Cultural Relativism

How are we to make sense of the diversity of beliefs and ethical values documented by anthropology's ethnographic record? Cultural relativism infers from this record that significant dimensions of human experience, including morality and ethics, are inherently local and variable rather than universal. Most relativists (with the exception of developmental relativists discussed below) interpret and evaluate such diverse beliefs and practices in relation to local cultural frameworks rather than universal principles.

There are many variations on the theme of cultural relativism. Six important variants are described below:

1. Epistemological relativism, the most general phrasing of cultural relativism, proposes that human experience is mediated by local frameworks for knowledge (Geertz 1973). Most epistemological relativism assumes that experienced reality is largely a social and cultural construction and so this position is often called "social constructionism" (Berger and Luckmann 1966).

2. Logical relativism claims that there are no transcultural and universal principles of rationality, logic and reasoning. This claim was debated in the 1970s in a series of publications featuring debates among English philosophers, anthropologists, and sociologists about the nature and universality of rationality in logical and moral judgment (B. Wilson 1970).

3. Historical relativism views historical eras as a cultural and intellectual history of diverse and changing ideas, paradigms, or worldviews (Burckhardt 1943; Kuhn 1977).

4. Linguistic relativism focuses on the effects of particular grammatical and lexical forms on habitual thinking and classification (Whorf 1956; Lucy 1992).

5. Ethical relativism claims that behavior can be morally evaluated only in relation to a local framework of values and beliefs rather than universal ethical norms (Ladd 1953). Proponents advocate tolerance in ethical judgments to counter the presumed ethnocentricism of universalistic judgments (Herskovitz 1972; Hatch 1983). Opponents claim that extreme ethical relativism is amoral and potentially immoral since it can justify, by an appeal to local or historical context, any action, including acts like genocide that most people would condemn (Vivas 1950; Norris 1996). This debate engages the highly visible discourse on the doctrine of universal human rights, and the extent to which it reflects natural rights rather than the cultural values of a politically dominant community (R. Wilson 1997). Important and emotionally salient issues engaged in this debate include the status of women, abortion, religious tolerance, the treatment of children, arranged marriages, female circumcision, and capital punishment. A common thread linking many of these issues is the status of "the individual" and by implication social equality versus social hierarchy, and cultural relativism can be used to justify relations of inequality (Dumont 1970).

6. Distinct from evolutionary psychologists mentioned above are developmental relativists who ascribe differences in thought or values to different stages of human development, either in terms of evolutionary stages or developmental differences in moral reasoning between individuals. A commonplace assumption of Victorian anthropology, evolutionism still has echoes in the genetic epistemology of developmental psychologists like PIAGET, Kohlberg, and Werner (Piaget 1932; Kohlberg 1981, 1983; Werner 1948/1964). Genetic epistemology acknowledges the cultural diversity and relativity of systems of reasoning and symbolism but links these differences to a universalistic developmental (and, by common implication, evolutionary) trajectory.

Both a philosophical and a moral stance, cultural relativism makes two different sorts of claims: (1) an ontological claim about the nature of human understanding, a claim subject to empirical testing and verification, and (2) a moral/political claim advocating tolerance of divergent cultural styles of thought and action.

Cultural relativism implies a fundamental human psychic diversity. Such diversity need not preclude important universals of thought and feeling. Relativism and universalism are often seen as mutually exclusive. At the relativist end of the spectrum are proponents of CULTURAL PSYCHOLOGY who argue that the very categories and processes by which psychologists understand the person are themselves cultural constructs, and who imply that academic psychology is actually a Western ETHNOPSYCHOLOGY (Shweder 1989). From this perspective comparative or cross-cultural psychology become impossible, inasmuch as the psychology of each community would need to be studied in its own analytical terms. At the universalist end of the spectrum is EVOLUTIONARY PSYCHOLOGY, which looks at human cognitive architecture as having evolved largely during the upper Paleolithic, subject to the general Darwinian forces of natural selection and fitness maximization (Barkow, Cosmides, and Tooby 1992). Local cultural differences are viewed as relatively trivial compared with the shared cognitive abilities that are the products of hominid evolution.

Many cognitive anthropologists see in the relativist/universalist distinction a false dichotomy. An adequate model of mind must encompass both universal and variable properties. Although they acknowledge the importance of a shared basic cognitive architecture and universal process of both information processing and meaning construction, many cognitive anthropologists do not see cultural variation as trivial but stress the crucial mediating roles of diverse social environments and variable cultural models in human cognition (D'Andrade 1987; Holland and Quinn 1987; Hutchins 1996; Shore 1996).

Although cultural relativism has rarely been treated as a problem of cognitive science, COGNITIVE ANTHROPOLOGY is a useful perspective for reframing the issues of cultural relativism. For cognitive anthropologists, a cultural unit comprises a population sharing a large and diverse stock of cultural models, which differ from community to community. Once internalized, cultural models become conventional cognitive models in individual minds. Cultural models thus have a double life as both instituted models (public institutions) and conventional mental models (individuals' mental representations of public forms; Shore 1996). Other kinds of cognitive models include "hard-wired" schemas (like those governing facial recognition) and personal/idiosyncratic mental models that differ from person to person. Thus viewed, culture is not a bounded unit but a dynamic social distribution of instituted and mental models.

When culture is conceived as a socially distributed system of models, the sources of cultural relativity become more complex and subtle but are easier to specify. Rather than draw simple oppositions between distinct cultures, we can specify which models (rather than which cultures) are different and how they differ. Thus the similarity or difference between communities is not an all-or-nothing phenomenon, but is a matter of particular differences or similarities.

In addition, significant conflict or contradiction among cultural models within a community becomes easier to account for, as do conflicts between cultural models and personal models or between cultural models and relatively unmodeled (diffuse/inarticulate) feelings and desires. Such internal conflicts do not argue against the intersubjective sharing of cultural models within a community or the important difference between communities. But they suggest a softening of the oppositions between discrete cultures that has been the hallmark of much of the discourse of cultural relativism.

Many within-culture conflicts suggest existential dilemmas that have no final resolution (e.g., autonomy versus dependency needs, equality and hierarchy; Fiske 1990; Nuckolls 1997). There are models and countermodels, as in political discourse. Cultural models sometimes provide temporary resolutions, serving as salient cognitive and emotional resources for clarifying experience. Sometimes, as in religious ritual, cultural models simply crystallize contradictions, representing them as sacred paradox. Such resolutions are never complete, and never exhaust the experience of individuals. In this way, the relativity between cultures is complemented by a degree of experiential relativity within cultures (variation and conflict) and periodically within individuals (ambivalence).

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-- Bradd Shore

References

Barkow H., L. Cosmides, and J. Tooby, Eds. (1992). The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture. New York: Oxford University Press.

Berger, P., and T. Luckmann. (1966). The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise on the Sociology of Knowledge. Garden City: Doubleday.

Burckhardt, J. (1943). Reflections on History. Trans. M. D. Hottinger. London: G. Allen and Unwin.

D'Andrade, R. (1987). Cultural meaning systems. In R. Shweder and R. LeVine, Eds., Culture Theory: Essays on Mind, Self and Emotion, pp. 88-119. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Dumont, L. (1970). Homo Hierarchicus. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Fiske, A. P. (1990). Relativity within Moose ("Mossi") culture: four incommensurable models for social relationships. Ethos 18(2):180-204.

Geertz, C. (1973). The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books.

Hatch, E. (1983). Culture and Morality: The Relativity of Values in Anthropology. New York: Columbia University Press.

Herskovitz, M. J. (1972). Cultural Relativism: Perspectives in Cultural Pluralism. New York: Random House.

Holland, D., and N. Quinn, Eds. (1987). Cultural Models in Language and Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Hutchins, E. (1996). Cognition in the Wild. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Kohlberg, L. (1981). Essays in Moral Development, vol. 1: The Philosophy of Moral Development. New York: Harper and Row.

Kohlberg, L. (1983). Essays in Moral Development, vol. 2: The Psychology of Moral Development. New York: Harper and Row.

Kuhn, T. (1977). The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. 2nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Ladd, J. (1953). Ethical Relativism. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.

Lakoff, G. (1987). Women, Fire and Dangerous Things. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Lucy, J. (1992). Language Diversity and Thought: A Reformulation of the Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Nuckolls, C. (1997). Culture and the Dialectics of Desire. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.

Piaget, J. (1932). The Development of Moral Reasoning in Children. New York: Free Press.

Shore, B. (1996). Culture in Mind: Cognition, Culture and the Problem of Meaning. New York: Oxford University Press.

Shweder, R. (1989). Cultural psychology: what is it? In J. Stigler, R. Shweder, and G. Herdt, Eds., Cultural Psychology: The Chicago Symposia on Culture and Development. New York: Cambridge University Press, pp. 1-46.

Vivas, E. (1950). The Moral Life and the Ethical Life. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Werner, H. (1948/1964). Comparative Psychology of Mental Development. Rev. ed. New York: International University Press.

Whorf, B. L. (1956). Language, Thought and Reality. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Wilson, B., Ed. (1970). Rationality. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

Wilson, R., Ed. (1997). Human Rights, Cultural Context: Anthropological Perspectives. London and Chicago: Pluto Press.

Cultural Relativism

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