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Cultural relativism is the view that concepts and moral values must be understood in their own cultural context and not judged according to the standards of a different culture. [1] [2] It asserts the equal validity of all points of view and the relative nature of truth, which is determined by an individual or their culture. [3]
This method advocates living with people of another culture for an extended period of time to learn the local language and be enculturated, at least partially, into that culture. In this context, cultural relativism is of fundamental methodological importance, because it calls attention to the importance of the local context in understanding ...
Cultural relativism as a methodological tool while conducting fieldwork, and as a heuristic tool while analyzing data. Boas argued that in order to understand "what is"—in cultural anthropology, the specific cultural traits (behaviors, beliefs, and symbols)—one had to examine them in their local context.
Another important aspect of Boasian anthropology was its perspective of cultural relativism which assumes that a culture can only be understood by first understanding its own standards and values, rather than assuming that the values and standards of the anthropologist's society, can be used to judge other cultures. In this way Boasian ...
The "emic" approach is an insider's perspective, which looks at the beliefs, values, and practices of a particular culture from the perspective of the people who live within that culture. This approach aims to understand the cultural meaning and significance of a particular behavior or practice, as it is understood by the people who engage in ...
Alethic relativism (also factual relativism) is the doctrine that there are no absolute truths, i.e., that truth is always relative to some particular frame of reference, such as a language or a culture (cultural relativism), while linguistic relativism asserts that a language's structures influence a speaker's perceptions.
Relativism concerning morals is known as moral relativism, a philosophical stance opposed to the existence of universal moral values. The claim for universal values can be understood in two different ways. First, it could be that something has a universal value when everybody finds it valuable. This was Isaiah Berlin's understanding of the term ...
He began with the mainstream understanding of culture as the product of human cognitive activity, and the Boasian emphasis on the subjective meanings of objects as dependent on their cultural context. He defined culture as "a mental phenomenon, consisting of the contents of minds, not of material objects or observable behavior."