Cultural Relativism Definition

Cultural relativism views what is acceptable or wrong is determined by a group of people. Human beings live and exist in groups which are called cultures. These cultures determine standards that are considered as normal behaviour. Each one of us are born into a culture it maybe a religion, ethnic background, language and so forth. In these cultures, we get values which create norms of which we must uphold. What is right or wrong is so because of a society or culture at a time therefore morality does not exist outside the society or group.
Cultural relativism forces us to confirm to the norms of the society, we are not given the freedom to think for ourselves. The minority view is wrong and the majority view is right. Cultural relativism claims that if something is accepted by the society therefore it means it is good. “Cultural Relativism is a theory in that it questions the status of ethical theories as opposed to simply human behaviour” (Warburton 1995 p.57). It exists in the sense of describing both relativity in ethics between individuals as well between societies”. http://www.brentonpriestley.com/writing/relativism.htm (Brentonpriestley, 2001) “The central tenet of Cultural relativism, that morality is relative to the society in which it exists, is deeply flawed, and reveals a major …show more content…
No, we cannot do things according to feelings, people have different feelings daily. We will not be able to distinguish what is acceptable or not in a classroom environment because everyone does what they feel. It will be difficult for teachers to get basis for their teaching values since learners and the teacher have their own emotions, passions and feelings. There won’t be any standard to reinforce what is wrong or right for example if learners feel like smoking during the lesson they are right according to this theory which means learners are permitted to do things whether their wrong or right as long as they feel like doing