A Defence Of Cultural Relativism.

The chances are that you have heard something about the concept of 'cultural relativism'. The idea that beliefs and practices are best understood in their own cultural context. It seems simple enough, no? Unfortunately it has fallen victim to misrepresentation. Some would have you believe that 'cultural relativism' is guilty of endorsing the most atrocious of evils. A common enough example being the holocaust. The holocaust we are told was a cultural practice. Which, I would note, is a fair enough observation to make. Next we are told that as a cultural practice it should be understood it it's own context. Again, this is not an assertion I find terribly opposable. The problem comes however when the follow up statement is made that because of the first two points we are incapable of casting condemnation on it. Wait what? Somewhere along the way it would seem that the importance of understanding beliefs and behaviours in their cultural context got confused for a policy of anything goes. It should be remembered that cultural relativism came about in response to, and as a critique of, two prevailing schools of the nineteenth century. Therefore it is of merit to, very briefly, look at these schools starting with nineteenth century evolutionism.

Nineteenth century evolutionism sought 'the' evolutionary history of civilization. For it was assumed knowledge that through the shared human condition, or as some reasoned 'psychic unity, natural laws would act upon people around the world in the same manner. The result of this would be all societies progressing down the same evolutionary path, albeit at different rates. Thus societies perceived as being more 'primitive' were understood to be at earlier stages of the evolutionary process. What luck! Here we found ourselves with 'living fossils' through which we could track our past. Cultural traits and beliefs were collected en masse from wherever they could be found, mostly travellers and missionaries notes. Such vast collections of cultural traits were then arranged to chart the development of civilization. Sir James Frazer's, The Golden Bough is a famous example of this being applied to religion. Diffusionists however took objection to the treatment of societies as isolated, independent units.

Diffusionism argued that far from each culture independently plodding along down the same path due to some 'psychic unity' or unconvincingly reasoned natural laws, cultural traits were distributed via diffusion. This view rested on the assumption that throughout history various differing locations served the role of 'cultural centers'. That is, specific cultural 'progression' could be attributed to particular locations at a particular point in history. Two examples would be the invention of the wheel and the use of horses for transportation. What this meant was that important 'progress' would be attained at a cultural center then through the process of diffusion, the cultural trait would spread out to other cultures. This led to a similar approach insofar as the acquisition of data was concerned. Diffusionists would collect cultural traits from numerous cultures but this time they would compare them to find degrees of separation and in the context of geographical distribution. They could then chart this data to not only identify cultural areas, but also to speculate as to where the cultural centers were. So it was against this two schools that cultural relativism served as a critique.

A common charge which was levied against both schools spoke to the nature of the data they were dealing with. That is, by concerning themselves, to a large degree, with cultural traits they were mystifying the results. Cultural traits, it was argued, could not be scooped up into a pile quite removed from their respective cultural contexts. Rather, they needed to be understood from within their cultural context. This was demonstrated in the critique of the universal evolutionary path proposed by Nineteenth Century Evolutionists. The evidence for their unilineal model was never particularly sound and was more a reflection of the source material they were dealing with. Indeed their theories were the result of fitting such data into their speculative models. Far from following some universal path due to some 'psychic unity', cultures followed their own unique paths. Through their diverse environments, they came with differing solutions. These differing solutions then framed their future obstacles and points of reference when it came to solving them. As Diffusionists identified, one important source of historical influence was to be found in cultural contact. While the significance of such contact should not be denied, Diffusionists unfortunately overplayed their hand in two key areas. Firstly it should be noted that similarity does not equate to a shared origin. Franz Boas demonstrated this point in regards to masks. It is well within the bounds of reason that cultural traits, especially material ones, could coincidentally end up having features similar. Thus it is not enough to simply observe similarity then speculate from there. Rather as reconstructionists laboured to do, one must prove to a reliable level that such a contact did occur between the cultures, directly or indirectly, which provided a compelling window for diffusion to occur. The second point of weakness is that knowledge of a cultural traits diffusion does not equate to an understanding of the cultural trait. Cultures do not blindly take cultural traits without modifying them. Rather as Ruth Benedict identified in Patterns of Culture, in adopting cultural traits through contact they often get reinterpreted and understood.

Thus to understand a cultural trait we need to understand it relative to it's cultural context. Now let's finish by briefly looking back at the bogeyman often employed to dismantle cultural relativism, namely the Holocaust. Various areas that could be explored would include a history of the region. We could look at the historical positions and prestige/stigma attached to the groups who found themselves victim. Concepts such as 'race science' and the various theories held by the NAZI regime could be explored. This is mostly certainly just the tip of the iceberg. As I have however identified, striving to apply the concept of cultural relativism to our understandings does not equate to accepting everything!