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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.
Historians and social theorists in the 18th and 19th centuries had speculated as to the causes of this differentiation, but Boas dismissed these theories, especially the dominant theories of social evolution and cultural evolution as speculative. He endeavored to establish a discipline that would base its claims on a rigorous empirical study.
Cultural relativism involves specific epistemological and methodological claims. Whether or not these claims require a specific ethical stance is a matter of debate. This principle should not be confused with moral relativism. Cultural relativism was in part a response to Western ethnocentrism. Ethnocentrism may take obvious forms, in which one ...
There are a number of theories of social development that describe culture as the factor that determines all of the others. This is distinct from theories of economic determinism such as that of Marx, namely that an individual or class' role in the means of production determines outlook and cultural roles (although some Marxists reject the label "economic determinism" as an accurate ...
Yet another is relativist (cultural relativism), which sees different cultural groups as employing different conceptual schemes that are not necessarily compatible or commensurable, nor more or less in accord with external reality. [121] Another debate considers whether thought is a type of internal speech or is independent of and prior to ...
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 ...
Historical particularism (coined by Marvin Harris in 1968) [1] is widely considered the first American anthropological school of thought.. Closely associated with Franz Boas and the Boasian approach to anthropology, historical particularism rejected the cultural evolutionary model that had dominated anthropology until Boas.
Florian Znaniecki (1882-1958) was a Polish-American philosopher and sociologist. Znaniecki's culturalism was based on philosophies and theories of Matthew Arnold (Culture and Anarchy), Friedrich Nietzsche (voluntarism), Henri Bergson (creative evolutionism), Wilhelm Dilthey (philosophy of life), William James, John Dewey and Ferdinand C. Schiller (). [5]