7/19/2017 Of Headhunters and Soldiers - Ethical Decision Making - Ethics Resources - Markkula Center for Applied Ethics - Santa Clara University Of Headhunters and Soldiers Separating Cultural and Ethical Relativism Renato Rosaldo These days, cultural relativism has a bad reputation in many quarters. It conjures images of a world where anything goes. According to this domino theory of norms, if people open themselves to the possibility that other cultures may have valid, if different, ways of life, the next thing you know, they’ll be "doing it in the streets." In academic debate, calling someone a relativist is a mild form of verbal abuse. When academic concepts achieve such shorthand status (the refined grunt), it’s probably wise to unpack them—take them out and look at them a little more carefully: shirts here, pants there, and so on. In that spirit, I’d like to look at relativist and universalist traditions in my field, anthropology. I begin with the relativist position, as it was defined by people like Franz Boas in the 1920s and ’30s. Relativism was formulated in the context of ethical issues; it was meant to be an answer to the Nazis and their racism, anti-Semitism, and eugenics. The idea was roughly this: Human differences, which ideologies such as Nazism attributed to race, should be understood as cultural. Behind this position was the idea of the plasticity of human nature, the ability of humans to acquire any one or more of a vast array of languages and cultures. The parable or metaphor the early relativists used was this: Except for the accidents of history, we might well have all been born in Tibet. Our genetic makeup would be the same, but we would speak a different language and adhere to a different culture. In this view, culture is the stuff you learn after birth. Ruth Benedict, a prominent anthropologist of the time, said all cultures are "coexisting and equally valid patterns of life, which mankind has created for itself from the raw materials of existence." In her view, and in the view of American anthropology of the time, each culture is self-contained, autonomous, separate but equal. Each makes sense in its own context, and all you have to do is know the context to understand what the people are doing and why they’re doing it. Today we might use the term incommensurable for the relativist view that all cultures are equally valid. You can’t, they argued, have a scale of human cultures: excellent, good, not so good, fair, medium, below medium. It’s just too complex a task. Now let’s consider an anthropologist who is usually portrayed as a universalist, Clyde Kluckhohn. Kluckhohn argued that ethical relativity is really a special case of cultural relativity. This being so, he https://www.scu.edu/ethics/ethics-resources/ethical-decision-making/of-headhunters-and-soldiers/ 1/7 7/19/2017 Of Headhunters and Soldiers - Ethical Decision Making - Ethics Resources - Markkula Center for Applied Ethics - Santa Clara University concluded that Benedict’s doctrine of cultural relativity—coexisting and equally valid patterns of life— precludes moral criticism of any cultural practice, including slavery, cannibalism, Nazism, or communism. If you adopt Benedict’s position, Kluckhohn suggested, then you can’t be critical of evil as you notice it in the world around you, whatever your favorite examples of evil may be. To replace Boas’ and Benedict’s relativism, Kluckhohn proposed a set of ethical and cultural universals that, to my ear, are surprisingly void of content. He drew one example from Benedict’s book, Patterns of Culture, in which she contrasts two Native American groups: the Kwakiutl of the Northwest Coast, whose culture encourages exhibitionism and the Zuni of the Southwest, who by contrast prize restraint. These are really different ways of giving meaning to one’s life, of displaying one’s identity, of being in the world. To Kluckhohn, this vast difference revealed a universal–prizing the norms of one’s culture. But how could that not be true? A people either prizes their own norms or they don’t have any norms. Similarly Kluckhorn argued that the variety of human moral standards contains a universal. He said, "Morality is as genuine a human universal as is language. All cultures have moral systems." I would think that’s fairly true, except that I don’t feel especially enlightened. To say that we all have moral https://www.scu.edu/ethics/ethics-resources/ethical-decision-making/of-headhunters-and-soldiers/ 2/7 7/19/2017 Of Headhunters and Soldiers - Ethical Decision Making - Ethics Resources - Markkula Center for Applied Ethics - Santa Clara University systems and then not to say what the moral standards are is not very substantive. Thou shalt not kill—is that a universal? Addressing that question would be getting into a more interesting and more difficult discussion—because I’m not sure what the universals would be. At the same time Kluckhohn was looking for cultural universals, he was also something of a relativist. He said many different values in human cultures are not so much ethical as they are matters of taste. The fact that the taste of other peoples does not coincide with our own does not make them stupid, ignorant, or evil. If somebody speaks a different language than you do, if they button their shirts from the bottom up instead of the top down, that doesn't mean they’re deranged. That, I think, is a key relativist tenet. Kluckhohn even went so far as to say, "In a world society, each group can and must learn from other cultures, can and must familiarize itself with divergent value systems even when it prefers, in the last analysis, to hold in the main to its own traditional norms." That’s another clear relativist position: insisting on the imperative to learn from other cultures. So although Kluckhohn held a brief for universals and argued against ethical relativism, he also had a fairly strong need for relativity. Kluckhohn was writing in the 1950s. What is happening to relativism in anthropology today? Here, my analysis proceeds from an assumption of committed anthropology, of scholars working with a sense of ethics—of right and wrong, or good and evil. This committed anthropology has disrupted the relativist notions inherited from the 1920s and '30s for two broad reasons. First, the idea of separate but equal cultures no longer seems accurate. Cultures are not separate; they are not confined to their own individual museum cases. They exist side by side in the same space. Also, we’ve noticed that there are inequalities between cultures—relations of dominance and subordination. Take, for example, settler colonialism, the system we had in America. Relationships formed in the colonial period and after created inequalities, which a committed anthropologist would have to critique. Second, in contrast with Kluckhohn, we see ethical relativism not as a special case of cultural relativism but as a different notion. I, for one, would regard myself as a cultural relativist; I would not regard myself as an ethical relativist. To explain this distinction, we have to begin by returning cultural relativism to a rather modest doctrine. It’s gotten inflated and become a kind of bogeyman. But the core notions of cultural relativism are the urgency of studying and learning from other cultures and the belief that because somebody has a different form of life, they’re not deranged, or evil. Here, Clifford Geertz's recent work is instructive. Geertz calls a human being an "unfinished animal," by which he means that humans are not genetically programmed to do what we do. He assumes that bees are genetically programmed to make honey and birds are genetically programmed to make nests, but humans are genetically programmed only to acquire language and culture. For example, we can look at plans and make a house, but that’s something learned after we are born; it's not built in. In this view, we are not fully human at birth. We haven't got all the stuff we need to cope in the world, to be social, to be moral, to be thinking, to be creative. The crux of Geertz's argument is that human https://www.scu.edu/ethics/ethics-resources/ethical-decision-making/of-headhunters-and-soldiers/ 3/7 7/19/2017 Of Headhunters and Soldiers - Ethical Decision Making - Ethics Resources - Markkula Center for Applied Ethics - Santa Clara University https://www.scu.edu/ethics/ethics-resources/ethical-decision-making/of-headhunters-and-soldiers/ 4/7 7/19/2017 Of Headhunters and Soldiers - Ethical Decision Making - Ethics Resources - Markkula Center for Applied Ethics - Santa Clara University nature is realized only in culture. Human nature is the capacity to become Javanese, for example. In Java, Geertz tells us, they have a saying: "The person is not yet human." But the way they say it is: "The person is not yet Javanese." The virtue of Geertz's position is its lack of parochialism. Relativism in this sense argues for engagement, for dialogue between cultures. This is not the kind of easy cosmopolitanism that implies enormous privilege—the capacity, for example, to spend three days in the Bali Hilton. It’s a deeper form of knowing that entails some recognition that I am one among others. I'm not the center of the universe. This argues against ethnocentrism, against what could be called cultural imperialism, (imposing a set of norms on people who might not want to inhabit those norms), against projection (laying something you see inside yourself on somebody else). The effort in relativism is to determine what that other person is actually thinking. https://www.scu.edu/ethics/ethics-resources/ethical-decision-making/of-headhunters-and-soldiers/ 5/7 7/19/2017 Of Headhunters and Soldiers - Ethical Decision Making - Ethics Resources - Markkula Center for Applied Ethics - Santa Clara University We can see the productiveness of relativism when we are trying to expand the discussion of concepts we think are important—love, for example. We can look at other cultures and ask, Do they have a notion of falling in love? When we do, we see that love is not a universal; it’s not even widespread. But other cultures may have something that's kind of like falling in love—romance, say. That’s probably one https://www.scu.edu/ethics/ethics-resources/ethical-decision-making/of-headhunters-and-soldiers/ 6/7 7/19/2017 Of Headhunters and Soldiers - Ethical Decision Making - Ethics Resources - Markkula Center for Applied Ethics - Santa Clara University of the categories you could find to look at. Our own imagination is limited by the culture we have grown up in, but if we actually go elsewhere and look at what other people do, we can expand our world and challenge our own notions. The caveat in all this is: To understand is not to forgive. Just because you come to terms with how something works in another culture doesn't mean you have to agree with it; it means you have to engage it. That's the sense in which I'd separate cultural and ethical relativism. I don't think that in order for me to hold a position as ethical, it needs to be universal. In this way, the relativist position becomes emancipating. It means I'm free to think what I think because I'm not going to wait for a consensus of the whole world, of every form of life, every language, every culture. But I want to be challenged by what other people are doing, saying, thinking—by their ethical systems. To illustrate, in the late 1960s, I lived with a Filipino hill tribe called the Ilongots, who were headhunters. Do I think headhunting is a good idea because I worked for years trying to understand it? No, I don’t. Am I horrified by it? I used to be; it gave me lots of bad dreams, but then something happened. One day, I went to Manila to get my mail, and I found I'd been called for the draft. I opposed the war in Vietnam, so of course I was not thrilled by this news. When I went back to the Ilongots' household where I was living, I told my hosts what had happened, partly because I needed somebody to talk to about it. But I also had an ignoble motive. I imagined that maybe this situation would make the Ilongots think better of me; maybe they would think, This guy has an opportunity to kill people, and that's great. I could not have been further from the truth. I mentioned the draft notice, and they said, "This is terrible. Don't worry. We'll take care of you. They'll never find you here." "Wait a minute," I said, "I thought you guys were in the business of killing." "No, no," they answered, "we've seen soldiers." In June of 1945, they really saw soldiers when the Americans drove Japanese troops into the hills where the Ilongots lived. The tribe lost a third of its population during that time. At first, I jumped to the conclusion that, having seen the carnage, they didn't approve of war. But when I talked more with them, I came to realize that they were as horrified of modern warfare as most of us would be of cannibalism or headhunting. It was a kind of moral horror. Because I picked up this reaction, I kept pursuing the issue. Finally they said, "Well, what we saw was that one soldier had the authority to order his brothers to sell their bodies." What they meant was that a commanding officer could order his subordinates to move into the line of fire. That was absolutely inconceivable to them. They said, "How can one person tell others to give up their lives, to put themselves so at risk that it's highly likely they'll lose their lives?" That was their moral threshold. https://www.scu.edu/ethics/ethics-resources/ethical-decision-making/of-headhunters-and-soldiers/ 7/7 THE CHALLENGE OF CULTURAL RELATIVISM James Rachels Morality differs in every society, and is a convenient term for socially approved habits. -RUTH BENEDICT, PATTERNS OF CULTURE (1934) DIFFERENT CULTURES HAVE DIFFERENT MORAL CODES Darius, a king of ancient Persia, was intrigued by the variety of cultures he met in his travels. He had found, for example, that the Callatians, who lived in India, ate the bodies of their dead fathers. The Greeks, of course, did not do that-the Greeks practiced cremation and regarded the funeral pyre as the natural and fitting way to dispose of the dead. Darius thought that a sophisticated o;t~tlook should appreciate the differences between cultures. One day, to teach this lesson, he summoned some Greeks who happened to be at his court and asked what it would take for them to eat the bodies of their dead fathers. They were shocked, as Darius knew they would be, and replied that no amount of money could persuade them to do such a thing. Then Darius called in some Callatians and, while the Greeks listened, asked them what it would take for them to burn their dead fathers' bodies. The Callatians were horrified and told Darius not to speak of such things. This story, recounted by Herodotus in his History, illustrates a recurring theme in the literature of social science: Different cultures have different moral codes. What is thought right within one group may horrify the members of another group, and vice versa. Should we eat the bodies of the dead or burn them? If you were a Greek, one answer would seem obviously correct~ but if you were a Callatian, the other answer would seem certain. There are many such examples. Consider the Eskimos of the early and mid 20th century. The Eskimos are the native people of Alaska, northern Canada, Greenland, and northeastern Siberia, in Asiatic Russia. Today, none of these groups call themselves "Eskimos," but the term has historically referred to that scattered Arctic population. Prior to the 20th century, the outside world knew little about them. Then explorers began to bring back strange tales. The Elements of Moral Philosophy, 6th Edition, McGraw-Hill, 2010, Chapter 2, pp. 14-31 121 122 CHAPTER 3 Ethical Relativism The Eskimos lived in small settlements, separated by great distances, and their customs turned out to be very different from ours. The men often had m?re than o~e wife, an~ t~ey would share their wives with guests, lending them out for the mght as a sign of hospitality. Moreover, within a community, a dominant male might demand-and get-regular sexual access to other men's wives. The women, however, were free to break these arrangements simply by leaving their husbands and taking up with new partners-free, that is, so long as their former husbands chose not to make too much trouble. All in all, the Eskimo custom of marriage was a volatile practice that bore little resemblance ~o our custom. . But it was not only their marriages and sexual practices that were different. The Eskimos also seemed to have less regard for human life. Infanticide, for example, was common. Knud Rasmussen, an early explorer, reported that he met one woman who had b?rne 20 children but had killed 10 of them at birth. Female babies, he found, were especially likely to be killed, and this was permitted at the parents' discretion, with no social stig~a attached. Moreover, when elderly family members became too feeble, they were left out m the snow to die. In Eskimo society, there seemed to be remarkably little respect for life. Most of us would find these Eskimo customs completely immoral. Our own way of living seems so natural and right that we ca~ hardly conceive of livi~'g so differ:ntl~., ~he.n we hear of such things, we tend to categonze the other people as backward or pnmitive." But to anthropologists, the Eskimos did not seem unusual. Since the tim~ of Herodotus, enlightened observers have known that conceptions of right and wrong differ from culture to culture. If we assume that our ethical ideas will be shared by all cultures, we are merely being naive. The Challenge of Cultural Relativism 123 3. There is no objective standard that can be used to judge one society's code as better than another's. There are no moral truths that hold for all people at all times. 4. The moral code of our own society has no special status; it is but one among many. 5. It is arrogant for us to judge other cultures. We should always be tolerant of them. These five propositions may seem to go together, but they are independent of one another-some may be true while others are false. Indeed, two of the propositions appear to be inconsistent with each other. The second says that right and wrong are determined by the norms of a society; the fifth says that we should always be tolerant of other cultures. But what if the norms of a society favor intolerance? For example, when the Nazi army invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, thus beginning World War II, this was an intolerant action of the first order. But what if it was in line with Nazi ideals? A cultural relativist, it seems, cannot criticize the Nazis for being intolerant, if all they're doing is following their own moral code. Given that cultural relativists take pride in their tolerance, it would be ironic if their theory actually supported the intolerance of warlike societies. However, it need not do that. Properly understood, Cultural Relativism holds that the norms of a culture reign supreme within the bounds of the culture itself Thus, once the German soldiers entered Poland, they became bound by the norms of Polish society-norms that obviously excluded the mass slaughter of innocent Poles. "When in Rome," the old saying goes, "do as the Romans do." Cultural relativists agree. THE CULTURAL DIFFERENCES ARGUMENT CULTURAL RELATIVISM To many people, this observation-"Different cultures have. different m?ral c.odes"seems like the key to understanding morality. The idea of umversal truth m ethics, th~y say, is a myth. The customs of different societies are all that exist. To say that. a custom IS "correct" or "incorrect" would imply that we can judge that custom by some mdependent standard of right and wrong. But no such standard exists, they say; every s~an.dard ~s culture-bound. The sociologist William Graham Sumner, writing in 1906, put It like this: The "right" way is the way which the ancestors used and which ha~ been handed ?~wn .... The notion of right is in the folkways. It is not outside of them, of mdependent ongm, and brought to test them. In the folkways, whatever is, is right. This is because they are traditional, and therefore contain in themselves the authority of the ancestral ghosts. When we come to the folkways we are at the end of our analysis. This line of thought, more than any other, has persuaded people ~o b.e skeptic~! a?~ut ethics. Cultural Relativism, as it has been called, challenges our belief m the obJeCtivity and universality of moral truth. It says, in effect, that there is no such thing as universal truth in ethics; there are only the various cultural codes, and nothing more. The following claims have all been made by cultural relativists: 1. Different societies have different moral codes. 2. The moral code of a society determines what is right within that society; that is, if the moral code of a society says that a certain action is right, then that action is right, at least within that society. Cultural Relativists often employ a ~ehain form of argument. They begin with facts about cultures and end up drawing a conClusion about morality. Thus, they invite us to accept this reasoning: 1. The Greeks believed it was wrong to eat the dead, whereas the Callatians believed it was right to eat the dead. 2. Therefore, eating the dead is neither objectively right nor objectively wrong. It is merely a matter of opinion, which varies from culture to culture. Or: 1. The Eskimos saw nothing wrong with infanticide, whereas Americans believe infanticide is immoral. 2. Therefore, infanticide is neither objectively right nor objectively wrong. It is merely a matter of opinion, which varies from culture to culture. Clearly, these arguments are variations of one fundamental idea. They are both examples of a more general argument, which says: 1. Different cultures have different moral codes. 2. Therefore, there is no objective "truth" in morality. Right and wrong are only matters of opinion, and opinions vary from culture to culture. We may call this the Cultural Differences Argument. To many people, it is persuasive. But is it a good argument-is it sound? 124 CHAPTER 3 Ethical Relativism It is not. For an argument to be sound, its premises must all be true, and the conclusion must follow logically from them. Here, the problem is that the conclusion does not follow from the premise-that is, even if the premise is true, the conclusion might still be false. The premise concerns what people believe-in some societies, people believe one thing; in other societies, people believe something else. The conclusion, however, concerns what really is the case. This sort of conclusion does not follow logically from that sort of premise. In philosophical terminology, this means that the argument is invalid. Consider again the example of the Greeks and Callatians. The Greeks believed it was wrong to eat the dead; the Callatians believed it was right. Does it follow, from the mere fact that they disagreed, that there is no objective truth in the matter? No, it does not follow; it could be that the practice was objectively right (or wrong) and that one of them was simply mistaken. To make the point clearer, consider a different matter. In some societies, people believe the earth is flat. In other societies, such as our own, people believe that the earth is spherical. Does it follow, from the mere fact that people disagree, that there is no "objective truth" in geography? Of course not; we would never draw such a conclusion, because we realize that the members of some societies might simply be wrong. There is no reason to think that if the world is round everyone must know it. Similarly, there is no reason to think that if there is moral truth everyone must know it. The Cultural Differences Argument tries to derive a substantive conclusion about a subject from the mere fact that people disagree. But this is impossible. This point should not be misunderstood. We are not saying that the conclusion of the argument is false; Cultural Relativism could still be true. The point is that the conclusion does not follow from the premise. This means that the Cultural Differences Argument is invalid. Thus, the argument fails. WHAT FOLLOWS FROM CULTURAL RELATIVISM Even if the Cultural Differences Argument is unsound, Cultural Relativism might still be true. What would follow if it were true? In the passage quoted earlier, William Graham Sumner states the essence of Cultural Relativism. He says that there is no measure of right and wrong other than the standards of one's society: "The notion of right is in the folkways. It is not outside of them, of independent origin, and brought to test them. In the folkways, whatever is, is right." Suppose we took this seriously. What would be some of the consequences? 1. We could no longer say that the customs of other societies are morally inferior to our own. This, of course, is one of the main points stressed by Cultural Relativism. We would have to stop condemning other societies merely because they are "different." So long as we concentrate on certain examples, such as the funerary practices of the Greeks and Callatians, this attitude may seem to be enlightened. However, we would also be barred from criticizing other, less benign practices. For example, the Chinese government has a long history of repressing political dissent within its own borders. At any given time, thousands of political prisoners in China are doing hard labor, and in the Tiananmen Square episode of 1989, Chinese troops slaughtered hundreds, if not thousands, of peaceful protesters. Cultural Relativism would preclude us from saying that the Chinese government's policies of oppression are wrong. We could not even say The Challenge of Cultural Relativism 125 that a society that respects free speech is better than Chinese society, for that would also imply a universal standard of comparison. The failure to condemn these practices does not seem enlightened; on the contrary, political oppression seems wrong wherever it occurs. ~evertheless, if we accept Cultural Relativism, we have to regard such social practices as Immune from criticism. 2. We could no longer criticize the code of our own society. Cultural Relativism suggests a simple test for determining what is right and what is wrong: All we need to do is ask whether the action is in line with the code of the society in question. Suppose a resident ?f India wonders whether her country's caste system-a system of rigid social hierarchyIs morally correct. All she has to do is ask whether this system conforms to her society's moral code. If it does, there is nothing to worry about, at least from a moral point of view. This implication of Cultural Relativism is disturbing because few of us think that our society's code is perfect-we can think of ways in which it might be improved. Moreover, we can think of ways in which we might learn from other cultures. Yet Cultural Relativism stops us from criticizing our own society's code, and it bars us from seeing ways in which other cultures might be better. After all, if right and wrong are relative to culture, this must be true for our culture, just as it is for other cultures. 3. The idea of moral progress is called into doubt. We think that at least some social changes are for the better. Throughout most of Western history, the place of women in society was narrowly defined. Women could not own property; they could not vote or hold political office; and they were under the almost absolute control of their husbands or fathers. Recently, much of this has changed, and most people think of it as progress. But if Cultural Relativism is correct, can we legitimately view this as progress? Progress means replacing the old ways with new and improved ways. But by what standard do we judge the new ways as better? If the old ways conformed to the standards of their time, then Cultural Relativisrh would not judge them by our standards. Sexist 19th-century society was a different society from the one we have now. To say that we have made progress implies that present-day society is better-just the sort of transcultural judgment that Cultural Relativism forbids. Our ideas about social reform will also have to be reconsidered. Reformers such as Martin Luther King, Jr., have sought to change their societies for the better. But according to Cultural Relativism, there is only one way to improve a society: to make it better match its own ideals. After all, the society's ideals are the standard by which reform is assessed. No one, however, may challenge the ideals themselves, for they are by definition correct. According to Cultural Relativism, then, the idea of social reform makes sense only in this limited way. These three consequences of Cultural Relativism have led many thinkers to reject it. Slavery, they say, is wrong wherever it occurs, and one's own society can make fundamental moral progress. Because Cultural Relativism implies that these judgments make no sense, it cannot be right. WHY THERE Is LESS DISAGREEMENT THAN IT SEEMS Cultural Relativism starts by observing that cultures differ dramatically in their views of right and wrong. But how much do they really differ? It is true that there are differences, but it is easy to exaggerate them. Often, when we examine what seems to be a big difference, we find that the cultures differ less than we thought. 126 CHAPTER 3 The Challenge of Cultural Relativism Ethical Relativism Consider a culture in which people believe it is wrong to eat cows. This may even be a poor culture, in which there is not enough food; still, the cows are not to be touche~. ~uch a society would appear to have values very different from our own. Bu~ does It. We have not yet asked why these people will not eat cows. Suppose they believe that after death the souls of humans inhabit the bodies of animals, especially cows, so that a cow may be someone's grandmother. Shall we say that their v~lues are differe~t from ours? No; the difference lies elsewhere. The difference is in our behef systems, not m our values. We agree that we shouldn't eat Grandma; we disagree about whether the cow could be Grandma. The point is that many factors work together to produce the customs of a society. _Not only are the society's values important, but so are its religious beliefs, its_ factual behe~s, and its physical environment. We cannot conclude that, because customs differ, values d~f­ fer. The difference in customs may be due to something else. Thus, there may be less disagreement about values than there appears to be. . . . Consider again the Eskimos, who killed perfectly healthy mfants, especially girls. We do not approve of such things; in our society, a parent who kills a baby will be locked up. Thus, there appears to be a great difference in the values of our two cultures. But suppose we ask why the Eskimos did this. The explanation is not that they lacked re_spect ~or ~uman life or did not love their children. An Eskimo family would always protect Its babies If conditions permitted. But the Eskimos lived in a harsh environment, whe~e food was in sho~~ supply. To quote an old Eskimo saying: "Life is hard, and the margm of safety small. A family may want to nourish its babies but be unable to do so. . . As in many traditional societies, Eskimo mothers would nurse their mfants over a much longer period than mothers in our culture-for four years, and perhaps even longer. So, even in the best of times, one mother could sustain very few children. Moreover, the Eskimos were nomadic; unable to farm in the harsh northern climate, they had to move about in search of food. Infants had to be carried, and a mother could carry only one baby in her parka as she traveled and went about her outdoor work. Finally, the Eskimos lacked birth control, so unwanted pregnancies were common. Infant girls were more readily disposed of for two reasons. First, in Eskimo society, the males were the primary food providers-they were the hunters-and food was scarce. Infant boys were thus better protected. Second, the hunters suffered a high casualty rate, so the men who died prematurely far outnumbered the women who died young. If male and female infants had survived in equal numbers, then the female adult population would have greatly outnumbered the male adult population. Examining the available statisti~s, one writer concluded that "were it not for female infanticide ... there would be approximately one-and-a-half times as many females in the average Eskimo local group as there are food-producing males." . . So, among the Eskimos, infanticide did not signal a fundamentally different attitude toward children. Instead, it arose from the recognition that drastic measures were needed to ensure the family's survival. Even then, however, killing the baby was not the first option considered. Adoption was common; childless couples were e~peci~ll~ happy to take a fertile couple's "surplus." Killing was the last resort. I emphasize thi~ m order ~o show that the raw data of anthropology can be misleading; it can make the differences m values between cultures appear greater than they are. The Eskimos' values were not all that different from our own. It is only that life forced choices upon them that we do not have to make. 127 SOME VALUES ARE SHARED BY ALL CULTURES w Ill It should not be surprising that the Eskimos were protective of their children. How could they not be? Babies are helpless and cannot survive without extensive care. If a group did not protect its young, the young would not survive, and the older members of the group would not be replaced. After a while, the group would die out. This means that any culture that continues to exist must care for its young. Infants who are not cared for must be the exception rather than the rule. Similar reasoning shows that other values must be more or less universal. Imagine what it would be like for a society to place no value on truth telling. When one person spoke to another, there would be no presumption that she was telling the truth, for she could just as easily be lying. Within that society, there would be no reason to pay attention to what anyone says. If I want to know what time it is, why should I bother asking anyone, if lying is commonplace? Communication would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, in such a society. And because societies cannot exist without communication among their members, society would become impossible. It follows that every society must value truthfulness. There may, of course, be situations in which lying is thought to be okay. No matter. The society will still value honesty. Consider another example. Could a society exist in which there was no prohibition against murder? What would this be like? Suppose people were free to kill one another at will, and no one disapproved. In such a "society," no one could feel safe. Everyone would have to be constantly on guard, and to survive they would have to avoid other people as much as possible. This would result in individuals trying to become self-sufficient-after all, associating with others would be dangerous. Society on any large scale would collapse. Of course, people might band togethe~ in smaller groups where they could feel safe. But notice what this means: They would be forming smaller societies that did acknowledge a rule against murder. The prohibition against murder, then, is a necessary feature of society. There is a general point here, namely, that there are some moral rules that all societies must embrace, because those rules are necessary for society to exist. The rules against lying and murder are two examples. And, in fact, we do find these rules in force in all cultures. Cultures may differ in what they regard as legitimate exceptions to the rules, but this disagreement exists against a broad background of agreement. Therefore, it is a mistake to overestimate the amount of difference between cultures. Not every moral rule can vary from society to society. JUDGING A CULTURAL PRACTICE TO BE UNDESIRABLE In 1996, a 17-year-old named Fauziya Kassindja arrived at Newark International Airport in New Jersey and asked for asylum. She had fled her native country of Togo, in West Africa, to escape what people there call "excision." Excision is a permanently disfiguring procedure. It is sometimes called "female circumcision," but it bears little resemblance to male circumcision. In the Western media, it is often referred to as "female genital mutilation." According to the World Health Organization, excision is practiced in 28 African nations, and about 120 million females have been painfully excised. Sometimes, excision is part of an elaborate tribal ritual, performed in small villages, and girls look forward to it because it signals their acceptance into the adult world. Other times, the practice is carried out in cities on young women who desperately resist. w Ill 128 CHAPTER 3 The Challenge of Cultural Relativism Ethical Relativism Fauziya Kassindja was the youngest of five daughters. Her father, who owned a successful trucking business, was opposed to excision, and he was able to defy the tradition because of his wealth. His first four daughters were married without being mutilated. But when Fauziya was 16, he suddenly died. She then came under the authority of her aunt, who arranged a marriage for her and prepared to have her excised. Fauziya was terrified, and her mother and oldest sister helped her escape. In America, Fauziya was imprisoned for nearly 18 months while the authorities decided what to do with her. During this time, she was subjected to humiliating strip searches, denied medical treatment for her asthma, and generally treated like a criminal. Finally, she was granted asylum, but not before her case aroused a great controversy. The controversy was not about her treatment in America, but about how we should regard the cultural practices of other peoples. A series of articles in The New York Times encouraged the idea that excision is barbaric and should be condemned. Other observers were reluctant to be so judgmental. Live and let live, they said; after all, our culture probably seems just as strange to other peoples. Suppose we are inclined to say that excision is bad. Would we merely be imposing the standards of our own culture? If Cultural Relativism is correct, that is all we can do, for there is no culture-independent moral standard to appeal to. But is that true? Is There a Culture-Independent Standard of Right and Wrong? Excision is bad in many ways. It is painful and results in the permanent loss of sexual pleasure. Its short-term effects can include hemorrhage, tetanus, and septicemia. Sometimes the woman dies. Its long-term effects can include chronic infection, scars that hinder walking, and continuing pain. Why, then, has it become a widespread social practice? It is not easy to say. The practice has no obvious social benefits. Unlike Eskimo infanticide, it is not necessary for group survival. Nor is it a matter of religion. Excision is practiced by groups from various religions, including Islam and Christianity. Nevertheless, a number of reasons are given in its defense. Women who are incapable of sexual pleasure are less likely to be promiscuous; thus, there will be fewer unwanted pregnancies in unmarried women. Moreover, wives for whom sex is only a duty are less likely to cheat on their husbands; and because they are not thinking about sex, they will be more attentive to the needs of their husbands and children. Husbands, for their part, are said to enjoy sex more with wives who have been excised. Unexcised women, the men feel, are unclean and immature. It would be easy, and perhaps a bit arrogant, to ridicule these arguments. But notice an important feature of them: They try to justify excision by showing that excision is beneficial-men, women, and their families are said to be better off when women are excised. Thus, we might approach the issue by asking whether this is true: Is excision, on the whole, helpful or harmful? In fact, this is a standard that might reasonably be used in thinking about any social practice: Does the practice promote or hinder the welfare of the people affected by it? But this looks like just the sort of independent moral standard that Cultural Relativism says cannot exist. It is a single standard that may be brought to bear in judging the practices of any culture, at any time, including our own. Of course, people will not usually see this principle as being "brought in from the outside" to judge them, because all cultures value human happiness. 129 Why, Despite All This, Thoughtful People May Be Reluctant to Criticize Other Cultures Many people who are horrified by excision are nevertheless reluctant to condemn it, for three reasons. First, there is an understandable nervousness about interfering in the social customs of other peoples. Europeans and their cultural descendants in America have a shameful history of destroying native cultures in the name of Christianity and enlightenment. Because of this, some people refuse to criticize other cultures, especially cultures that resemble those that were wronged in the past. There is a difference, however, between (a) judging a cultural practice to be deficient and (b) thinking that we should announce that fact, apply diplomatic pressure, and send in the troops. The first is just a matter of trying to see the world clearly, from a moral point of view. The second is something else entirely. Sometimes it may be right to "do something about it," but often it will not be. Second, people may feel, rightly enough, that they should be tolerant of other cultures. Tolerance is, no doubt, a virtue-a tolerant person can live in peace with those who see things differently. But nothing about tolerance requires us to say that all beliefs, all religions, and all social practices are equally admirable. On the contrary, if we did not think that some things were better than others, there would be nothing for us to tolerate. Finally, people may be reluctant to judge because they do not want to express contempt for the society being criticized. But again, this is misguided: To condemn a particular practice is not to say that the culture on the whole is contemptible or is inferior to any other culture. The culture could have many admirable features. In fact, we should expect this to be true of most human societies-they are mixtures of good and bad practices. Excision happens to be one of the bad ones. BACK TO THE FIVE CLAIMS Let us now return to the five tenets of Cultural Relativism that were listed earlier. How have they fared in our discussion? 1. Different societies have different moral codes. This is certainly true, although there are some values that all cultures share, such as the value of truth telling, the importance of caring for the young, and the prohibition against murder. Also, when customs differ, the underlying reason will often have more to do with the factual beliefs of the cultures than with their values. 2. The moral code of a society determines what is right within that society; that is, if the moral code of a society says that a certain action is right, then that action is right, at least within that society. Here we must bear in mind the difference between what a society believes about morals and what is really true. The moral code of a society is closely tied to what people in that society believe to be right. However, that code, and those people, can be in error. Earlier, we considered the example of excision-a barbaric practice endorsed by many societies. Consider three more examples, all of which involve the mistreatment of women: • In 2002, an unwed mother in Nigeria was sentenced to be stoned to death for having had sex out of wedlock. It is unclear whether Nigerian values, on the whole, approved of this verdict, since it was later overturned by a higher court. However, 130 CHAPTER 3 Ethical Relativism it was overturned partly to appease the international community. When the Nigerians themselves heard the verdict being read out in the courtroom, the crowd shouted out their approval. • In 2005, a woman from Australia was convicted of trying to smuggle nine pounds of marijuana into Indonesia. For that crime, she was sentenced to 20 years in prison-an excessive punishment. Under Indonesian law, she might even have received a death sentence. • In 2007, a woman was gang-raped in Saudi Arabia. When she complained to the police, the police discovered in the course of their investigation that she had recently been alone with a man she was not related to. For this crime, she was sentenced to ninety lashes. When she appealed the conviction, this angered the judges, and they increased her sentence to 200 lashes plus a six-month prison term. Eventually, the Saudi king pardoned her, though he said that he supported the sentence she had received. Cultural Relativism holds, in effect, that societies are morally infallible-in other words, that the morals of a culture can never be wrong. But when we see that societies can and do endorse grave injustices, we see that societies, like their members, can be in need of moral improvement. 3. There is no objective standard that can be used to judge one society's code as better than another's. There are no moral truths that hold for all people at all times. It is difficult to think of ethical principles that hold for all people at all times. However, if we are to criticize the practice of slavery, or stoning, or genital mutilation, and if such practices are really and truly wrong, then we must appeal to principles that are not tethered to one society's peculiar outlook. Earlier I suggested one such principle: that it always matters whether a practice promotes or hinders the welfare of the people affected by it. 4. The moral code of our own society has no special status; it is but one among many. It is true that the moral code of our society has no special status. After all, our society has no heavenly halo around its borders; our values do not have any special standing just because we happen to believe them. However, to say that the moral code of one's own society "is merely one among many" seems to deny the possibility that one moral code might be better or worse than some others. Whether the moral code of one's own society "is merely one among many" is, in fact, an open question. That code might be one of the best; it might be one of the worst. 5. It is arrogant for us to judge other cultures. We should always be tolerant of them. There is much truth in this, but the point is overstated. We are often arrogant when we criticize other cultures, and tolerance is generally a good thing. However, we shouldn't tolerate everything. Human societies have done terrible things, and it is a mark of progress when we can say that those things are in the past. WHAT WE CAN LEARN FROM CULTURAL RELATIVISM So far, in discussing Cultural Relativism, I have dwelt mostly on its shortcomings. I have said that it rests on an unsound argument, that it has implausible consequences, and that it suggests greater moral disagreement than exists. This all adds up to a rather thorough repudiation of the theory. Nevertheless, you may have the feeling that all this is a little unfair. The Challenge of Cultural Relativism 131 The theory must have something going for it-why else has it been so influential? In fact I think there is something right about Cultural Relativism, and there are two lessons w~ should learn from it. First, Cultural Relativism warns us, quite rightly, about the danger of assuming that all our preferences a:e based on some absolute rational standard. They are not. Many (but not all) of our p:ac~Ices are ~erely peculiar to our society, and it is easy to lose sight of that fact. In remmdmg us of It, the theory does us a service. Funerary practices are one example. The Callatians, according to Herodotus, were "men who eat their fathers"-a shocking idea, to us at least. But eating the flesh of the dead could be understood as a sign of respect. It could be taken as a symbolic act that says "We wish this person's spirit to dwell within us." Perhaps this is how the Callatians sa; ~t. On this way of thinking, burying the dead could be seen as an act of rejection, and burn~ng the co~se as positively scornful. Of course, we may feel a visceral repugnance at the Idea of eatm~ human flesh. But so what? This repugnance may be, as the relativists say, only a reflectiOn of our own society. There are. many other matters that we tend to think of in terms of right and wrong that are really nothing more than social conventions. Consider monogamous marriage. Why must we .loc~ ours~lves into just one romantic relationship? Some people practice "polyamory," which IS h~vmg more than one loving partner, with the consent of everyone involved. ~oly~ory mcludes group marriages (such as "quads," involving four people), open relati~nships, networks of interconnecting relationships, and so on. Some of these arrangements IDI~ht work better than others, but this is not really a matter of morality. If four people want to h~e together and function as a single family, with love flowing from each to each, there is nothmg mor~lly wrong with that. But most people in our society would be horrified by it. . Or consider modesty of dress ... During the 2004 Super Bowl halftime show, Justin Timberlake ripped off part of Janet Jackson's costume, thus exposing one of her breasts to the audience. CBS quickly cut to an aerial view of the stadium, but it was too late. Half a millio~ viewers complained, and the federal government fined CBS $550,000. In America, a publicly exposed breast is considered scandalous. In other cultures, however, such displays are common. Objectively speaking, the display of a woman's breast is neither right nor ~ron~. Cultural Relativism begins with the valuable insight that many of our practices are like this-they are only cultural products. Then it goes wrong by inferring that, because some practices are like this, all of them must be. The second les~on has to do with keeping an open mind. In the course of growing up, each of us has acqmred some strong feelings: We have learned to think of some types of conduct as acceptable, and we have learned to reject others. Occasionally, we may find ~hose feelings challenged. For example, we may have been taught that homosexuality is Immoral, and we may feel uncomfortable around gay people and see them as alien and perv~rted. But then ~omeone suggests that this may be prejudice; that there is nothing wrong With homosexuality; that gay people are just people, like anyone else, who happen to be ~ttracted to members of the same sex. Because we feel so strongly about this, we may find It hard to take this line of reasoning seriously. Cultural Relativism provides an antidote for this kind of dogmatism. When he tells the story of the Greeks and Callatians, Herodotus adds: Po~ if anyone, no matter who, were given the opportunity of choosing from amongst all the natiOns of the world the set of beliefs which he thought best, he would inevitably, after careful 132 CHAPTER 3 Ethical Relativism consideration of their relative merits, choose that of his own country. Everyone without exception believes his own native customs, and the religion he was brought up in, to be the best. Realizing this can help broaden our minds. We can see that our feelings are not necessarily perceptions of the truth-they may be nothing more than the result ~f cultura~ conditioning. Thus, when we hear it suggested that some element of our social code IS not really the best, and we find ourselves resisting the suggestion, we might stop and remember this. Then we will be more open to discovering the truth, whatever it might be. We can understand the appeal of Cultural Relativism, then, despite its shortcomings. It is an attractive theory because it is based on a genuine insight: that many of the practices and attitudes we find natural are really only cultural products. Moreover, keeping this thought firmly in view is important if we want to avoid arrogance and keep ~n open mind. These are important points, not to be taken lightly. But we can accept them without accepting the whole theory. THE ESCAPE FROM POSITIVISM Kwame Appiah Kwame Anthony Appiah ( 1954- ) was born in London and raised in Ghana. Appiah's uncle was king of the Ashanti and his grandfather was British Chancellor of the Exchequer. He took his B.A. and Ph.D. from Clare College, Cambridge University. In addition to Cambridge, he has held appointments at Yale, Cornell, Duke, Harvard, and Princeton, where he now serves in the Philosophy Department and the· University Center for Human Values. His work has been wide~ranging, including contributions in semantics and ethics. His current interests range over African and African~American intel~ lectual history and literary studies, ethics and philosophy of mind and language; and he has also taught regularly about African traditional religions; but his major current work has to do (a) with the philosophical foundations of liberalism .and (b) with questions of method in arriving at knowledge about values. He has published numerous books including The Ethics of Identity (2005). Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers (2006), and Experiments in Ethics (2008), He has alsopublishedthree novels. PROFESSIONAL RELATIVISM Cultural anthropologists are great enthusiasts for other cultures. That is, after all, their business. Once, not so long ago, before everybody in the world was within hearing distance of a radio, before Michael Jackson was famous on the steppes of Inner Mongolia and Pele was known along the banks of the Congo River, an anthropologist could set out from Europe or North America for places that had never before seen the "white man." There, at the ground zero of ethnography, the moment of first contact, he or she could come face to face with people who were completely unknown. Their gods, their food, their language, their dance, their music, their carving, their medicines, their family lives, their rituals of peace and war, their jokes and the stories they told their children: all could be wonderfully, fascinatingly strange. Ethnographers spent long days and hard nights in the rain forest or the desert or the tundra, battling fever or frostbite, struggling against loneliness as they Appiah, Kwame. "The Escape From Positivism" from Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers, pp. 13-31. Copyright © 2006 by W. W. Norton. Reprinted by permission of the publisher. 133 
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