Examples Of Cultural Relativism

When observing different cultures, it is suggested to take the anthropological perspective into thought. Rather than being narrow-minded, this perspective encourages anthropologists and others to take in different aspects and points of views when encountering a culture and their values. One aspects of this anthropological perspective is cultural relativism. Cultural relativism suggests that an observer cannot apply ones understanding of one culture to another, rather a culture must be understood and evaluated in relation and relative to itself. By definition, it is “the reaction to the fact of cultural diversity in which one attempts to understand and judge the behavior of another culture in terms of its standards or good, normal, moral, legal, …show more content…
This is seen in movements such as missionary work, strongly with western cultures and their impact on other countries. In Napoleon Chagnon’s documentary , there are scenes were western technologies and tools are being traded with the Yanomamo peoples, in hopes of helping advance their simple methods of completing everyday tasks to more efficient methods that mirrored western practices. Here lies a belief that western culture has it best and is the most efficient at completing certain tasks. Therefore, by providing others with access to efficiency, these other cultures will come closer to the standard bar set by the western culture. Additionally, Charles Marie de la Condamime suggests that the indigenous peoples of the Amazon were like children frozen in their ability to fully develop, and mentioned them having to be made human before being made Christians. However, it is not just people of the west who tend to believe their culture is central. When staying with the Yanomami, some of the people within the community told Napolean Chagnon that they would help him become human again, as if Chagnon was not meeting their standards of being human. In a similar case, the Barasana peoples claimed to be more philosophically in touch with their surroundings, unlike the ‘white people’, by disregarding the idea of time as they believed it came from spirits and demons, and by “see[ing] with their minds” rather than their eyes as westerners do. Prejudice comment such as these raises the idea that most cultures likely believe that the culture they possess is the norm as it is what they know and what they were raised in. In order to put cultural relativism into play, one cannot have this prejudice towards other cultures. One must be willing to expand their mind to new ideas and attempt to be as standard-less as one can possibly