cultural relativism

Syllable breakdown

Dictionary meaning

the methodological and ethical principle in anthropology that a culture's beliefs, practices, and values must be understood within their own cultural context rather than judged according to the standards of another culture, particularly the researcher's own; cultural relativism was advocated by Franz Boas, the founder of American anthropology, as an antidote to the evolutionary hierarchies and ethnocentrism that distorted nineteenth-century anthropology by ranking cultures on a scale from primitive to civilised with European culture at the apex; as a methodological principle cultural relativism enables more accurate and respectful ethnographic description by requiring researchers to understand practices in their own terms before evaluating them; as an ethical principle it becomes more controversial when applied to practices that involve severe harm to individuals, leading to ongoing debate about whether cultural relativism is compatible with universal human rights