Cultural Relativism — 2019 Paper I

Approach

• Demand of Question: Explain cultural relativism as a foundational anthropological principle and indicate its significance.
• Structuring the Response: Define it through Boas and Herskovits, contrast it with ethnocentrism, and briefly discuss its limitations.
• Key Dimensions to Cover: Franz Boas, Herskovits, historical particularism, ethnocentrism, emic perspective and critical relativism.

Model Answer

Introduction: Cultural relativism is the principle that beliefs and practices should be understood within their own cultural context rather than judged exclusively by the standards of another culture.

Boasian foundation: Franz Boas challenged nineteenth-century evolutionary rankings and argued that each culture develops through its own particular historical circumstances.

Thus:

Cultural practice → Cultural context → Indigenous meaning

Against ethnocentrism: Cultural relativism rejects the assumption that one society’s values constitute a universal standard for judging all others. It encourages anthropologists to understand:

• local beliefs;
• values;
• institutions;
• ecological conditions;
• historical experiences.

Melville Herskovits strongly emphasized that cultural values acquire meaning within the society in which they operate.

Anthropological importance: It contributed to:

1. reduction of ethnocentric bias;
2. respect for cultural diversity;
3. attention to emic perspectives;
4. more context-sensitive ethnography.

Limitation: Absolute relativism may make criticism of coercion, violence or severe inequality difficult. Contemporary anthropology therefore often adopts critical cultural relativism—understanding a practice culturally without abandoning concerns of dignity and rights.

Conclusion: Cultural relativism remains fundamental because it replaces ethnocentric judgement with contextual and comparative understanding.