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tend to be in the domain of claims of self evidence made on behalf of a people the critical function was indeed one of the ends to which benedict hoped her own work would meet the most famous use of cultural relativism as a means of cultural critique is margaret mead s research of adolescent female sexuality in samoa by contrasting the ease and freedom enjoyed by samoan teenagers mead called into question claims that the stress and rebelliousness that characterize american adolescence is natural and inevitable as marcus and fischer point out however this use of relativism can be sustained only if there is ethnographic research in the united states comparable to the research conducted in samoa although every decade has witnessed anthropologists conducting research in the united states the very principles of relativism have led most anthropologists to conduct research in foreign countries comparison to moral relativism edit according to marcus and fischer when the principle of cultural relativism was popularized after world war ii it came to be understood more as a doctrine or position the principle of cultural relativity does not mean that because the members of some savage tribe are allowed to behave in a certain way that this fact gives intellectual warrant for such behavior in all groups cultural relativity means on the contrary that the appropriateness of any positive or negative custom must be evaluated with regard to how this habit fits with other group habits while breeding a healthy scepticism as to the eternity of any value prized by a particular people anthropology does not as a matter of theory deny the existence of moral absolutes rather the use of the comparative method provides a scientific means of discovering such absolutes if all surviving societies have found it necessary to impose some of the same restrictions upon the behavior of their members this makes a strong argument that these aspects of the moral code are indispensable 18 19 although kluckhohn was using language that was popular at the time e g savage tribe but which is now considered antiquated and coarse by most anthropologists his point was that although moral standards are rooted in one s culture anthropological research reveals that the fact that people have moral standards is a universal he was especially interested in deriving specific moral standards that are universal although few if any anthropologists think that he was successful 18 there is an ambiguity in kluckhohn s formulation that would haunt anthropologists in the years to come it makes it clear that one s moral standards make sense in terms of one s culture he waffles however on whether the moral standards of one society could be applied to another four years later american anthropologists had to confront this issue head on vertical and horizontal relativism edit it was james lawrence wray miller who provided an additional clarification tool or caveat of the theoretical underpinnings of cultural relativism by dividing it into two binary analytical continuums vertical and horizontal cultural relativism ultimately these two analytical continuums share the same basic conclusion that human morality and ethics are not static but fluid and vary across cultures depending on the time period and current condition of any particular culture vertical relativism describes that cultures throughout history vertical i e passage through past and future are products of the prevailing societal norms and conditions of their respective historical periods therefore any moral or ethical judgments made during the present regarding past cultures belief systems or societal practices must be firmly grounded and informed by these norms and conditions to be intellectually useful vertical relativism also accounts for the possibility that cultural values and norms will necessarily change as influencing norms and conditions change in the future horizontal relativism describes that cultures in the present horizontal in time i e the present period of the culture are products of the prevailing norms and conditions developed as a result of their unique geographies histories and environmental influences therefore moral or ethical judgments made during the present regarding a current culture s belief system or societal practices must account for these unique differences to be intellectually useful statement on human rights edit the transformation of cultural relativism as a heuristic tool into the doctrine of moral relativism occurred in the context of the work of the commission of human rights of the united nations in preparing the universal declaration of human rights 1948 melville j herskovits prepared a draft statement on human rights which executive board of the american anthropological association revised submitted to the commission on human rights and then published the statement begins with a fairly straightforward explanation of the relevance of cultural relativism 20 the problem is thus to formulate a statement of human rights that will do more than phrase respect for the individual as individual it must also take into full account the individual as a member of a social group of which he is part whose sanctioned modes of life shape his behavior and with whose fate his own is thus inextricably bound the bulk of this statement emphasizes concern that the declaration of human rights was being prepared primarily by people from western societies and would express values that far from being universal are really western today the problem is complicated by the fact that the declaration must be of world wide applicability it must embrace and recognize the validity of many different ways of life it will not be convincing to the indonesian the african the chinese if it lies on the same plane as like documents of an earlier period the rights of man in the twentieth century cannot be circumscribed by the standards of any single culture or be dictated by the aspirations of any single people such a document will lead to frustration not realization of the personalities of vast numbers of human beings although this statement could be read as making a procedural point that the commission must involve people of diverse cultures especially cultures that had been or are still under european colonial or imperial domination the document ended by making two substantive claims even where political systems exist that deny citizens the right of participation in their government or seek to conquer weaker peoples underlying cultural values may be called on to bring the peoples of such states to a realization of the consequences of the acts of their governments and thus enforce a brake upon discrimination and conquest worldwide standards of freedom and justice based on the principle that man is free only when he lives as his society defines freedom that his rights are those he recognizes as a member of his society must be basic these claims provoked an immediate response by a number of anthropologists julian steward who as a student of alfred kroeber and robert lowie and as a professor at columbia university was situated firmly in the boasian lineage suggested that the first claim may have been a loophole to exclude germany from the advocated tolerance but that it revealed the fundamental flaw in moral relativism 21 either we tolerate everything and keep hands off or we fight intolerance and conquest political and economic as well as military in all their forms similarly he questioned whether the second principle means that anthropologists approve the social caste system of india the racial caste system of the united states or many other varieties of social discrimination in the world steward and others argued that any attempt to apply the principle of cultural relativism to moral problems would only end in contradiction either a principle that seems to stand for tolerance ends up being used to excuse intolerance or the principle of tolerance is revealed to be utterly intolerant of any society that seems to lack the arguably western value of tolerance 22 they concluded that anthropologists must stick to science and engage in debates over values only as individuals 22 governmental usage edit several countries have used cultural relativism as a justification for limiting the rights in the universal declaration of human rights despite the world conference on human rights rejecting it as a refutation of human rights violations 23 a 2011 study by international legal expert roger lloret blackburn examining the universal periodic reviews distinguishes several different groups of nations 24 one group consists of nations where the current regime has been installed by revolution and that deny the need for political plurality china vietnam myanmar cuba and iran another group are certain islamic nations that adhere to sharia and certain traditional practices yemen iran saudi arabia pakistan a third possible group is nations that give special rights to specific groups malaysia mexico indonesia and colombia criticism edit cultures differ in values practices and outcomes some prioritize individual liberty others collective harmony some advance scientific inquiry others may suppress it these differences can lead to measurable disparities in things like human rights economic prosperity or technological development the debate over the statement on human rights then was not merely over the validity of cultural relativism or the question of what makes a right universal it forced anthropologists to confront the question of whether anthropological research is relevant to non anthropologists although steward and barnett seemed to be suggesting that anthropology as such should restrict itself to purely academic affairs people within and without the academy have continued to debate the ways non anthropologists have used this principle in public policy concerning ethnic minorities or in international relations political scientist alison dundes renteln has argued that most debates over moral relativism misunderstand the importance of cultural relativism 25 most philosophers understand the benedictine herskovitz formulation of cultural relativism to mean w hat is right or good for one individual or society is not right or good for another even if the situations are similar meaning not merely that what is thought right or good by one is not thought right or good by another but that what is really right or good in one case is not so in another 26 although this formulation clearly echoes the kinds of example anthropologists used in elaborating cultural relativism renteln believes that it misses the spirit of the principle accordingly she supports a different formulation there are or can be no value judgements that are true that is objectively justifiable independent of specific cultures 27 renteln faults philosophers for disregarding the heuristic and critical functions of cultural relativism her main argument is that in order to understand the principle of cultural relativism one must recognize the extent to which it is based on enculturation the idea that people unconsciously acquire the categories and standards of their culture this observation which echoes the arguments about culture that originally led boas to develop the principle suggests that the use of cultural relativism in debates of rights and morals is not substantive but procedural that is it does not require a relativist to sacrifice his or her values but it does require anyone engaged in a consideration of rights and morals to reflect on how their own enculturation has shaped their views there is no reason why the relativist should be paralyzed as critics have often asserted 28 but a relativist will acknowledge that the criticism is based on his own ethnocentric standards and realizes also that the condemnation may be a form of cultural imperialism renteln thus bridges the gap between the anthropologist as scientist whom steward and barnett felt had nothing to offer debates on rights and morality and as private individual who has every right to make value judgements the individual keeps this right but the scientist requires that the individual acknowledge that these judgements are neither self evident universals nor entirely personal and idiosyncratic but rather took form in relation to the individual s own culture post colonial politics edit boas and his students understood anthropology to be a historical or human science in that it involves subjects anthropologists studying other subjects humans and their activities rather than subjects studying objects such as rocks or stars under such conditions it is fairly obvious that scientific research may have political consequences and the boasians saw no conflict between their scientific attempts to understand other cultures and the political implications of critiquing their own culture for anthropologists working in this tradition the doctrine of cultural relativism as a basis for moral relativism was anathema for politicians moralists and many social scientists but few anthropologists who saw science and human interests as necessarily independent or even opposed however the earlier boasian principle of cultural relativism was anathema thus cultural relativism came under attack but from opposing sides and for opposing reasons political critique edit on the one hand many anthropologists began to criticize the way moral relativism in the guise of cultural relativism is used to mask the effects of western colonialism and imperialism thus stanley diamond argued that when the term cultural relativism entered popular culture popular culture co opted anthropology in a way that voided the principle of any critical function relativism is the bad faith of the conqueror who has become secure enough to become a tourist cultural relativism is a purely intellectual attitude it does not inhibit the anthropologist from participating as a professional in his own milieu on the contrary it rationalizes that milieu relativism is self critical only in the abstract nor does it lead to engagement it only converts the anthropologist into a shadowy figure prone to newsworthy and shallow pronouncements about the cosmic condition of the human race it has the effect of mystifying the profession so that the very term anthropologist student of man commands the attention of an increasingly popular audience in search of novelty but the search for self knowledge which montaigne was the first to link to the annihilation of prejudice is reduced to the experience of culture shock a phrase used by both anthropologists and the state department to account for the disorientation that usually follows an encounter with an alien way of life but culture shock is a condition one recovers from it is not experienced as an authentic redefinition of the personality but as a testing of its tolerance the tendency of relativism which it never quite achieves is to detach the anthropologist from ...