Cultural relativism facts for kids

Cultural relativism is a way of understanding different cultures. It means we should not judge other cultures based on our own rules or beliefs. Instead, we should try to understand their values and ideas from their own point of view. It's like saying, 'What's normal for them might be different from what's normal for us, and that's okay!' People who support cultural relativism believe that the rules and values of one culture should not be judged using the rules and values of another.

Understanding Different Cultures

Franz Boas, an important anthropologist, noticed something interesting. People who study other cultures often judge them based on their own culture's ideas. This is called ethnocentrism. It means thinking your own culture is the best or most normal. Someone can be ethnocentric without even realizing it.

Boas showed how different cultures hear sounds in different ways. When people from one culture try to understand the language of another, they might misunderstand sounds. For example, Boas studied texts from Eskimo and British Columbia groups. He found many misspellings. This happened because people from other cultures had different ways of hearing and writing sounds. Their own language system influenced how they heard new sounds.

To help reduce ethnocentrism, Boas suggested a method. He thought that anthropologists should live with the people they are studying for a long time. By doing this, they could learn the culture and language much better. This would help them avoid misunderstanding sounds and words from that culture.

Learning About Ways of Life

Ruth Benedict was one of Franz Boas's students. She was also an anthropologist. She studied the beliefs and practices within a culture's social system. She noticed that these ideas and practices often mixed together in unique ways.

Benedict believed that everyone should learn about all the different ways people live. How people show emotions, do their daily routines, or perform normal tasks changes from one culture to another. By studying these cultures, Benedict thought people could understand that there are many different ways to live. They would see that their own way of living is not the only way.

What is Right and Wrong?

Ruth Benedict also observed something about what people think is right or wrong. She found that an individual's view of right and wrong depends on their own culture. People learn what is right and wrong from the social rules and values of their culture. These rules then help them form their own system of morals, which guides how they live.

Benedict believed that no one person's morals were necessarily better or worse than another's. She thought it all depended on the society they lived in. What is considered good in one place might be seen differently in another.

A Tool for Thinking

Two other anthropologists, George Marcus and Michael Fisher, explained cultural relativism in another way. They described it as a "critical device." This means it's a tool used for analyzing and studying other cultures. It also helps us to look at our own culture and think about it more deeply. It encourages us to question our own assumptions.

Different Kinds of Relativism

Richard Feinberg, another anthropologist, identified three types of cultural relativism:

• Contextual relativism: This means that the beliefs and practices of a community must be understood within that specific culture. Symbols and meanings can be different in various cultures. For example, a practice that looks similar in two cultures might mean something completely different in each one. Franz Boas also pointed this out in his work.
• Ethical relativism: This idea suggests that cultures do not have "good" or "bad" practices and beliefs in a universal sense. So, people should not judge them as such. Ruth Benedict also explained this idea.
• Epistemological relativism: This view suggests that it's very hard, or even impossible, to truly understand another culture in a deep and meaningful way. This idea is similar to Boas's concept of 'historical anthropology,' which is now called historical particularism.

See also

In Spanish: Relativismo cultural para niños