Cultural Relativism Essay

A general history of Native Americans has been a part of my education for as long as I can remember. I remember how during the week before Thanksgiving, my 1st grade class did a skit about the “First Thanksgiving”. In order to look like Indians we made vests out of paper grocery bags and crumpled them up to look like leather and drew on them with crayons. When I think of my education of Native American culture, I think of going to North Pacific Reservations and seeing 10-12 ft tall totem poles with the shapes of animals carved into them. Most of the Native American tribes that I have learned about have been Western United States tribes because I grew up in California. When I read the list of Wisconsin Native

In today’s society, the Native American culture is found only in reservations and is not well known. Portrayed as

In “The Challenge of Cultural Relativism”, James Rachels presents six claims that have been made by cultural relativists. One of the six claims that Rachels presents in section 2.2 of the article is that different societies have different moral codes. I believe that Rachels thinks this claim is true. Section 2.1 of the article does a good job at explaining this idea. In this section, Rachels gives several examples of the differences that can be found in moral codes of different people groups throughout time. One of the specific examples he mentions is the different burial rituals of the Greeks and the Callatians. The Greeks perform a ritual that includes burning the dead. The Callatian ritual consists of eating the dead. The Greeks and Callatians, while encountering each other, both stated that the other’s ritual was inhumane. This disagreement, according to Cultural Relativism, is okay and to be expected because the two moral codes come from two drastically different societies. A modern example of this claim is that up until recently in China, small feet were praised and larger feet were frowned upon for women. Radical efforts to prevent women’s feet from growing included foot-binding. This method of prevention caused women to constantly be in pain. Women’s foot size in the United States isn’t emphasized like the way it used to be in China. Therefore, citizens of the United States believe that Chinese foot-binding was a barbaric method, while people in China would think

For most of my life, the word “Native American” had immediately made me think of feathers, powwows, and a society uncorrupted by civilization. However, in watching the movie Smoke Signals, a movie that depicts the modern Native American culture, I learned many other things. For one, I learned that many of the customs that modern Native Americans have are very similar to my own. I also saw that the family life of the Native Americans in the film had many of the same problems that my family had undergone in the past years. This film was unlike any that I have ever seen; therefore, it reached me on a very personal level.

The American Indian looks at land, culture, and history very important to their identity for many reasons. Native Americans look at events such as fishing, hunting, and harvesting as spirited recurrent ceremonies that are crucial for cultural endurance and the preservation of family, peoplehood, and tribal bonds. An example as stated in the class reading, Peoplehood, that stood out to me is how when Native Americans bury their dead, shrines are often erected and certain parts of the immediate environment-plants, water, earth, animal parts-are often utilized in religious ceremonies. Another example from the reading is how their homelands are considered as holy lands, and even when tribes migrate or are removed from their original territories

Today my classmates and I took a trip to the Cherokee Reservation about an hour away from Warren Wilson college’s campus. It was most certainly worth the drive, for I have never been to a reservation before and was highly looking forward to learning about a culture, that honestly, I did not, and still do not, know enough about. In my public school education, from what I remember, my exposure to Native American studies in elementary school was primarily during Thanksgiving time, with storybooks and cartoons on bulletin boards of the Native Americans so graciously welcoming the pilgrims. As I got older, lesson plans became slightly more honest, explaining how we forced them out of their homes, treated them unfairly and discriminated against them,

Cultural relativism is the theory where there is no objective truth in morality, and moral truths are determined by different cultures. The primary argument used to justify cultural relativism is the cultural differences argument, which claims different cultures have different moral practices and beliefs, therefore, there is no objective truth in morality (Newton). After reading James Rachels The Challenge of Cultural Relativism, I find his criticisms to be persuasive because the argument made for Cultural Relativism is not sound from a logical point of view. You cannot draw a conclusion about what is factual based on what people believe is factual. Rachels also points out that even though cultures do in fact disagree about moral values,

The targeting of the citizen who is being pulled over within the United States raises an ethical question concerning racial profiling. Racial profiling, the act of judging a person based on their ethnicity, is illegal, however, “Empirical evidence confirms the existence of racial profiling on America's roadways.” (“The Leadership Conference,” n.d.) Racial profiling has been highly documented and monitored, but this too will take massive reform to overcome.

Cultural relativism can be defined as the principle of analyzing a culture from the viewpoint of the culture itself; your own culture can’t interfere in the process of analysis. In this paper, I will analyze how one’s partiality can affect his judgment of a culture, more specifically, a fictional one. Reading a fantasy book makes, in some aspects, one to do an anthropological study. You need to understand the social mechanisms of the new world you are exploring, how people think, which species exist in the world and all possible information that the book gives you, therefore, being biased in your analysis means to probably have the wrong conclusions about the social phenomena of the book. Moreover, a lot of science fiction and fantasy books have criticism and parodies about our society; some authors are more direct than others when showing the problems of our society - as we observe in Brave New

Cultural relativism is the way society separates right from wrong within a culture. What we describe as “good” and “bad” is based off of our cultural beliefs. Cultural relativism argues that no culture is better than any other and all their beliefs are equally valid. The way that modern society is has made it possible for almost everything to be justified.

Ethnocentrism is the idea that ones own cultural is the standard of living and all other cultures are susceptible to be compared to that way of life, Cultural relativism on the other hand is understanding that different cultures in different environments survive differently. I just recently witnessed someone exhibit their ethnocentric ideas when my father visited and we went hiking in sedona. Having grown up in Hawaii neither of us hardly ever wore shirts, going straight from the beach to a grocery store in nothing but surf shorts was never a problem or anything out of the ordinary. So naturally while out on a hike in the hot sun we took our shirts off and went on our way, as we progressed the trail I felt like everyone was looking at us and I couldn't figure out why. We passed multiple groups giving us weird looks but I didn't think anything of it, it wasn't until we stopped by a convenience store where the clerks scowl made me realize that "No shirt, no shoes, no service" is actually a thing here. Thankfully she still let us buy our things and leave, but it was interesting to see someones expression and demeanor change simply due to a couple men not wearing shirts, it's not like we're covered in tattoo's or provide anything to profile us as problematic. I can see how some might say not wearing a shirt isn't a cultural thing but considering how widely accepted and popular it is amongst locals i'd say it's a characteristic. Cultural relativism is a much better outlook to

Cultural relativism is the way society separates right from wrong within a culture. What we describe as “good” and “bad” is based off of our cultural beliefs. No culture is better than any other and all their beliefs are equally valid. The way that modern society is has made it possible for almost everything to be justified.

When it comes to a base principle for my personal moral system, I would be inclined to fall forth in the relativism category. As humans were are taught a basic or general system for which we should follow in order to blend within society. In doing so, humans have set forth laws to which each person within a governed area should adhere too. As a child understanding certain laws was quite difficult, but more difficult to comprehend was the actions of others. After years of experience within a society that says one thing and does another, I have come to realize that it is difficult to stick to absolutes. Since relativism seems to work well for others, why not give it a try? The luxury of relativism is and will continue to be the ever changing

Cultural Relativism is defined as, “The principle that an individual 's beliefs and activities should be understood by others in terms of that individual 's own culture”. Wilson talked about this term extensively in his class and he noticed a common trend within his classroom. The trend was that his students warned him, “Not to be 'judgmental ' or to 'impose your values on other people.”(Soccio 2007). This is a common trend found with a lot of people in my opinion. In fact, I have the same belief as many of Wilson’s students. Cultural relativism is important for many reasons. First, having a sense of cultural relativism provides people with a form of tolerance towards other cultures. Second, it helps people understand acts or actions

If we look at the world today, there are millions of cultures centered everywhere. With this much cultures in the world, everyone is bound to believe that they’re all different. Even though they are different in some aspects, all of them are similar to each other in some way. So if this is the case, do we as human beings have the right to judge these cultures as ethically wrong or just a cultural difference? Cultural Relativism is the belief that we cannot judge the cultural practices of other societies and that we should let them do as they please. But if we cannot judge them, does it make it right when they threaten the lives of others? Through the book Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, we begin to have a deeper insight this idea of