Cultural relativism

Cultural relativism is an anthropological approach to the consideration of different cultures. It represents a counter concept to ethnocentrism. It is based on the idea that the ways of thinking and actions of a person or a group can only be understood from an internal perspective. Accordingly, each culture follows its own laws, which are to be evaluated independently of each other, whereby sweeping, overarching generalizations are not useful in the consideration. According to the cultural relativist view, one culture should not be described and evaluated on the basis of another culture. Thus cultural relativism is also an antithesis of universalism.

Within the framework of value relativism, cultural relativism - unlike universalist positions - assumes that there is no universally valid ethics or sociological theory that applies to all people and situations. This culturally relativistic position - when taken to an extreme - is criticized because it could legitimize extremist and anti-human actions.

General

Cultural relativism attempts to avoid ethnocentrism, which views one's own culture as authoritative and classifies and judges all other cultures in terms of one's own worldview. It arose as a reaction to the naturalistic thinking of the 19th century. Cultural relativism emphasizes a pluralism of cultures and postulates that cultures could not be compared or judged from another culture's point of view. Certain cultural forms of behaviour would always have to be seen in the light of the associated social, value system and cultural understanding. Thus, a value-free and prejudice-free intercultural exchange should take place. Accordingly, cultural phenomena can only be understood, judged and considered in their own context (emic view). Different cultural patterns of thought and behaviour are to be considered just as plausible and reasonable as one's own from their respective perspective.

According to Melford Spiro, three types of cultural relativism can be distinguished: descriptive, normative and epistemological.

Important representatives of cultural relativism are Franz Boas, Ruth Benedict, Margaret Mead, Ray Birdwhistell and Clifford Geertz. Franz Boas, who made cultural relativism the central premise of cultural studies research, assigns Spiro to the descriptive form.

Cultural relativist reasoning

The treatment of concepts such as "human rights" and "market economy" shows that they can be introduced into non-Western cultural areas without being rejected, but that they can then be interpreted in a culturally relativistic way so that their normative content confirms the values of the local culture:

Semantic

The existence of human rights is acknowledged, but as a sign the term "human rights" is directed to different designates: In the "West", for example, to the right of an individual to sue for his right; in China, for example, to the right of the masses not to have their stability threatened by an individual's claim to rights.

Pragmatic

The relationship of the sign "human rights" to the interpreter is used for differentiation. This enables Chinese rulers, for example, after years of rejecting "human rights", to now claim human rights themselves, but "with a Chinese twist" ("Zhongguo tese de").

Syntactic

The example from pragmatics is also at the same time an example of the control of the relation between signs by repeated syntactic linking of signs. It is observed here that the character pointing to the designate very often occurs together with a particular character serving as its attribute. Thus, even the character "market economy" in modern Chinese very often occurs with the character "with Chinese character", with the purpose of programming its pragmatic relationship. This relation consists in the meaning of the sign for its interpreter, which is here influenced by syntactic means.

What is interesting about the - often unconscious - use of semiotics to construct a culturally relativistic argument is especially when it is used effectively in discussions between representatives from different "cultural circles", thereby pointing to commonalities in people's culture of discussion.