Human is a social animal. He cannot survive without a society. Society gives birth to culture. The ideas, customs, practices, beliefs of a society forms it’s culture. This culture incorporates with the lives of the people belonging to a society. Cultural transmission starts from right when we are born and continues till we live. Our culture is given to us as our legacy which must be practiced and preserved. Therefore it is a given that different societies have different culture and cultural practices, some more different than others.
Generally, it has been seen that there is this notion among people that our culture is superior or that a particular culture is inferior to our culture. An “Us vs them” mentality is created which leads to perception bias in our favour. This leads to cultural misinterpretations and generalisations about other cultures. Sometimes these beliefs are so strong that they take forms of prejudices, disparity, bullying, intolerance, wars, genocide etc.
A well-known instance of this is the Nazi Germany and the holocaust of Jews.
It’s not our differences that divide us, but our own inability to accept those differences.
This is where ‘Cultural Relativism’ comes into light. Cultural relativism refers to the ability of a person to understand a culture on it’s own terms and not being judgemental towards it. It simply means that we should try to understand cultural practices of other groups in their own cultural context. This term was first used philosopher Alain Locke. It lays emphasis on the fact that people from different cultures can have relationships with respect and acknowledgement of each other’s diverse lives.
The basic goal of cultural relativism is to promote a sense of unity and to demolish the views pertaining to superiority of a particular culture over others. It also argues that there is no particular standard of judging what is good or evil and every decision is individually decided in each society. The bottom-line is that there no right or wrong in an ethical system and it is our own perception which tints our sense of morality.
Cultural relativism has two broad categories, absolute and critical.
The former argues that whatever happens within a culture has nothing to do with outsiders and therefore should not be questioned. The later forms questions about the practices in terms of who is accepting them and why.
We need to understand that there exists absolutely no culture that can be called Perfect. Cultural relativism has it’s flaws of course. Sometimes in the name of culture, we violate Human Rights but inspite of that, it is very important because it gives us objective insight, cross cultural empathy and makes us realise similarity among human cultures. It enables us to leave behind our biased mind sets and to see things in new light. It can also help to put a check on discriminatory practices and prejudiced behaviour which originates as a by-product of cultural misinterpretation. Cultural relativism important in studying and understanding other and different cultures because first and foremost we have to realise that our perception can be prejudiced while we are studying another culture. In a nutshell, cultural relativism is what we need to create a world which is equally hospitable and welcoming for everyone irrespective to their culture.
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