Cultural relativism | anthropology | Britannica (original) (raw)
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Boas
In Franz Boas: Contribution to anthropology …are the result of environmental, cultural, and historical circumstances. Other anthropologists, frequently called cultural relativists, argue that the evolutionary view is ethnocentric, deriving from a human disposition to characterize groups other than one’s own as inferior, and that all surviving human groups have evolved equally but in different ways. Read More
In communitarianism: Cultural relativism and the global community Because communitarians favour communal formulations of the good, which are necessarily particular to each community, they are vulnerable to the charge of ethical relativism, or to the claim that there is no absolute good but only different goods for… Read More
cultural evolutionism
In anthropology: American cultural anthropology …most notably the concept of cultural relativism, a theory of culture change or acculturation, and an emphasis on the study of symbolic meaning. Perhaps the most important achievement of Boas and his students was the demonstration that there is no necessary connection between culture and “race,” that the capacity for… Read More
development anthropology
In anthropology: Development anthropology …by persons fundamentally wedded to cultural relativism, who argue that anthropologists might describe social change but should never participate in causing it. Increasingly, though, the profession has acknowledged the moral necessity of rejecting those who hold to an inviolability of local culture, even when this position results in poverty, infant… Read More
human culture
In culture: Cultural relativism Increased knowledge led to or facilitated a deeper understanding and, with it, a finer appreciation of cultures quite different from one’s own. When it was understood that universal needs could be served with culturally diverse means, that worship might assume a variety of… Read More
medical anthropology
In anthropology: Medical anthropology …they encouraged a degree of cultural relativism by suggesting ways that programs could acknowledge local customs and use traditional concepts to explain desirable new practices. This approach was illustrated in Health, Culture, and Community (1955), a collection of case studies first presented at the Harvard School of Public Health. The… Read More
