What are your thoughts on cultural relativism?

12 comments

1. It depends.

2. It does make sense within certain limits.

3. I strongly dislike it. There’s a line between sensible tolerance (different diets and foodstuff) and tolerance of reprehensible practices that deserve condemnation (normalized sexual exploitation of children in some societies).

4. I practice the Stanford Model of design thinking for work. In short, as it relates to this subject: definining a problem is contingent on empathizing with the constituency that experiences this problem.

   The simplified way of putting it: the context of the problem is an essential part of solving the problem.

   You dont have to agree with the context of a problem in order to solve it. And in practice, trying to solve problems without empathizing with its context leads to inadequate solutions.

   I’m unsure if I believe in cultural relativism as an absolute idea, but I know from experience that it is a very practical idea.

5. Makes sense to a certain extent but in my mind there’s a line where things are just bad and cultural relativism no longer applies.

   Now, do I have that line because I’ve been culturally socialized to believe that those things are inherently immoral? Probably, yeah. Do I care? No, I still think they are inherently immoral.

6. In aesthetics yes, in ethics no.

7. It makes sense when judging the actions of past people. The reality is that most people are a byproduct of their society.

8. It makes a bit of sense. But it cannot be a hard and fast rule. Rape is a good example. We all think it’s bad, should be punishable. But in “other times” and other cultures it was seen as the norm, so that makes it ok, right? Wrong. Because it has been used as a punishment. It has been used against men, women, and children. It had been used by victors to thoroughly shame and disrespect those they conquered. So we have ALWAYS known it’s wrong. Just because it *was the norm* does not mean it was ever not wrong.

9. It makes sense outside of the extremes…old people not always using the right word for minorities or a culture saying its a womans job to keep house is way different than…the culture thinks child brides are okay or that certain races should be put in camps.

10. It’s an academic model for how to understand cultures, cultural pratices, cultural conflicts, and how to combat our biases when trying to understand them. As with most high-level anthropological and sociological models and theories, I don’t think the ideas necessarily translate to the microlevel nor have any real-life application

11. In a perfect world Cultural Relativism is fine, but then some cultures remove the clitoris of women. Some cultures encourage lying almost all of the time. The Taliban has now issued a proclamation that all women in Afghanistan must wear full burkas when out in public.

    I do not like those cultural components and think they are horrid.

12. As an academic stance it makes perfect sense.

    As a practical one…there are limits.