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If I try to understand a practice from the inside first, have I signed up to relativism?

Aroha Tipene Fellow
· 5 replies
Society & cultureAfrican & AfricanaAmericanLatin AmericanClifford GeertzFranz Boas#cultural-relativism#indigenous-philosophy#method-and-doctrine#understanding-practices
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Its coordinates: 6.7 Social Ontology · 6.15 Philosophy of Social Science · 6.31 Philosophy of Culture

I teach at a Māori-language school. When visitors come, I always ask them to understand our practices on their own terms before judging them: why we greet the way we do, why the river is treated as an ancestor, why some places are tapu. Most visitors are respectful. But last term a visiting lecturer told me, kindly, that this was “cultural relativism” and that cultural relativism is philosophically indefensible, because it means you can never criticise anything, even slavery.

I was stung, and I did not know how to reply. I do not think nothing can be criticised. Our own tikanga is argued about all the time, by us. I just think you should understand something before you condemn it.

So, as a beginner:

  1. Is what I am asking for really relativism?
  2. If not, what is the difference between what I am asking for and the relativism the lecturer was attacking?
  3. Is there a name for the position I actually hold?
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5 answers

Accepted answer

  1. Kwame Asante

    ✓ Accepted answer Fellow

    Aroha, you are asking for something the lecturer ran together with something else, and the distinction between them is the most important thing to know about the word relativism.

    Methodological relativism: to understand a practice, suspend judgement and reconstruct it in the participants' own terms. That is what you ask of visitors. It is a rule about how to study, and it goes back in anthropology to Franz Boas, who insisted that cultures be understood through their own history rather than ranked on a single ladder with Europe at the top.

    Doctrinal relativism: there are no standards applying across cultures, so cross-cultural judgement is illegitimate. That is what the lecturer attacked, and his slavery objection is aimed at it.

    Nothing in the first commits you to the second. You can reconstruct a practice in its own terms and still evaluate it later; in fact, an evaluation made without that reconstruction is usually an evaluation of a caricature.

    Your position might simply be called methodological relativism with ethical universalism, or, in plain words, understand first, then judge. Kwasi Wiredu, whose work I teach, held something close to it: he insisted on understanding Akan thought in its own concepts, and he also held that some moral requirements are universal and that some Akan customs fail them. The two commitments fit together.

    Helpful · 1
    1. Aroha Tipene

      Fellow

      Kia ora, Kwame, and everyone. “Understand first, then judge” is exactly what I meant, and I like knowing it has a respectable name. I will use Sam's question next time a visitor tries this. And Mateo's point that the condemnations without understanding were often about practices that had been misdescribed is something my students will recognise immediately.

      Helpful · 1

Other answers

  1. Mateo Quispe

    Fellow

    From Peru: the lecturer's move is common, and its effect, intended or not, is to excuse visitors from doing the work of understanding. Indigenous practices in the Andes were condemned for centuries by people who never learned Quechua. When understanding finally came, some of the condemnations turned out to be accurate and many turned out to be about practices that had been badly misdescribed. Understanding first is not relativism. It is basic honesty about evidence.

    Helpful · 2
  2. Valentina Ríos

    Fellow

    Clifford Geertz gave a famous lecture called “Anti Anti-Relativism” in the 1980s, which might comfort you. His point, roughly, was that he did not want to defend relativism as a doctrine, but he was more worried by its opponents, whose fear of relativism often served as an excuse for parochialism. Being against the people who are against relativism is a different position from being a relativist, and it sounds close to yours.

    Helpful · 3
  3. Sam Ellery

    Fellow

    One practical tip: when someone calls you a relativist, ask them which claim they mean, “we should understand before judging” or “we cannot judge at all”. If they mean the first, they have to explain what is wrong with understanding. If they mean the second, they are attacking a view you do not hold, and you can say so.