Cultural Relativism - Current Debates

Current Debates

The debates over the Statement on Human Rights, then, was not merely over the validity of cultural relativism, or the question of what makes a right universal. It forced anthropologists to confront the question of whether anthropological research is relevant to non-anthropologists. Although Steward and Barnett seemed to be suggesting that anthropology as such should restrict itself to purely academic affairs, people within and without the academy have continued to debate the ways non-anthropologists have used this principle in public policy concerning ethnic minorities or in international relations (see this interview or this article on cultural relativism and human rights for examples of this debate).

Political scientist Alison Dundes Renteln has recently argued that most debates over moral relativism misunderstand the importance of cultural relativism. Most philosophers understand the Benedictine-Herskovitz formulation of cultural relativism to mean

what is right or good for one individual or society is not right or good for another, even if the situations are similar, meaning not merely that what is thought right or good by one is not thought right or good by another ... but that what is really right or good in one case is not so in another.

Although this formulation clearly echoes the kinds of example anthropologists used in elaborating cultural relativism, Renteln believes that it misses the spirit of the principle. Accordingly, she supports a different formulation: "there are or can be no value judgements that are true, that is, objectively justifiable, independent of specific cultures".

Renteln faults philosophers for disregarding the heuristic and critical functions of cultural relativism. Her main argument is that in order to understand the principle of cultural relativism, one must recognize the extent to which it is based on enculturation: "the idea that people unconsciously acquire the categories and standards of their culture." This observation, which echoes the arguments about culture that originally led Boas to develop the principle, suggests that the use of cultural relativism in debates of rights and morals is not substantive but procedural. That is, it does not require a relativist to sacrifice his or her values. But it does require anyone engaged in a consideration of rights and morals to reflect on how their own enculturation has shaped their views:

There is no reason why the relativist should be paralyzed, as critics have often asserted. But a relativist will acknowledge that the criticism is based on his own ethnocentric standards and realizes also that the condemnation may be a form of cultural imperialism.

Renteln thus bridges the gap between the anthropologist as scientist (whom Steward and Barnett felt had nothing to offer debates on rights and morality) and as private individual (who has every right to make value judgements). The individual keeps this right, but the scientist requires that the individual acknowledge that these judgements are neither self-evident universals, nor entirely personal (and idiosyncratic), but rather took form in relation to the individual's own culture.