Week 3 Lecture 1: Between Perspective and the Sacred: Understanding Relativism

Relativism and Spirituality

Relativism

The idea that truth, values, and meanings are not fixed/ universal, but instead depend on social/ individual context

Cultural Relativism

The view that beliefs and practices need to be understood through their own culture

• No culture is viewed as “superior”, rejects the idea of a single, logical truth

Cultures cannot be judged by standards of a different culture, but rather on their own terms, with their own symbolic logic

Is not “anything goes”, but a model of holistic analysis

Franz Boas

Established cultural relativism

Cultural Anthropologist

“Father of anthropology”, pushed back against scientific racism, the idea that civilization is “evolution”

Moral relativism

What is “morally right/ wrong” depends on norms of culture

Concerned with philosophical debates about ethical universalism

Claims about morality rather than specific cultural practices

Indigenous perspective on cultural relativism

Understanding that the divine gave different practices to different groups, but rejects the idea that beliefs are isolated

Unique, place-based protocols from the same authority

• Pluralistic, but interconnected

Ethnocentrism

Belief or tendency to view one’s own culture as the center, norm, and benchmark (and superior)

Eurocentrism

Practice of viewing the world from a European-centered perspective

Assuming European culture/ history to be the “norm” and “superior”

• Has been used for subjugation (i.e. imperialism/ manifest destiny)

Emic perspective

Grounded in experience and practice

Emic perspective on pilgrimages

A way to connect with a sacred place, with the divine, a way to receive blessings

Etic perspective

Grounded in external frameworks to analyze cultures

Etic perspective on pilgrimages

Pilgrimages as social institutions shaping local economies