cultures of other worlds, cultural anthropologists have valued the rights of peoples to pursue their traditional practices and values.2 This is not to say that in the past cultural anthropologists were not affected by ethnocentrism. Indeed there are many examples of disparagement and condemnation of customs to be found in earlier writings of cultural anthropologists. But anthropologists have struggled to clarify their perspective, recognizing the impossibility of totally “value-free” social science and yet pursuing a stance capable of greater objectivity than ethnocentrism affords. Any missionary zeal to change “the other” into a copy of the model of “civilized” culture offered by one’s own culture is understood to truncate one’s ability to understand.
Thus the anthropological antidote to ethnocentrism became cultural relativism—judging each culture within its own context rather than by the values of others. I regard cultural relativism not as an ultimate ethical stance but as a mental technique to assist people to avoid negative judgments of, say, food preferences, manners of greeting, or marital customs. Such a perspective is clearly necessary for carrying out ethnographic field research. While a cultural relativistic approach embodies certain ethical dilemmas, it is a beneficial starting point for promoting inter-cultural understanding. Although a useful mental exercise to free one from unreflective ethnocentrism, cultural relativism usually requires a degree of suspension of one’s ethical values. How far can or should one go with this?
Female circumcision offers a major test of whether it is possible to reconcile cultural relativist respect for cultural diversity with the desire to improve the lives of girls and women across cultural boundaries. It raises the question of whether the outsider’s desire to influence cultural practices constitutes ethnocentric interference or humanitarian solidarity. It demands consideration of how respect for cultural variation, which seems to imply noninterference, can be made to allow a constructive role for outsiders in social change.
The Limits to Cultural Relativism
One way to explore the issue of limits is to turn to some of the most extreme examples that can be imagined and see how individuals’ ethical values respond to these cases. Let us consider for a moment slavery. In slavery systems, one person owns and controls the fate of another, his or her freedom, work, sexuality, and well-being. In doing so, the owner may be following a socially permitted institution of another time and place, and he or she may consider slavery to be right and just. Applying cultural relativism would allow for better understanding and explanation of how that owner might manage to feel morally upright. An even more extreme example would be genocide. While it is jarring to think about it, those who have engaged in genocide or ethnic cleansing may have reasons for doing these things that they consider proper, such as perhaps a belief that it is God’s will or that racial/ethnic purity and homogeneity are the proper state of existence and the ancestral rights of inhabitants of a region.
But is it necessary to accept slavery or genocide as legitimate human institutions simply because certain cultures at particular historical junctures have justified them? Surely not. But to dismiss such views as purely crazy or “backward” is also to fail to appreciate the incredible complexity of the human mind, which can find justifications for behavior that in the light of a more general sense of human morality is clearly disgusting and outrageous. It is also clear that trying to understand the causes of such practices may prove valuable in preventing them in the future.
In my view, human beings should reflect upon and criticize historical events, whether they are directly involved in them or not. The exercise of understanding how those who practice slavery or genocide think about and justify the practices could be extremely valuable both to the understanding of humanity, a fundamental goal of anthropology, and to practical efforts to prevent these practices. For issues less likely to be altered by legislation or war, understanding why it may be in the interests of certain groups to continue practices judged harmful by others is a basic prerequisite for any efforts to convince others to change.
My point is that in order to benefit from the insights of the suspended judgment used in cultural relativism, individuals need not disavow all ethical considerations. And if an individual’s ethics are derived from a particular religious or cultural tradition, that does not automatically disqualify them as ethnocentric. Indeed, when there is dialogue, many of our culturally based human values can be seen to transcend cultures.
Genocide and slavery provide stark examples of cross-cultural ethical judgments; the response to other practices is not as clear to many of us. Consider infanticide. Although one might believe it is wrong to kill or abandon a healthy, unwanted infant after it is born, it is possible to arrive at understanding and sympathy for the moral position of a mother who has committed infanticide without oneself approving of infanticide as a customarily tolerated practice. In a situation of rural isolation, poverty, maternal malnutrition, cultural permission, and no apparent alternatives, a mother may be faced with a situation in which a new baby presents an unacceptable risk to the survival of her fourteen-month-old child who is also dependent on her milk. Early weaning of a toddler in a situation where other sources of milk or nutritious weaning foods are not available could easily lead to that child’s death through malnutrition and consequent infectious diseases. In fact, “kwashiorkor,” the name for a severe nutritional deficiency disease, means “second-child disease,” indicating that the disease is related to early weaning after the arrival of a new infant (Wood 1979:73). Faced with the risk of losing an older child to whom she and her family are already attached and in whom she has invested a great deal of effort, a mother might understandably consider protecting that child from the competition of a new, unwanted infant. If in addition the new infant has some disadvantage—a physical handicap, say, or being female in a social situation where sons are vital—the mother might make the difficult choice of infanticide, for which she would not be considered immoral in that society. (For one such example, see Chagnon 1983. See also Scheper-Hughes’s study of motherhood in the impoverished conditions of urban Brazil, Death Without Weeping, 1992.)
In the case of infanticide, pronouncing a moral judgment is really beside the point. What is to be gained by calling such a mother a murderer? Will an external condemnation serve as a deterrent to future such incidents? Or would changing the economic, educational, nutritional, and other social opportunities be a more effective route to change?
Where change is desirable and urgent, pronouncing moral judgments may have a place. But while it may be psychologically satisfying to pass judgment on the practices of others, it is not particularly useful unless the person is already in agreement with you. With issues like female circumcision, utilizing relativism is often more fruitful because it requires contextualization and inhibits crude ethnocentric prejudices that interfere with effective dialogue. Exploring the context produces clues about what changes would be necessary to allow for changes in the unfortunate practice and what factors might create obstacles to change. Infanticide can disappear when change occurs in the conditions that fostered it, as when economic conditions improve, allowing for more adequate nutrition. One can also expect that changes in cultural conditions, such as the strong preference for sons (which is itself frequently based on old-age security considerations of parents) found in many cultures where female infanticide has been accepted, could also help to reduce infanticide. If rural communities offered better opportunities for children and if a government introduced policies to allow girls the same educational and employment opportunities as boys, this could facilitate a cultural transition away from male-child preference. But under what conditions would a government introduce such policies? And is it acceptable for state power to interfere with cultural preferences? Can a state be assumed to represent the legitimate interests of the peoples it governs, even if some groups oppose the cultural standards imposed?
Strong cultural relativists question whether it is justified to strive to change the culture of others or whether a basic right of cultural self-determination prohibits external interference. In this view, to offer or impose changes rooted in the values and cultural traditions of powerful external forces constitutes cultural imperialism. Wasn’t this exactly the sort of justification used by European powers to conquer and subjugate other regions of the
