CULTURAL RELATIVISM

INTRODUCTION
We live in an age of cultural mixing. Easy travel has shrunk the world, communications network has enmeshed it, and global business has united it. Millions are exposed on daily basis to a culture radically different from the one in which they grew up, and they must come to terms with the values of that culture.
Different cultures have different moral codes. What is thought right within one group may be utterly abhorrent to the members of other group, and vice versa. The Callatians (a tribe of Indians) customarily ate the bodies of their dead fathers (Endocannibalism). The Greeks did not do that – they Greeks practiced cremation and regarded the funeral pyre as natural and fitting way to dispose of the dead. Should we eat the bodies of the dead or burn them? Greek will only answer the second leg of the question in the affirmative, and Callatian will only answer the first leg of the question in the affirmative.
The paper will look into this cultural diversity with a view of finding whether there will be a possibility of tolerating each other's culture and see whether the universal human rights serve as a challenge to the cultural relativism, thereafter makes finding/observations, recommendations and conclusion.

CULTURAL RELATIVISM
Cultural relativism is a theory which asserts that there is no absolute truth, be it ethical, moral or cultural and that there no is meaningful way to judge different cultures, because all judgments are ethnocentric. It contends that what is morally permissible is what accords with socially approved customs or standards, while what is morally wrong is what goes against the custom or standards of society. While a particular action is morally acceptable in one culture, the same would be morally wrong in another culture.
The understandings (cultural understandings) are relative to enculturation, the ethnographer must interpret a culture on the basis of its own web of logic rather than through the application of a universal yardstick. This principle applies to everything from language and kinship system to morality and ontology. Cultural relativism is in essence an approach to the question of the nature and role of values in culture. If values are shared, ideals which give rise to beliefs and norms of behavior around which a people or group organizes its collective life and goals, cultural relativism declares that these values are relative to the cultural ambiance out of which they arise.
Because of this many ethicists believe that concept of cultural relativism threatens the discipline of ethics since, if values are relative to a given culture then this must mean that there are no universal moral absolute by which the behavior of people can be judged. Therefore, if there is no observable control transcending all cultures, no eternal book of rules, then right and wrong are a matter of opinion and it doesn't matter what we do. Thus, we can't go around passing judgment on what other people do. For, if all morality is relative, then what moral objection could one make to the Nazi holocaust, South African Xenophobia, to the economic deprivation of a Latin American underclass, or to a militaristic nation's unleashing nuclear devastation on others? And what would be wrong to Female Genital Mutilation, female and male infant circumcision, early marriage, tribal marks on the faces of children, cannibalism, defilement of children, etc.? In a world where no moral court of appeal exists, might make right. The only appeal can be to power.

CULTURAL RELATIVISM WHETHER THE SAME AS ETHICAL RELATIVISM
Cultural relativism has an exclusive cross cultural reference; whereas ethical relativism is essentially intra-cultural in its focus. Cultural relativism raises the question of the validity of applying criteria that sanction the behavior and guide the thinking of one of the people of one society to the standards of another; ethnic relativism raises the question of whether any standards can be drawn to direct individual culture within any one society.
Ethnocentrism has three different levels, namely: a positive one, negative one and extremely negative one. The positive ethnocentrism envisages a situation where the only point of view is that, one's own way of life is to be preferred to all others. There is nothing wrong with such feelings, for it characterizes the way most individual feel about their own cultures, whether or not they verbalized their feelings. It is ethnocentrism that which gives people their sense of people hood, group identity, and place in history – all of which are valuable traits to possess. Ethnocentrism becomes negative when one's own group becomes the centre of everything, and all others are sealed and rated with reference to it. It reaches its extreme negative from when a more powerful group not only imposes its rule on another, but actively depreciates the things they hold to be of value. Apartheid, the holocaust, and the genocide of American Indians are all examples of this third level of ethnocentrism.
Ethnocentrism also implies the failure or refusal to view reality from the perspective of the other, thereby causing one to reject the other's contribution as valid, simply because it differs from one's own. Thus is one reason why ethicists, whose discipline arises out of philosophy (a metaphysical discipline),have difficulty with cultural relativism , which arises out of anthropology and sociology (both empirical disciplines). Each discipline approaches cultural relativism from a different paradigm or way of seeing the world. Thus ethicists approach cultural relativism from the perspective of philosophers and not from the perspective of social scientists. The result is a rejection of the concept, since it doesn't fit within the parameters of their discipline.
But lest one is too quick to judge ethics, one needs to realize that sociology does same with religion. Since God does not fit the parameters of an empirical approach, many social scientists have tended to reject the divine aspect of religion.
CULTURAL RELATIVISM, ETHICS AND SOCIOLOGY
Ethics and sociology used the findings of one discipline to evaluate the findings of another, which is what cultural relativism is seeking to prevent in the first place. Each culture, each society, or each discipline, must be evaluated in terms of its presuppositions, and not those of another. Only through such approach will its contributions be understood.
CULTURAL RELATIVISM AND RELIGION
Cultural relativism, however, raises a problem for itself, in that, as it is true of any discipline, it intends to view reality exclusively from its own narrow perspective. This is what Abraham Kaplan calls, "the law of instrument", which is based on the old adage "if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail". In the law of instrument – the instrument determines the problem as well as the solution. Applied to any field of study, the law of instrument exposes the fallacy of trying to explain reality exclusively from one disciplinary perspective. Thus, as important as the cultural relativist perspective is, it is only one perspective; it is only one way of looking at phenomena.
But the social sciences provide only one perspective of looking at reality – the human perspective. The divine perspective, which lies outside of the realm of the social sciences, is lacking; and yet is most essential in order to comprehend human moral conduct. Therefore, as against the uncritical assumption of cultural relativism that culture is the primary determinant of human experience and that all reality as known is cultural reality. It is important to realize that culture is but a one of the conditions of human experience.
For the religious, divine revelation is another source that regulates human conduct independent from the culture. The divine speaks to human kind in the sacred writings, such as the Qur'an, the Bible, the Torah, or Bhagavad-Gita, out of which emerges diverse cultural values.



CULTURAL RELATIVISM AND UNIVERSAL HUMAN RIGHTS
Cultural relativism in relation to universal human rights can be seen from the extreme positions on cultural relativism, which are radical cultural relativism and radical universalism. Radical cultural relativism would hold that culture is the sole source of the validity of a moral right or rule. Radical universalism would hold that culture is irrelevant to the validity of moral rights and rules, which are universally valid.
The above two extreme positions can be further divided into strong and weak cultural relativism.
Strong cultural relativism: This holds that culture is the principal source of the validity of a moral right or rule. In other words, the presumption is that rights (and other social practices, values, and moral rules) are actually determined, but the universality of human nature and rights serves as a check on the potential excess of relativism. Strong cultural relativism would accept a few basic rights with virtually universal application, but allow such a wide range of variation for most rights.
Weak cultural relativism: This holds that culture may be an important source of the validity of a moral right or rule. In other words, there is a weak presumption of validity of universality, but the relativity of human nature, communities, and rights serve as a check on potential excess of universalism. Short of radical universalism, weak cultural relativism would recognize a comprehensive set of prima facie universal human rights and allow only relatively rare and strictly limited local variations and exceptions.
A cultural relativist account of human rights, however, seems to be guilty of contradiction. If human rights are based in human nature, on the simple fact that one is a human being, and if human nature is universal then how can human rights be relative in any fundamental way?
The simple answer is that human nature is itself in some measure culturally relative. But if all rights rested solely on culturally determines social rules, as radical cultural relativism holds, then there could be no human rights, no rights one has simply as a human being. The strongest form of radical cultural relativism would hold that the concept of "human being" is one of moral significance; the mere fact that one is a human being is irrelevant to one's moral status.
Strong and weak relativism cannot be distinguished solely by the number of deviations they allow from "universal" standards; some qualitative measure also required. The distinction between variation in substance, interpretation, and form is worthy of consideration. However, the nature of the paper will not accommodate such lengthy discussion and in depth analysis on the nitty-gritty of the concept, in relation to how universal human rights are perceived from the spectacle of a cultural relativist.
Looking at complete lists of universal human rights rather than particular right, there may be an essential universality even in the midst of considerable substantive diversity.
OBSERVATION/FINDING
Cultural relativism as a concept aiming at having an accommodating society will have problems in the following lights:
Lack of uniformity of cultures, norms and values throughout human race;
Lack of inter-cultural tolerance thereby paving a ground for ethnic and tribal unrest.
Tribal sentiment and ethnic jingoism, which would not allow an avenue for multi-cultural approach to our education system.

RECOMMENDATION
Cultural relativism is one of the ways that will help in posturing cooperation between nationals and help in ensuring societal development.
Inter-cultural tolerance would help in averting ethnic and tribal crisis, as we use to have them recurrently in Nigeria. Kano, Kaduna, Lagos and Plateau crisis are some of the examples on point.
Cultural relativism can only be realizable through multi-cultural approach to education
CONCLUSION
Cultural relativism, as a new way of seeing, is a necessary optic to perceive the socio-cultural reality in today's multi-cultural world. It is "new" in the sense that most people tend to be socialized within an ethnocentric perspective. To move away from such a view and encompass a culturally relativistic one can be rather traumatic for most people. Yet such a perspective is necessary if a person is to become a "world citizen" – a person who is able to transcend his/her own racial/ethnic, gender, cultural and socio-political reality and identify with humankind throughout the world, at all levels of human need.
This is the goal to attain as a cultural relativist to become a world citizen. The needs of the 21st century demand nothing less. And a multicultural approach to education is the process that will make it possible.





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Ontology: A theory concerning fundamental types of entities in the universe or nature or essential characteristics of beings and things that exist.
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Ibid
Ibid
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Ibid
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Ibid
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Ibid
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Ibid
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Ibid
Ibid
Ibid
Ibid
Ibid
Ibid
Cultural Relativism and Universal Human Rights culled from www.jstor.org, last visited 5th June, 2016 at 8:30pm