Relativism

Relativism is a philosophical concept claiming that there is no absolute truth. Truth is relative— a subjective value dependent upon perception.

Essentially, relativism postulates that the limits of the mind and the conditions under which knowledge can be gained affect knowledge in general. This philosophical framework is not limited to a single doctrine but is instead a myriad of views that shares one common theme: the idea that all forms of experience and even reality itself must be seen as relative to other things. Strands of relativism with this common theme turn up in virtually every area of philosophy. However, relativism has also spilled over into academic disciplines outside philosophy and into American popular culture as well. In fact, relativism plays a central role in America's culture wars.

In his Philosophical Investigations, philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein claimed that we humans can understand and evaluate our own beliefs and behaviors or the beliefs and behaviors of others only within the social, historical, and cultural context out of which those behaviors or beliefs emerged. This philosophical position was taken up by anthropologists. For the discipline of anthropology, relativism is a methodology. Researchers must suspend their own beliefs and their own social, historical, and cultural biases in order to understand the beliefs and behaviors of others within their social, historical, and cultural context. The purpose of this methodology is to avoid what sociologist William Graham Sumner called ethnocentrism. Ethnocentrism involves the application of one's own cultural standards to assess the culture of others—putting one's own group at the center of the universe and evaluating all other groups based on that standard.

It is this kind of relativism—cultural relativism—that is of most importance to those studying multiculturalism. Cultural relativism was a response to the ethnocentrism that existed in the West. The Western tradition promulgates the idea that Western art is the most aesthetically sound, Western values are the most virtuous, and Western beliefs are truth with a capital “T.” According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the first use of the term cultural relativism was by Alain Locke, a philosopher and social theorist. Locke used the term in 1924 to describe Robert Lowie's “extreme cultural relativism” in Lowie's 1917 book Culture and Ethnology.

Anthropologist Franz Boas introduced the principle of cultural relativism to the discipline of anthropology in his research. Boas first articulated the idea in 1887 when he wrote, “civilization is not something absolute, but … is relative, and … our ideas and conceptions are true only so far as our civilization goes.” Boas argued that one's own culture mediates perception. This, according to Boas, can limit one's perceptions. What is most interesting about Boas's work on culture is his definition of what culture entails. Boas understood culture to be much broader than one's taste in food, art, music, or social or religious practices. For Boas, culture was “the totality of the mental and physical reactions and activities that characterize the behavior of the individuals composing a social group collectively and individually in relation to their natural environment, to other groups, to members of the group itself, and of each individual to himself.”

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