Cultural Relativism and the Other

The question of cultural relativity was central to last week’s class discussion. The essential question was: can there be two systems without one being wrong and the other right? One advanced and the other primitive? The idea of cultural relativism is in and of itself tricky. It is the principle that an individual’s beliefs and activities should be understood in terms of his or her own culture. The implication behind the premise is that every behavior can be rationally explained, since each culture has different logical imperatives. On a basic level it is an acknowledgement that everyone is not the same and just because there are differences it does not mean they should be subjected to a moral hierarchy. It is like Thoreau wrote, “if a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.”

The reason I write that cultural relativism is a tricky concept is because of what happens when two cultures interact with one another. When two individuals form different cultural backgrounds come into contact with one another, as Emilio and Supaari did, two different realities also come into contact with one another. Both realities have norms, and since a norm always claims itself as the highest authority, the two norms find themselves in a battle over the moral high ground. Essentially, Emilio and our human European cultural framework dictates that rape is evil, pushing Supaari and the Jana’ata’s reality necessarily lower on the moral totem pole than our own. In our mind, Emilio’ framework is morally correct while the Jana’ata’s is mislead and downright immoral.

The clash can be seen in our own human history. Anthony Pagden in the foreword to The Conquest of America writes the European-Native American encounter was “an encounter between two ways of interpreting the world, between two systems of signs.”

I wonder what should be done about this fight for moral supremacy. Atrocities have been committed under both the European and Jana’ata’s cultural frameworks. Can we justify our actions through our beliefs and cultural logic, as is perhaps implied by the concept of cultural relativism? Or should our beliefs and logic conform to whatever the moral standard of the time or place may be? Should we do as the Jana'ata when in Rakhat?