Revision summary
Relativism asks that custom be read in its own history. Boas used it against unilinear racial stages. Herskovits and Benedict spread it as method and public teaching. It is a brake on ethnocentrism, not a moral blank cheque. Rights debates mark its political edge.
Model answer
Copper italics in this answer — like this — are the key facts. Each one is unpacked in the Facts & figures rail.
Introduction
Cultural relativism says a custom must be understood in its own cultural frame before it is ranked. It was Boas’s answer to ethnocentric ladders.
Body
The claim
- Franz Boas and Herskovits taught that values are historically local. Potlatch or caste purity is not a failed Europe.
- Method: hold judgment while the ethnography is built. Benedict’s Patterns of Culture popularised the stance.
Limits
- Relativism is a research ethic, not a ban on criticising violence.
- Universalists in human rights, and Sahlins versus Obeyesekere on Captain Cook, show the fight over how far local meaning goes.
- Female genital cutting and untouchability are understood locally and still judged in law and policy.
Flow diagram
flowchart TD CR[Cultural relativism] --> B[Boas Herskovits] CR --> M[Understand in context] CR --> L[Not a ban on judgment]
Conclusion
Cultural relativism blocks racial ranking of whole peoples. It does not make every practice beyond critique once the local meaning is known.
Quick related
Students also ask
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Does relativism mean anything goes?
No. It means understand first. Law and ethics may still constrain harm.
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Is it the same as moral nihilism?
No. It is methodological humility, not the claim that morals are nothing.
Same topic · past papers
UPSC has asked this before
These previous-year questions sit on the same topic. Open one to practise the earlier ask.
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2022 · Q4(b) · Anthropology GS 1 · 15 marks
Discuss the historical and cultural contexts that led to superseding ethnocentrism with cultural relativism in anthropology
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