Cultural Relitivism Essay

599 Words3 Pages
Cultural relativism in my opinion is how you look at someone’s culture, beliefs, and rituals although you may not do these same things you can agree to them as being relative or relevant to their own personal and social views. Cultural relativism is important to anthropologist because when they do fieldwork they have to look at cultures with a holistic view and have to see everything done and in their own point of view and relate it to the culture of the society of people doing it. Not to be understood by other people but totally understood by the society doing it so right or wrong is culture specific. There is no standard for morality in today’s society nobody has the right to be judged by their customs. Cultural relativist believe that all cultures are worthy in their own right and are of equal value no one that is not in the society can say whether it is right or wrong for some of the practices done to be wrong. Expression is not wrong or right in terms of cultural expression kind of like Americans and shooting off fireworks in the summer it’s not wrong but in terms of other cultures doing it I don’t think they would do it or even agree with the shooting of fireworks. In the reading we did on Lee he gives up a fat ox to the bushmen that he had been studying for a while and they go on to tell him that the cow was to small and not good enough to eat so lee reacts as if his gift was not good and even questions his self. The bushmens who have a culture of hunting their own food and really don’t take handouts or surplus production because it is against their views misinterpreted the gift. Gifts to us in the America is a good thing and a part of our cultural background to give a gift is like saying thank you or showing respect for something of a good deed. In the reading by Boas the limitation of the comparative method of anthropology talks about how the
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