on racial bias. Cultural relativism encourages individuals to form alliances with those who have similar perspectives instead of sharing different outcomes. Community segregation occurs frequently because of the discomfort levels which occur when different definitions are present. People will always follow their own moral codes and ethics at the expense of others in a society with the structure.

2. Cultural relativism only works if humanity is perfect. Most people would agree that the average person tries to do good things every day. The average individual would like to see everyone have the opportunity to pursue their dreams or goals in some way. It is these concepts which create a temptation to follow the processes is defined by cultural relativism. The issue in doing so is that every person is fallible. Humans lie, cheat, and steal. We can get angry when something doesn’t go our way, and that puts ourselves and our families at risk. There must be a moral code that governs groups in society to create enough checks and balances to deal with these imperfections.

Without this accompanying structure, the moral codes of the individual would reign supreme. That means we would be operating on the idea of perfection while pursuing imperfection.

3. Cultural relativism drives people away from one another. C.S. Lewis described what environment focused on cultural relativism would be like in his work called “The Screwtape Letters.” Each person what attempt to get as far away as possible from every other individual to escape whatever personal demons they would have. There would be no guarantees in a society like this that you would ever be safe. Someone’s moral code could dictate that you need to die because that will help that person feel better. Although the theory suggests that it would embrace diversity, the reality is that people would isolate themselves as a way to protect their lives.

4. Cultural relativism would create a world of chaos. The idea that someone could follow their own moral code at any time because there is no concrete definition of right or wrong would create chaos. Anyone could harm any other person at any time. You could take something from the store because you felt like it was the right thing to do. You could disobey any of the laws (assuming there were some enforced) because you felt that they were unjustly applied. Only the strongest would survive this type of situation, which brings it closer to an apocalyptic version of the future instead of something that is realistic.

5. Cultural relativism would promote a lack of diversity. The only diversity that cultural relativism promotes is the individual perspective. All of the rights that so many of our ancestors fought to have for generations would disappear instantly with this societal format. The only standards that people could follow in this scenario would be the ones that they set for themselves. Each person will then pursue their own position of strength. It is impossible to create a society that is diverse when the emphasis on success is based on selfish accomplishments.

6. Cultural relativism allows opinions and perceptions to become universal truths. Any theory becomes the truth if cultural relativism is implemented for society. What you think or feel becomes a reality, even if you imagined things. That is the most significant disadvantage of this concept. An opinion instantly becomes fact. Perceptions become real. You could make up a story, included in your personal morality, and there would be nothing that anyone could do to stop you from achieving whatever outcome it is that you wanted.

7. Cultural relativism would limit the progress of humanity. Some people see the concept of cultural relativism as an evolution of the human experience. The reality of this idea, however, is that it would limit our progress. If you remove judgment from a society completely, then there are no standards to follow. We would no longer have the ability to effectively compare different societies, past or present, to chart away toward the future. There could be no real definition of success for humanity because we would all be operating within an individual culture. Even though each person could see personal progress, there would be billions of people all going in different directions at the same time.

These cultural relativism pros and cons our reflection of the possible outcomes which would occur should this theoretical system be implemented at some point. It is an idea which was initially proposed by Franz Boas in the late 19th century and has never been implemented on a scale that would affect alarm society. If we were to follow this idea, then we would be creating individualized cultures, not group societies, and that would change the world as we know it.

Reason and Meaning

Philosophical reflections on life, death, and the meaning of life, summary of cultural relativism.

Philosophical Ethics 

Ethics is that part of philosophy which deals with the good and bad, or right and wrong in human conduct. It asks questions like: What is morality? Is morality objective or subjective? What is the relationship between self-interest and morality? Why should I be moral?

We can divide philosophical ethics into four parts. Meta-ethics analyzes moral concepts, moral justification, and the meaning of moral language. Descriptive ethics describes the moral systems of various cultures. Normative ethics considers moral norms, standards or criteria that underlie moral theories. Applied ethics applies normative theories to moral problems in law, medicine, business, computer science, the environment and more. Over the next few weeks we will discuss normative ethics, or moral theories. We’ll begin with relativism.

Now you might agree that  my previous assault on relativism has been successful, but still claim that while some truths are objective—logical, mathematical, and natural scientific ones for example—other so-called truths are relative—ethical truths for instance. Such considerations lead us to moral relativism, the theory that there are no absolute, objective, and universally binding moral truths . According to the moral relativist, there exist conflicting moral claims that are both true. (X is right, and x is wrong.) In short, the ethical relativist denies that there is any objective truth about right and wrong. Ethical judgments are not true or false because there is no objective moral truth—x is right—for a moral judgment to correspond with. In brief, morality is relative, subjective, and non-universally binding, and disagreements about ethics are like disagreements about what flavor of ice cream is best.

And what specifically might morality be relative to? Usually morality is thought to be relative to a group’s or individual’s: beliefs, emotions, opinions, wants, desires, interests, preferences, feelings, etc. Thus, we distinguish between two kinds of moral relativism: cultural moral relativism and personal moral relativism. (I’ll discuss the first one today, and the second one tomorrow.)

What is Cultural Moral Relativism?  

Cultural moral relativism i s the theory that moral judgments or truths are relative to cultures . Consequently, what is right in one society may be wrong in another and vice versa. (For culture, you may substitute: nation; society; group, sub-culture, etc.) This is another theory with ancient roots. Herodotus, the father of history, describes the Greeks encounter with the Callatians who ate their dead relatives. Naturally, the Greeks found this practice revolting. But the Callatians were equally repelled by the Greek practice of cremation causing Herodotus to conclude that ethics is culturally relative. World literature sounds a recurring theme: different cultures have different moral codes , an insight confirmed by the evidence of cultural differences. The Incas practiced human sacrifice, Eskimos shared their wives with strangers and killed newborns, Japanese samurai tried out his new sword on an innocent passer-by, Europeans enslaved masses of Africans, and female circumcision is performed today in parts of North Africa.

Cultural moral relativism contains two theses: 1) the diversity thesis— moral beliefs, practices, and values are diverse or vary from one culture to another; and 2) the dependency thesis —moral obligations   depends upon cultures, since they are the final arbiters of moral truth. In short, cultural relativism implies that no cultural values have any objective, universal validity, and it would be arrogant for one culture to make moral judgments about other cultures.

The thesis of diversity is descriptive; it describes the way things are. Moral beliefs, rules, and practices, in fact, depend upon facets of culture like social, political, religious, and economic institutions. By contrast the thesis of dependency is prescriptive ; it describes how things ought to be. Morality should depend on culture because there is nothing else upon which it is based. Now we might argue for cultural relativism as follows:

Argument 1 – (from the diversity thesis)

• Different cultures have different moral codes;
• Thus, there is no morality independent of culture.

The weakness of this argument is that  the conclusion doesn’t follow from the premise . The fact that cultures disagree about morality doesn’t show that morality is relative. After all, cultures disagree about whether abortion is moral or immoral, but their disagreement doesn’t mean there is no truth about the matter. It might be that one culture is just mistaken. Consider how cultures might disagree as to whether the earth or sun is at the center of our solar system. Their disagreement doesn’t mean there is no truth about the matter. Similarly, societies might disagree about whether they should put their young to death, but that disagreement proves nothing, other than societies disagree. So cultural disagreements are not enough to prove cultural relativism. Consider another argument:

Argument 2 – (from the dependency thesis)

• What is often regarded as the moral truths depends on cultural beliefs;
• Thus, there is no moral truth independent of culture.

The argument commits the fallacy that logicians call “begging the question.” This occurs when you assume the truth of what you are trying to prove. (For example, if you ask me why I think abortion is wrong and I say, because it’s bad, I’ve begged the question.) In argument 2, one is trying to show that right and wrong depend on culture. It begs the question to say that right and wrong depend on culture because they depend on culture.

Now might we make a stronger case for the relativist if we put the two theses together?

Premise 1 – Right and wrong vary between cultures (diversity). Premise 2 – Right and wrong depend upon a cultural context (dependency). Conclusion – Thus, right and wrong are relative to culture.  

Critique of Cultural Moral Relativism – Premise 1

This seems better; at least the conclusion follows from the premises. But are these premises true? Let’s consider the first premise (diversity). Nothing seems more obvious than the fact of cultural differences. Eskimos believed in infanticide; most Americans do not. Most Americans believe executing criminals is morally justifiable; most French find the practice barbaric. Clearly, there are different cultural mores. But maybe the differences between cultural values are not as great as they seem.

Consider that Eskimos live in harsh climates where food is in short supply and mothers nurse their babies for years. There simply isn’t enough food for all their children, nor enough backs upon which nomadic people can carry their children. So Eskimos want their children to live just like we do, and it is the harsh and unusual condition that force them to make difficult choices. Sometimes they kill a weaker child so that both the stronger and weaker children won’t die. We may disagree with the practice, but we can imagine doing the same in similar circumstances. Thus, the underlying principle—life is valuable—has been applied differently in different contexts. Maybe cultures aren’t so different after all.

Consider that there is more crime in America than in France. Most Americans seem to believe that criminals deserve to be punished for their crimes, that severe punishment brings peace to the victim’s family, that capital punishment is a deterrent to crime, etc. The French are more likely to renounce retribution or doubt that capital punishment brings victim’s families peace or deters crime. But notice again. Both cultures are steered by a principle—act justly—even though they apply the principle differently. So upon closer inspection, there doesn’t seem to be as much disagreement as it first appeared. So the differences in cultural values might be more apparent than real.

Now suppose we could show that there are moral principles that all cultures share? Wouldn’t that show that morality was not relative to culture? Many scientists claim that there are moral principles common to all cultures. 1 For instance, all cultures share: regulations on sexual behavior; prohibitions against unjust killing; requirements of familial obligations and child care; emphasis on truth-telling; and reward for reciprocity and cooperation. If we take these two ideas together—cultural moral differences aren’t as great as they appear, and all cultures share some moral values—then the diversity thesis is false . And if the first premise is false, then the conclusion of the cultural relativist’s argument doesn’t follow.

However notice that even if the first premise is false , that doesn’t prove that moral objectivism is true. Cultures that share the same moral values could all be wrong! So the empirical evidence concerning similarities and differences between moral codes isn’t relevant to the question of whether morality is absolute or relative. And that means that while we haven’t proven the truth of cultural absolutism, we have undermined the cultural relativist. For the evidence about diversity of culture is irrelevant, then we have undermined the relativist’s first premise, and with it the conclusion of his/her argument.

Critique of Cultural Moral Relativism – Premise 2

While undermining the first premise sufficiently undermines cultural relativism, let’s turn to the second premise (dependency) to see if it fares any better. Now it does appear true that some moral “truths” depend on culture—for example, regulations on sexual behaviors or funeral practices. But it is not self-evident that all moral truth depends on culture. Moral truth may be independent of culture in the same way that other truths are independent of culture. Ethics may be objectively grounded in reason, the god’s commands, the most happiness for the most people, human nature, or something else.

But rather than trying to contradict all the relativist’s arguments for the second premise, consider the implications of taking cultural relativism seriously. If cultural relativism is true then all of the following (counter-intuitive) are true. 1) We cannot make cross-cultural judgments . We could not consistently criticize a culture for killing all those over forty, exterminating ethnic groups, or banishing children to the Antarctic. 2 ) We cannot make intra-cultural judgments . We cannot say, even within our culture, whether we should send children to their death or to school, whether we should torture our criminals or reward them. 3) The idea of moral progress is incoherent . All you can say is that cultures change, not that one is better than another. The old culture practiced slavery; we do not, and that’s the end of it. The appearance of moral progress is illusory.

But all of this is counter-intuitive. We might think that cultures can do what they want regarding funeral practices, but what about human sacrifice? Aren’t there some things that are just plain wrong, in both other cultures and our own? Don’t you believe that society is better now because it has outlawed slavery? Cultural relativism answers no to both questions. But can such a strongly counterintuitive theory be correct?

Summary and Transition

Thus cultural relativism is as incoherent and unsubstantiated as epistemological relativism, as I argued yesterday. The logical arguments for cultural relativism fail, and we have good reasons to doubt the truth of the premises of cultural relativism. Finally, cultural relativism contradicts our moral intuition. While we can’t prove that cultural relativism is mistaken—you can only really do this in logic or mathematics—we have shown that there are many reasons to doubt the theory, and few reasons to accept it.

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3 thoughts on “ summary of cultural relativism ”.

I’d like to offer an odd point of view on this question, although I hasten to point out that I have no expertise, and my analysis is nowhere near as careful or thorough as your own. Treat this idea as a curious stimulus for thought, not a clearly established thesis.

I look at reality and I see no morality. It’s not in this tree; I don’t find it when I dig a hole, nor does it seem to be under the sea or in the stars. It is a strictly human concept; in fact, it is a human. To my narrow physicist’s point of view, this means that it is not objectively real; it’s merely a human perception.

Of course, there are plenty of human perceptions that *are* real in some sense. English is a language; so is Urdu; and they are certainly real in the sense that they are used in the real world. In fact, I think that languages provide us with a useful analogy. Moral systems are arbitrary in the same sense that languages are arbitrary. That is, there is absolutely nothing in the physical world that dictates that the sound “cat” intrinsically refers to our pets. “Gato” and “feles” are just as arbitrary. Nevertheless, language is constrained to follow an innate “deep structure” that is universal to all humans.

In the same fashion, we could argue that morality is arbitrary yet constrained by certain universal principles. I here argue that morality has been subjected to exactly the same evolutionary pressures that applied to humans as individuals. Cultures with stupid moral systems were superseded by cultures with more pragmatic moral systems. The prohibition against murder, for example, is obviously of great pragmatic value for any society. Similar principles elicit prohibitions against many other behaviors.

As you point out, applications of the deep principles can manifest themselves in surprisingly different fashions in different physical environments. Yet there remains one fundamental principle: societies evolve moral systems that optimize their ability to survive and prosper in the physical environment in which they find themselves.

Anyway, for what it’s worth, that’s how I perceive the existence of moral systems. I understand how many people feel a need for some objective moral system to exist, something that we could find graven in stone that would give us peace of mind in knowing what truly is right and wrong. I maintain that no such stone can ever exist.

I’m sure that, with your vastly greater experience wrestling with these issues, you can pick out some blunders in my thinking, so I’d love to see your reactions.

Most of these issues are addressed in my ethics book or at good sites like Wikipedia, Stanford Enc. of Phil, or the internet enc. of phil. Everything you say is spot on and you could have a new career as an ethicist. Ethics is so important, we so need more moral and intelligent people. Basically you have adopted an anti-realist position in meta-ethics in your comments.

Moral Anti-Realism (or Moral Irrealism) is the meta-ethical doctrine that there are no objective moral values. It is usually defined in opposition to Moral Realism, which holds that there are indeed objective moral values, that evaluative statements are factual claims which are either true or false, and that their truth or falsity is independent of our perception of them or our beliefs, feelings or other attitudes towards them. Thus, Moral Anti-Realism can involve either a denial that moral properties exist at all, or the acceptance that they do exist, but that their existence is mind-dependent and not objective or independent.

You do hedge your bets slightly with this quote “In the same fashion, we could argue that morality is arbitrary yet constrained by certain universal principles.” This position was defended by another non-professional philosopher Michael Shermer in his wonderful and readable book “The Science of Good & Evil.” I think you would like it.

The position you adopt is popular but not the most popular position. Here are the stats from the site “what phils believe” Meta-ethics: moral realism 56.4%; moral anti-realism 27.7%; other 15.9%.

Finally you mention evolution and we are of one mind here. I am an evolutionary ethicist and you can read all about that too. I think game design might have to go on hold while you become an ethicist.

CRAWFORD INVENTS WHEEL!! SCIENTISTS AND ENGINEERS AGHAST!! “We never thought of that!” Seen as “the death of distance”!!

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The Culture Concept

Emily cowall, mcmaster university, priscilla medeiros, mcmaster university , learning objectives.

• Compare and contrast the ideas of ethnocentrism and cultural relativism.
• Describe the role that early anthropologists Sir James Frazer and Sir E. B. Tylor played in defining the concept of culture in anthropology.
• Identify the differences between armchair anthropology and participant-observer fieldwork and explain how Bronislaw Malinowski contributed to the development of anthropological fieldwork techniques.
• Identify the contributions Franz Boas and his students made to the development of new theories about culture.
• Assess some of the ethical issues that can arise from anthropological research.

THOUGHTS ON CULTURE OVER A CUP OF COFFEE

Do you think culture can be studied in a coffee shop? Have you ever gone to a coffee shop, sat down with a book or laptop, and listened to conversations around you? If you just answered yes, in a way, you were acting as an anthropologist. Anthropologists like to become a part of their surroundings, observing and participating with people doing day-to-day things. As two anthropologists writing a chapter about the culture concept, we wanted to know what other people thought about culture. What better place to meet than at our community coffee shop?

Our small coffee shop was filled with the aroma of coffee beans, and the voices of people competed with the sound of the coffee grinder. At the counter a chalkboard listed the daily specials of sandwiches and desserts. Coffee shops have their own language, with vocabulary such as macchiato and latte . It can feel like entering a foreign culture. We found a quiet corner that would allow us to observe other people, and hopefully identify a few to engage with, without disturbing them too much with our conversation. We understand the way that anthropologists think about culture, but we were also wondering what the people sitting around us might have to say. Would having a definition of culture really mean something to the average coffee-shop patron? Is a definition important? Do people care? We were very lucky that morning because sitting next to us was a man working on his laptop, a service dog lying at his feet.

Meeting Bob at the Coffee Shop

Having an animal in a food-service business is not usually allowed, but in our community people can have their service dogs with them. This young golden retriever wore a harness that displayed a sign stating the owner was diabetic. This dog was very friendly; in fact, she wanted to be touched and would not leave us alone, wagging her tail and pushing her nose against our hands. This is very unusual because many service dogs, like seeing eye dogs, are not to be touched. Her owner, Bob, let us know that his dog must be friendly and not afraid to approach people: if Bob needs help in an emergency, such as a diabetic coma, the dog must go to someone else for help.

We enjoyed meeting Bob and his dog, and asked if he would like to answer our question: what is culture? Bob was happy to share his thoughts and ideas.

Bob feels that language is very important to cultural identity. He believes that if one loses language, one also loses important information about wildlife, indigenous plants, and ways of being. As a member of a First Nations tribe, Bob believes that words have deep cultural meaning. Most importantly, he views English as the language of commerce. Bob is concerned with the influence of Western consumerism and how it changes cultural identity.

Bob is not an anthropologist. He was just a person willing to share his ideas. Without knowing it though, Bob had described some of the elements of anthropology. He had focused on the importance of language and the loss of tradition when it is no longer spoken, and he had recognized that language is a part of cultural identity. He was worried about globalization and consumerism changing cultural values.

With Bob’s opinions in mind, we started thinking about how we, two cultural anthropologists, would answer the same question about culture. Our training shapes our understandings of the question, yet we know there is more to culture concepts than a simple definition. Why is asking the culture concept question important to anthropologists? Does it matter? Is culture something that we can understand without studying it formally?

In this chapter, we will illustrate how anthropology developed the culture concept. Our journey will explore the importance of storytelling and the way that anthropology became a social science. This will include learning about the work of important scholars, how anthropology emerged in North America, and an overview of the importance of ethics.

STORIES AS A REFLECTION ON CULTURE

Stories are told in every culture and often teach a moral lesson to young children. Fables are similar, but often set an example for people to live by or describe what to do when in a dangerous situation. They can also be a part of traditions, help to preserve ways of life, or explain mysteries. Storytelling takes many different forms such as tall tales and folktales. These are for entertainment or to discuss problems encountered in life. Both are also a form of cultural preservation, a way to communicate morals or values to the next generation. Stories can also be a form of social control over certain activities or customs that are not allowed in a society.

A fable becomes a tradition by being retold and accepted by others in the community. Different cultures have very similar stories sharing common themes. One of the most common themes is the battle between good and evil. Another is the story of the quest. The quest often takes the character to distant lands, filled with real-life situations, opportunities, hardships, and heartaches. In both of these types of stories, the reader is introduced to the anthropological concept known as the Other . What exactly is the Other ? The Other is a term that has been used to describe people whose customs, beliefs, or behaviors are different from one’s own.

Figure 1: Travel writer Lemuel Gulliver is captured and tied down by the Lilliputians.

Can a story explain the concept of the Other? Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels is about four different voyages that Gulliver undertakes. His first adventure is the most well-known; in the story, Lemuel Gulliver is a surgeon who plans a sea voyage when his business fails. During a storm at sea, he is shipwrecked, and he awakens to find himself bound and secured by a group of captors, the Lilliputians, who are six inches tall. Gulliver, having what Europeans consider a normal body height, suddenly becomes a giant. During this adventure, Gulliver is seen as an outsider, a stranger with different features and language. Gulliver becomes the Other.

What lessons about culture can we learn from Gulliver’s Travels ? Swift’s story offers lessons about cultural differences, conflicts occurring in human society, and the balance of power. It also provides an important example of the Other. The Other is a matter of perspective in this story: Gulliver thinks the Lilliputians are strange and unusual. To Gulliver, the Lilliputians are the Other, but the Lilliputians equally see Gulliver as the Other—he is a their captive and is a rare species of man because of his size.

The themes in Gulliver’s Travels describe different cultures and aspects of storytelling. The story uses language, customary behaviors, and the conflict between different groups to explore ideas of the exotic and strange. The story is framed as an adventure, but is really about how similar cultures can be. In the end, Gulliver becomes a member of another cultural group, learning new norms, attitudes, and behaviors. At the same time, he wants to colonize them, a reflection of his former cultural self.

Stories are an important part of culture, and when used to pass on traditions or cultural values, they can connect people to the past. Stories are also a way to validate religious, social, political, and economic practices from one generation to another. Stories are important because they are used in some societies to apply social pressure, to keep people in line, and are part of shaping the way that people think and behave.

Anthropologists as Storytellers

People throughout recorded history have relied on storytelling as a way to share cultural details. When early anthropologists studied people from other civilizations, they relied on the written accounts and opinions of others; they presented facts and developed their stories, about other cultures based solely on information gathered by others. These scholars did not have any direct contact with the people they were studying. This approach has come to be known as armchair anthropology . Simply put, if a culture is viewed from a distance (as from an armchair), the anthropologist tends to measure that culture from his or her own vantage point and to draw comparisons that place the anthropologist’s culture as superior to the one being studied. This point of view is also called ethnocentrism. Ethnocentrism is an attitude based on the idea that one’s own group or culture is better than any other.

Figure 2: Sir James Frazer is among the founders of modern anthropology.

Armchair anthropologists were unlikely to be aware of their ethnocentric ideas because they did not visit the cultures they studied. Scottish social anthropologist Sir James Frazer is well-known for his 1890 work The Golden Bough: A Study of Comparative Religions . Its title was later changed to A Study in Magic and Religion , and it was one of the first books to describe and record magical and religious beliefs of different culture groups around the world. Yet, this book was not the outcome of extensive study in the field. Instead, Frazer relied on the accounts of others who had traveled, such as scholars, missionaries, and government officials, to formulate his study.

Another example of anthropological writing without the use of fieldwork is Sir E. B. Tylor’s 1871 work Primitive Culture . Tylor, who went on to become the first professor of anthropology at Oxford University in 1896, was an important influence in the development of sociocultural anthropology as a separate discipline. Tylor defined culture as “that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, law, morals, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society.” [1]  His definition of culture is still used frequently today and remains the foundation of the culture concept in anthropology.

Figure 3: Drawing of a mother and child in Malaysia from Anthropology: An Introduction to the Study of Man and  Civilization E.B. Tylor, 1904.

Both Frazer and Tylor contributed important and foundational studies even though they never went into the field to gather their information. Armchair anthropologists were important in the development of anthropology as a discipline in the late nineteenth century because although these early scholars were not directly experiencing the cultures they were studying, their work did ask important questions that could ultimately only be answered by going into the field.

Anthropologists as Cultural Participants

The armchair approach as a way to study culture changed when scholars such as Bronislaw Malinowski, Alfred Radcliffe-Brown, Franz Boas, and Margaret Mead took to the field and studied by being participants and observers. As they did, fieldwork became the most important tool anthropologists used to understand the “complex whole” of culture.

Bronislaw Malinowski, a Polish anthropologist, was greatly influenced by the work of Frazer . However , unlike the armchair anthropology approach Frazer used in writing The Golden Bough , Malinowski used more innovative ethnographic techniques, and his fieldwork took him off the veranda to study different cultures. The off the veranda approach is different from armchair anthropology because it includes active participant-observation : traveling to a location, living among people, and observing their day-to-day lives.

What happened when Malinowski came off the veranda? The Argonauts of the Western Pacific (1922) was considered the first modern ethnography and redefined the approach to fieldwork. This book is part of Malinowski’s trilogy on the Trobriand Islanders. Malinowski lived with them and observed life in their villages. By living among the islanders, Malinowski was able to learn about their social life, food and shelter, sexual behaviors, community economics, patterns of kinship, and family. [3]

 Malinowski went “native” to some extent during his fieldwork with the Trobriand Islanders. Going native means to become fully integrated into a cultural group: taking leadership positions and assuming key roles in society; entering into a marriage or spousal contract; exploring sexuality or fully participating in rituals. When an anthropologist goes native, the anthropologist is personally involved with locals. In The Argonauts of the Western Pacific , Malinowski suggested that other anthropologists should “grasp the native’s point of view, his relations to life, to realize his vision of his world.” [4] However, as we will see later in this chapter, Malinowski’s practice of going native presented problems from an ethical point of view. Participant-observation is a method to gather ethnographic data, but going native places both the anthropologist and the culture group at risk by blurring the lines on both sides of the relationship.

Figure 4: Bronislaw Malinowski in the Trobriand Islands, 1915–1918

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THEORIES OF CULTURE

Anthropology in europe.

The discipline of cultural anthropology developed somewhat differently in Europe and North America, in particular in the United States, during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries with each region contributing new dimensions to the concept of culture. Many European anthropologists were particularly interested in questions about how societies were structured and how they remained stable over time. This highlighted emerging recognition that culture and society are not the same. Culture had been defined by Tylor as knowledge, beliefs, and customs, but a society is more than just shared ideas or habits. In every society, people are linked to one another through social institutions such as families, political organizations, and businesses. Anthropologists across Europe often focused their research on understanding the form and function of these social institutions.

European anthropologists developed theories of functionalism to explain how social institutions contribute to the organization of society and the maintenance of social order. Bronislaw Malinowski believed that cultural traditions were developed as a response to specific human needs such as food, comfort, safety, knowledge, reproduction, and economic livelihood. One function of educational institutions like schools, for instance, is to provide knowledge that prepares people to obtain jobs and make contributions to society. Although he preferred the term structural-functionalism , the British anthropologist A.R. Radcliffe-Brown was also interested in the way that social structures functioned to maintain social stability in a society over time. [5] He suggested that in many societies it was the family that served as the most important social structure because family relationships determined much about an individual’s social, political, and economic relationships and these patterns were repeated from one generation to the next. In a family unit in which the father is the breadwinner and the mother stays home to raise the children, the social and economic roles of both the husband and the wife will be largely defined by their specific responsibilities within the family. If their children grow up to follow the same arrangement, these social roles will be continued in the next generation.

In the twentieth century, functionalist approaches also became popular in North American anthropology, but eventually fell out of favor. One of the biggest critiques of functionalism is that it views cultures as stable and orderly and ignores or cannot explain social change. Functionalism also struggles to explain why a society develops one particular kind of social institution instead of another. Functionalist perspectives did contribute to the development of more sophisticated concepts of culture by establishing the importance of social institutions in holding societies together. While defining the division between what is cultural and what is social continues to be complex, functionalist theory helped to develop the concept of culture by demonstrating that culture is not just a set of ideas or beliefs, but consists of specific practices and social institutions that give structure to daily life and allow human communities to function.

Anthropology in the United States

Figure 5: Franz Boas, One of the founders of American Anthropology, 1915

The participant-observation method of fieldwork was a revolutionary change to the practice of anthropology, but at the same time it presented problems that needed to be overcome. The challenge was to move away from ethnocentrism, race stereotypes, and colonial attitudes, and to move forward by encouraging anthropologists to maintain high ethical standards and open minds.

Franz Boas, an American anthropologist, is acknowledged for redirecting American anthropologists away from cultural evolutionism and toward cultural relativism. Boas first studied physical science at the University of Kiel in Germany. Because he was a trained scientist, he was familiar with using empirical methods as a way to study a subject. Empirical methods are based on evidence that can be tested using observation and experiment.

In 1883, Franz Boas went on a geographical expedition to Baffin Island in the Canadian Arctic. The Central Eskimo (1888) details his time spent on Baffin Island studying the culture and language of the central Eskimo (Inuit) people. He studied every aspect of their culture such as tools, clothing, and shelters. This study was Boas’ first major contribution to the American school of anthropology and convinced him that cultures could only be understood through extensive field research. As he observed on Baffin Island, cultural ideas and practices are shaped through interactions with the natural environment. The cultural traditions of the Inuit were suited for the environment in which they lived. This work led him to promote cultural relativism: the principle that a culture must be understood on its own terms rather than compared to an outsider’s standard. This was an important turning point in correcting the challenge of ethnocentrism in ethnographic fieldwork. [6]  

Boas is often considered the originator of American anthropology because he trained the first generation of American anthropologists including Ruth Benedict, Margaret Mead, and Alfred Kroeber. Using a commitment to cultural relativism as a starting point, these students continued to refine the concept of culture. Ruth Benedict, one of Boas’ first female students, used cultural relativism as a starting point for investigating the cultures of the American northwest and southwest. Her best-selling book Patterns of Culture (1934) emphasized that culture gives people coherent patterns for thinking and behaving. She argued that culture affects individuals psychologically, shaping individual personality traits and leading the members of a culture to exhibit similar traits such as a tendency toward aggression, or calmness.

Figure 6: Ruth Benedict, 1936

Alfred Louis Kroeber, another student of Boas, also shared the commitment to field research and cultural relativism, but Kroeber was particularly interested in how cultures change over time and influence one another. Through publications like T he Nature of Culture (1952), Kroeber examined the historical processes that led cultures to emerge as distinct configurations as well as the way cultures could become more similar through the spread or diffusion of cultural traits. Kroeber was also interested in language and the role it plays in transmitting culture. He devoted much of his career to studying Native American languages in an attempt to document these languages before they disappeared.

Anthropologists in the United States have used cultural relativism to add depth to the concept of culture in several ways. Tylor had defined culture as including knowledge, belief, art, law, morals, custom, capabilities and habits. Boas and his students added to this definition by emphasizing the importance of enculturation , the process of learning culture, in the lives of individuals. Benedict, Mead, and others established that through enculturation culture shapes individual identity, self-awareness, and emotions in fundamental ways. They also emphasized the need for holism , approaches to research that considered the entire context of a society including its history.

Kroeber and others also established the importance of language as an element of culture and documented the ways in which language was used to communicate complex ideas. By the late twentieth century, new approaches to symbolic anthropology put language at the center of analysis. Later on, Clifford Geertz, the founding member of postmodernist anthropology, noted in his book The Interpretation of Cultures (1973) that culture should not be seen as something that was “locked inside people’s heads.” Instead, culture was publically communicated through speech and other behaviors. Culture , he concluded, is “an historically transmitted pattern of meanings embodied in symbols, a system of inherited conceptions expressed in symbolic forms by means of which men communicate, perpetuate, and develop their knowledge about and their attitudes toward life.” [7] This definition, which continues to be influential today, reflects the influence of many earlier efforts to refine the concept of culture in American anthropology.

ETHICAL ISSUES IN TRUTH TELLING

As anthropologists developed more sophisticated concepts of culture, they also gained a greater understanding of the ethical challenges associated with anthropological research. Because participant-observation fieldwork brings anthropologists into close relationships with the people they study, many complicated issues can arise. Cultural relativism is a perspective that encourages anthropologists to show respect to members of other cultures, but it was not until after World War II that the profession of anthropology recognized a need to develop formal standards of professional conduct.

The Nuremberg trials, which began in 1946 Nuremberg, Germany, were conducted under the direction of France, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States, prosecuted members of the Nazi regime for war crimes. In addition to military and political figures, physicians and scientists were also prosecuted for unethical human experimentation and mass murder. The trials demonstrated that physicians and other scientists could be dangerous if they used their skills for abusive or exploitative goals. The Nuremberg Code that emerged from the trials is considered a landmark document in medical and research ethics. It established principles for the ethical treatment of the human subjects involved in any medical or scientific research.

Because of events such as the Nuremberg trials, many universities embraced research ethical guidelines for the treatment of human subjects. Anthropologists and students who work in universities where these guidelines exist are obliged to follow these rules. The American Anthropological Association (AAA), along with many anthropology organizations in other countries, developed codes of ethics describing specific expectations for anthropologists engaged in research in a variety of settings. The principles in the AAA code of ethics include: do no harm; be open and honest regarding your work; obtain informed consent and necessary permissions; ensure the vulnerable populations in every study are protected from competing ethical obligations; make your results accessible; protect and preserve your records; and maintain respectful and ethical professional relationships. These principles sound simple, but can be complicated in practice.

Bronislaw Malinowski

The career of Bronislaw Malinowski provides an example of how investigations of culture can lead anthropologists into difficult ethical areas. As discussed above, Malinowski is widely regarded as a leading figure in the history of anthropology. He initiated the practice of participant-observation fieldwork and published several highly regarded books including The Argonauts of the Western Pacific . Following his death, the private diary he kept while conducting fieldwork was discovered and published as A Diary in the Strictest Sense of the Term (1967). The diary described Malinowski’s feelings of loneliness and isolation, but also included a great deal of information about his sexual fantasies as well his some insensitive and contemptuous opinions about the Trobriand Islanders. The diary provided valuable insight into the mind of an important ethnographer, but also raised questions about the extent to which his personal feelings, including bias and racism, were reflected in his official conclusions.

Most anthropologists keep diaries or daily notes as a means of keeping track of the research project, but these records are almost never made public. Because Malinowski’s diary was published after his death, he could not explain why he wrote what he did, or assess the extent to which he was able to separate the personal from the professional. Which of these books best reflects the truth about Malinowski’s interaction with the Trobriand Islanders? This rare insight into the private life of a field researcher demonstrates that even when anthropologists are acting within the boundaries of professional ethics, they still struggle to set aside their own ethnocentric attitudes and prejudices.

Figure 7: Yanomami Woman and Child,1997

Napoleon Chagnon

A more serious and complicated incident concerned research conducted among the Yanomami, an indigenous group living in the Amazon rainforest in Brazil and Venezuela. Starting in the 1960s, the anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon and James Neel, a geneticist, carried out research among the Yanomami. Neel was interested in studying the effects of radiation released by nuclear explosions on people living in remote areas. Chagnon was investigating theories about the role of violence in Yanomami society. In 2000, an American journalist, Patrick Tierney, published a book about Chagnon and Neel’s research: Darkness in El Dorado: How Scientists and Journalists Devastated the Amazon . The book contained numerous stunning allegations, including a claim that the pair had deliberately infected the Yanomami with measles, starting an epidemic that killed thousands of people. The book also claimed that Neel had conducted medical experiments without the consent of the Yanomami and that Chagnon had deliberately created conflicts between Yanomami groups so he could study the resulting violence.

These allegations were brought to the attention of the American Anthropological Association, and a number of inquiries were eventually conducted. James Neel was deceased, but Napoleon Chagnon steadfastly denied the allegations. In 2002, the AAA issued their report; Chagnon was judged to have misrepresented the violent nature of Yanomami culture in ways that caused them harm and to have failed to obtain proper consent for his research. However, Chagnon continued to reject these conclusions and complained that the process used to evaluate the evidence was unfair. In 2005, the AAA rescinded its own conclusion, citing problems with the investigation process. The results of several years of inquiry into the situation satisfied few people. Chagnon was not definitively pronounced guilty, nor was he exonerated. Years later, debate over this episode continues. [8] The controversy demonstrates the extent to which truth can be elusive in anthropological inquiry. Although anthropologists should not be storytellers in the sense that they deliberately create fictions, differences in perspective and theoretical orientation create unavoidable differences in the way anthropologists interpret the same situation. Anthropologists must try to use their toolkit of theory and methods to ensure that the stories they tell are truthful and represent the voice of the people being studied using an ethical approach.

BACK IN THE COFFEE SHOP

This chapter has looked at some historic turning points in the way anthropologists have defined culture. There is not one true, absolute definition of culture. Anthropologists respect traditions such as language; the development of self, especially from infancy to adulthood; kinship; and the structure of the social unit, or the strata of a person within their class structure; marriage, families, and rites of passage; systems of belief; and ritual. However, anthropologists also look at change and the impact it has on those traditions.

With globalization moving at a dramatic pace, and change unfolding daily, how will emerging trends redefine the culture concept? For example, social media and the Internet connect the world and have created new languages, relationships, and an online culture without borders. This leads to the question: is digital, or cyber anthropology the future? Is the study of online cultures, which are encountered largely through reading text, considered armchair or off the veranda research? Is the cyber world a real or virtual culture? In some ways, addressing online cultures takes anthropology back to its roots as anthropologists can explore new worlds without leaving home. At the same time, cyberspaces and new technologies allow people to see, hear, and communicate with others around the world in real time.

Back in the coffee shop, where we spent time with Bob, we discovered that he hoped to keep familiar aspects of his own culture, traditions such as language, social structure, and unique expressions of values, alive. The question, what is culture, caused us to reflect on our own understandings of the cultural self and the cultural Other , and on the importance of self and cultural awareness.

My cultural self has evolved from the first customary traditions of my childhood, yet my life with the Inuit caused me to consider that I have similar values and community traits as my friends in the North. My childhood was focused on caring, acceptance, and working together to achieve the necessities of life. Life on the land with the Inuit was no different, and throughout the years, I have seen how much we are the same, just living in different locations and circumstances. My anthropological training has enriched my life experiences by teaching me to enjoy the world and its peoples. I have also experienced being the cultural Other when working in the field, and this has always reminded me that the cultural self and the cultural Other will always be in conflict with each other on both sides of the experience.

Living with different indigenous tribes in Kenya gave me a chance to learn how communities maintain their traditional culture and ways of living. I come from a Portuguese- Canadian family that has kept strong ties to the culture and religion of our ancestors. Portuguese people believe storytelling is a way to keep one’s traditions, cultural identity, indigenous knowledge, and language alive. When I lived in Nairobi Province, Kenya, I discovered that people there had the same point of view. I found it odd that people still define their identities by their cultural history. What I have learned by conducting cultural fieldwork is that the meanings of culture not only vary from one group to another, but that all human societies define themselves through culture.

Our Final Reflection

Bob took us on a journey to understand what is at the heart of the culture concept. Clearly, the culture concept does not follow a straight line. Scholars, storytellers, and the people one meets in everyday life have something to say about the components of culture. The story that emerges from different voices brings insight into what it is to be human. Defining the culture concept is like putting together a puzzle with many pieces. The puzzle of culture concepts is almost complete, but it is not finished…yet.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

• How did the armchair anthropology and the off the veranda approaches differ as methods to study culture? What can be learned about a culture by experiencing it in person that cannot be learned from reading about it?
• Why is the concept of culture difficult to define? What do you think are the most important elements of culture?
• Why is it difficult to separate the “social” from the “cultural”? Do you think this is an important distinction?
• In the twenty-first century, people have much greater contact with members of other cultures than they did in the past. Which topics or concerns should be priorities for future studies of culture?

Armchair anthropology : an early and discredited method of anthropological research that did not involve direct contact with the people studied.

Cultural determinism : the idea that behavioral differences are a result of cultural not racial or genetic causes.

Cultural evolutionism: a theory popular in nineteenth century anthropology suggesting that societies evolved through stages from simple to advanced. This theory was later shown to be incorrect.

Cultural relativism : the idea that we should seek to understand another person’s beliefs and behaviors from the perspective of their own culture and not our own.

Enculturation: the process of learning the characteristics and expectations of a culture or group

Ethnocentrism: the tendency to view one’s own culture as most important and correct and as the stick by which to measure all other cultures.

Functionalism: an approach to anthropology developed in British anthropology that emphasized the way that parts of a society work together to support the functioning of the whole.

Going native : becoming fully integrated into a cultural group through acts such as taking a leadership position, assuming key roles in society, entering into marriage, or other behaviors that incorporate an anthropologist into the society he or she is studying.

Holism: taking a broad view of the historical, environmental, and cultural foundations of behavior.

Kinship: blood ties, common ancestry, and social relationships that form families within human groups.

Participant observation: a type of observation in which the anthropologist observes while participating in the same activities in which her informants are engaged.

Salvage anthropology : activities such as gathering artifacts, or recording cultural rituals with the belief that a culture is about to disappear.

Structuralism: an approach to anthropology that focuses on the ways in which the customs or social institutions in a culture contribute to the organization of society and the maintenance of social order.

The Other: a term that has been used to describe people whose customs, beliefs, or behaviors are “different” from one’s own.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Dr. Emily Cowall is a cultural anthropologist and instructor in the department of Anthropology at McMaster University, Canada; Medical Historian; and former regulated health practitioner in Ontario. Her primary academic research interests are focused on the cultural ethno-history of the Canadian Arctic. Emily moved to the Eastern Arctic in the 1980s, where she became integrated into community life. Returning for community-based research projects from 2003 to 2011, her previous community relationships enabled the completion of a landmark study examining the human geography and cultural impact of tuberculosis from 1930 to 1972. From 2008 to 2015, her work in cultural resource management took her to the Canadian High Arctic archipelago to create a museum dedicated to the Defense Research Science Era at Parks C anada, Quttinirpaaq National Park on Ellesmere Island. When she is not jumping into Twin Otter aircraft for remote field camps, she is exploring cultural aspects of environmental health and religious pilgrimage throughout Mexico.

Priscilla Medeiros is a PhD candidate and instructor at McMaster University, Canada, and is defending her thesis in fall 2017. Her primary research interests center on the anthropology of health. This involves studying the biocultural dimensions of medicine, with a particular emphasis on the history and development of public health in developed countries, sickness and inequalities, and gender relationships. Priscilla began her community-based work in prevention, care, and support of people living with HIV and AIDS seven years ago in Nairobi Province, Kenya, as part of her master’s degree. Her current research focuses on the absence of gender-specific and culturally appropriate HIV prevention initiatives and programs for women in the Maritime Provinces, Canada, and is funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. When she is not working in rural areas or teaching in the classroom, Priscilla is traveling to exotic destinations to learn to prepare local cuisine, speak foreign languages, and explore the wonders of the world. In fact, she is the real-life Indiana Jane of anthropology when it comes to adventures in the field and has many great stories to share.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Benedict, Ruth. Patterns of Culture . Boston: Houghton and Mifflin Company, 1934.

Boas, Franz. Race, Language, and Culture . Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1940.

Darwin, Charles. On the Origin of Species . London: John Murray, Albemarle Street, 1859.

Kroeber, Alfred. The Nature of Culture . Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1952.

Malinowski, Bronislaw. Argonauts of the Western Pacific . London: Routledge and Sons, 1922.

Mead, Margaret. Coming of Age in Samoa: A Psychological Study of Primitive Youth for Western Civilization . New York: William Morrow and Company, 1928.

Swift, Jonathan. Gulliver’s Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World . London: Benjamin Motte, 1726.

Tylor, Edward B. Primitive Culture: Researches into the Development of Mythology, Philosophy, Religion, Language, Art, and Customs . London: Cambridge University Press. 1871.

• Edward B. Tylor, Primitive Culture: Researches into the Development of Mythology, Philosophy, Religion, Language, Art, and Customs (London: Cambridge University Press, 1871), preface. ↵
• Lewis Henry Morgan was one anthropologist who proposed an evolutionary framework based on these terms in his book Ancient Society (New York: Henry Holt, 1877). ↵
• The film Bronislaw Malinowski: Off the Veranda , (Films Media Group, 1986) further describes Malinowski’s research practices. ↵
• Bronislaw Malinowski. Argonauts of the Western Pacific (London: Routledge & Keegan Paul, 1922), 290. ↵
• For more on this topic see Adam Kuper, Anthropology and Anthropologists: The Modern British School (New York: Routledge, 1983) and Alfred Radcliffe-Brown, Structure and Function in Primitive Society (London: Cohen and West, 1952). ↵
• Boas’ attitudes about cultural relativism were influenced by his experiences in the Canadian Arctic as he struggled to survive in a natural environment foreign to his own prior experience. His private diary and letters record the evolution of his thinking about what it means to be “civilized.” In a letter to his fiancé, he wrote: “I often ask myself what advantages our ‘good society’ possesses over that of the ‘savages’ and find, the more I see of their customs, that we have no right to look down upon them ... We have no right to blame them for their forms and superstitions which may seem ridiculous to us. We ‘highly educated people’ are much worse, relatively speaking.” The entire letter can be read in George Stocking, ed. Observers Observed: Essays on Ethnographic Fieldwork (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1983), 33. ↵
• Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Culture (New York: Basic Books, Geertz 1973), 89. ↵
• For more information about the controversy, see Thomas Gregor and Daniel Gross, “Guilt by Association: The Culture of Accusation and the American Anthropological Associations Investigation of Darkness in El Dorado.” American Anthropologist 106 no. 4 (2004):687-698 and Robert Borofsky, Yanomami: The Fierce Controversy and What We Can Learn From It (Berkley: University California Press, 2005). Napoleon Chagnon has written his rebuttal in Noble Savages: My Life Among Two Dangerous Tribes—The Yanomamo and the Anthropologists (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2013). ↵
• Perspectives: An Open Invitation to Cultural Anthropology. Authored by : Edited by Nina Brown, Laura Tubelle de Gonzalez, and Thomas McIlwraith. Provided by : American Anthropological Association. Located at : http://perspectives.americananthro.org/ . License : CC BY-NC: Attribution-NonCommercial

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What Is Cultural Anthropology?

WHAT IS CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY?

Cultural anthropology—like anthropology’s other fields of archaeology , linguistic anthropology , and biological anthropology — studies humans and what it means to be a human. [1] [1] In academic institutions in Europe and some other parts of the world, the discipline of social anthropology, which focuses on social institutions and relations, is far more common than cultural anthropology. The two overlap significantly but are not synonymous and come from different intellectual traditions. The term “sociocultural anthropology,” which combines the two, is also now commonly used in many parts of the world. What makes cultural anthropology different is that it looks specifically at the things humans do, believe , experience, and create .

Cultural anthropology asks many questions: What do people think ? How do they live ? What makes a family ? What economic and spiritual practices do people engage in? What makes people feel they are different from one another, and how do these perceived differences emerge in ideas about race , gender , or geographic origin ? How do people create social structures and understand power ? Why do people eat what they eat ? How do they use language ? What do they do in their leisure time? How do they interact with animals, plants, and wider environments ? And how do all these identities, practices, and relationships affect how people see themselves as humans ?

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These starting points lead to the more fundamental questions of cultural anthropology: What does it mean to live life as a human being in the world? Why do people around the world live so differently—and what do they have in common? And how can examining human diversity reveal alternative possibilities of how to be human and how to imagine our shared futures ?

To explore these questions and arrive at some answers, cultural anthropologists rely on in-depth research among communities. They often engage with these groups for years or even decades. Because anthropology is considered a science (hence the “-ology”), it requires data to make claims. Anthropologists can’t simply say something is a certain way without this data, so they go into the “field”—that is, a place in the world where humans are doing human things—and collect it in a process called fieldwork .

WHAT DO CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGISTS STUDY?

Some scientific disciplines use large data sets to find societal patterns or replicate lab findings to arrive at supposed universal facts. On the other hand, cultural anthropologists tend to focus on specific social contexts. They study how people think and act within these settings. Cultural anthropologists do not seek to ultimately solve humanity’s greatest mysteries through conducting fieldwork research. Rather, they aim to make sense of the complicated ways people make meaning in their lives.

Throughout the 19th and much of the 20th centuries, this research primarily consisted of anthropologists (usually from Europe or North America ) going to a single field site (usually a village or town in Latin America, Africa, Asia, or Oceania) and examining local knowledge and practices. In recent decades, these ideas about who can practice anthropology and where the “field” is located have expanded and diversified.

Today an anthropologist’s field may include following global commodity chains , looking at how cellphones are changing social relations , or diving into social media platforms used by people across the world. Cultural anthropologists study the ways different contemporary societies face complex issues, such as mental health in Indonesia , policing in Kenya , and waste management in Hong Kong .

Some issues faced by local populations reflect worldwide problems. Therefore, anthropologists also study the politics around global climate change , refugee movements , and the social effects of economic surplus and austerity , among other topics. Cultural anthropology even reaches into areas where human experiences overlap with technologies and nonhuman animals. Researchers study topics ranging from AI-driven robot soldiers , to cross-species organ transplants , to people’s relationships with macaque monkeys and landmine-detecting military rats .

WHAT ARE THE CORE PRINCIPLES OF CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY?

The ways anthropologists understand and study culture have changed much since the formal discipline began around 150 years ago . Throughout these shifts and evolutions, a few foundational concepts and practices have become central to cultural anthropology. These include the concept of “culture,” the value placed on holistic approaches, the ideal of “cultural relativism” in opposition to “ethnocentrism,” and comparison.

Culture : Non-anthropologists may think of “culture” as synonymous with fine arts or fancy cuisine. Anthropologists have a different understanding of the term. Cultural anthropologists roughly define culture as all the beliefs, practices, symbols, and rules of groups of people. This culture can be written, passed down verbally, spread through practice, or never even mentioned (but followed nonetheless).

Much like the concept itself, anthropologists’ relationship to culture as a way of conceptualizing human groups has changed over time. Cultural anthropologists now emphasize that cultures are unstable and unbounded. Indeed, within any group or society, culture is socially constructed and constantly contested and remade by its members. Culture is influenced by wider economic, sociopolitical, and environmental shifts. Some anthropologists even reject the idea that groups of people can be defined by distinct cultures , arguing that the concept oversimplifies the differences and connections between peoples.

Holism : Cultural anthropologists approach and understand things “ holistically .” This means they try to see situations and practices as part of a bigger picture. People often view their own lives as part of a linear progression—this event caused that event, which then caused this other event, et cetera. Cultural anthropology fights against this tendency. Instead, it tries to grasp the multiple connected forces of power , identity , history , geography, belief, social relationships , and so on in even the smallest practices, expressions, or activities.

Cultural relativism : Cultural relativism is perhaps best understood by starting with its opposite: ethnocentrism . An ethnocentric attitude views one’s own culture as not only “better” than other cultures but as “normal” or “natural.” This perspective makes all other cultures abnormal and unnatural (or at least weird). Cultural relativism (also referred to as “ cultural relativity ”) opposes this stance. It has the goal of trying to understand cultural features—such as morals, rules, and beliefs—from that culture’s own viewpoint. This principle allows anthropologists to resist the immediate urge to dismiss certain practices as immoral or odd. Instead, cultural relativism lets researchers explore how these practices connect to the whole (see holism above) without all the ethnocentric baggage.

It is also important to note, though, that anthropologists draw their own ethical lines. Most anthropologists use relativistic thinking as a guide for how to approach difference. But this does not mean they do not speak out—or even take action—against morally unjust practices or structures. Anthropologists often battle inequalities in their own communities and in the communities they research.

Comparison : Anthropology has been a comparative discipline since its inception in the 19th century. In its early days, some anthropologists engaged in deeply troubling scientific racism , or ranking groups by race or geographic origin to claim one “culture” was more or less “civilized” than another. Often, these comparisons were used to justify colonialism, slavery, and other unjust systems and institutions.

Over time, most anthropologists came to challenge overtly prejudicial understandings of some societies as “savage” or “primitive”; however, efforts to “decolonize” the discipline and reckon with this history are ongoing . Today when cultural anthropologists make use of comparison, what they deem significant is how groups differ or change across time and space. They want to understand what those differences and changes can tell us about the richness of human diversity.

WHAT IS ETHNOGRAPHY?

The term “ethnography” is used to describe both a practice and a material product. When a cultural anthropologist is in the field, they engage in what is called ethnographic research , or “doing ethnography” (the practice). An ethnography (the product) is the end result of this in-depth ethnographic research; it is usually a detailed book about a certain group of people in a specific place and time. [2] [2] While a written ethnography is still the standard for the field, anthropologists are also increasingly producing other ethnographic media, such as documentary films , sonic ethnographies , ethnographic poetry , and even ethnographic graphic novels . So, anthropologists do ethnography in order to write an ethnography.

For many anthropologists, an important aspect of doing ethnographic fieldwork is the understanding they will be in the field for an extended period. This can be as short as a few months but often extends to many years. Unlike most other sciences, anthropologists enter the field with guiding questions rather than a hypothesis. They then allow fieldwork to reveal answers to their questions, frequently posing new questions in the process.

Anthropologists depend on personal relationships with “interlocutors”—what they often call the folks they are engaging with. These relationships can take time and effort to form, especially if an anthropologist is not already embedded in the society they are studying. Also, different practices might arise with seasonal changes; in special circumstances like births , deaths , or weddings ; or in response to conflict , natural disasters , or the introduction of a new technology . This makes long-term study preferable. Only with this level of exposure, open-mindedness, and commitment can an anthropologist see cultures more holistically.

Over this long, entrenched period, cultural anthropologists may write field notes and/or field poems , conduct interviews, draw maps , construct charts of kinship and power relations, record stories and biographical narratives, trace networks of communication, and investigate many other sources of cultural information. Even if the anthropologist was previously familiar with this group, they pay close attention to see patterns that may have escaped day-to-day notice. But doing ethnography does not simply mean hanging out with a group of people and writing a lot about them. Rather than passively observing, most cultural anthropologists practice “participant observation.”

WHAT IS PARTICIPANT OBSERVATION?

Participant observation is exactly what it sounds like—anthropologists observe and write notes, take pictures, audio/video recordings, et cetera, while also participating in the cultures they are studying. On a fundamental level, this means living among their interlocutors in the same communities, sometimes even the same dwellings. This also means that an anthropologist must prepare beforehand by trying to learn the language(s) spoken there (if they speak a different language) before entering the field.

The anthropologist not only lives with but also works , plays , eats , dances , celebrates , mourns , and even drinks with their interlocutors. This includes everyday activities, like herding reindeer in Norway, helping prevent wildfires in California, eating guinea pig in Peru, or childrearing in Arizona. This becomes complicated in a specifically thorny way when the anthropologist is already a member of the society being studied, as they will continue to do all these daily, supposedly “unremarkable” activities but as a group member and also as an anthropologist.

HOW CAN CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY HELP US UNDERSTAND THE WORLD TODAY?

Cultural anthropological research addresses the pressing issues and life experiences of humans. For contemporary humans on Earth, this includes studying processes such as global warming . For instance, how are people around the world cleaning up their carbon with sustainable agriculture, or how does an increase in hurricanes expose social inequality ? Anthropologists are also increasingly looking at technology : How are cellphones , social media , and artificial intelligence affecting people’s lives?

Many anthropologists today also look at the ways historically unjust systems of power have influenced how people live now. This ranges from the treatment of incarcerated deaf people to anti-Blackness in Cuba and in Brazil to anti-Asian bias in the U.S. Cultural anthropologists often focus on how people can work to dismantle unjust systems. In recent years, many anthropologists have also turned their focus on the COVID-19 pandemic —looking at changes across many aspects of life, from educational systems , to death rituals , to collegiate sports .

Anthropologists, like other scholars, share these research insights through writing books and articles, teaching , and giving public lectures. They also engage in other pursuits to share knowledge, like public-facing podcasts or ethnographic fiction , often alongside other collaborators , including their interlocutors. In many cases, the products of anthropology that were once largely anthropologists talking and writing about their subjects of study are beginning to resemble collaborative projects with interlocutors .

WHAT JOBS CAN YOU GET WITH A CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY DEGREE?

You might immediately think that a degree in cultural anthropology can only lead to a career as an anthropology professor. These jobs do exist (though they are increasingly hard to come by ), but most anthropologists work in an “applied anthropology” position . That is, they use the theory and training of anthropology to aid in other fields such as humanitarianism and international development , journalism , public health , and cultural heritage . These applied anthropologists can work for corporations, governments, or nonprofits and nongovernmental organizations.

Not all cultural anthropology undergraduate majors go on to become professional anthropologists, of course. But training in cultural anthropology fosters skills such as critical, ethical, and relativistic thinking; the ability to collaborate; and excellent written and verbal communication that are essential to many occupations.

Employers tend to value anthropology majors because they “get” people. They often hire anthropology majors for positions in advertising, marketing, human resources, user experience, or research design—jobs that depend on insight into human behaviors. This is especially prevalent now, when businesses are increasingly looking to foster inclusivity and diversity in the workplace. In fact, for anthropologists, the employment rate is projected to increase by 6 percent between 2021 and 2031.

IS CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY USEFUL?

Humans live an ever-changing and precarious existence. We have questions—about the world, one another, and ourselves. Cultural anthropology seeks answers to those very questions. And in that way, yes, it is extremely useful.

Cultural anthropology shows us why the idea of “pristine wilderness” is a myth and illustrates the danger of bans on gun violence research . It explores sovereignty on Mars , reveals the links between oracles and digital algorithms , and imagines post-coal futures . It even seriously considers whether people in the Western philosophical tradition are wrong about almost every single thing they think they know!

If that last prospect terrifies you, maybe cultural anthropology is not for you. If you find it exciting, welcome.

Devin Proctor is a cultural anthropologist who specializes in digital anthropology, studying identity and group construction in online spaces . He earned his Ph.D. from George Washington University and works as an assistant professor of anthropology at Elon University. Proctor is currently working on projects that address the process of radicalization into online white power extremism and those that trace misinformation and memorialization during the COVID-19 pandemic.

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