Talk:Cultural relativism

Hey, ark, are you a conservative or libertarian or what? Do you know anything (or care anything about) issues that I also care about? If so, would you like to collaborate? We could make beautiful music together... Ed Poor, Tuesday, June 11, 2002

I'm an anarchist (by which I mean left-anarchist) trying to figure out how to be an anarch. I have a very wide range of interests so I'm sure ours must overlap somewhere. I wouldn't mind collaborating at all; what do you have in mind? -- Ark, Tuesday, June 11, 2002

1. Fewer and shorter arguments on talk pages
2. More and clearer articles written from NPOV

Topics you might be knowledgeable on seem to relate to your interest in de Mause's views on psychohistory. Could you delineate the views of other writers, in addition to de Mause, on subjects such as:

• anthropology
• primitive cultures
• incest

If you will stick to the following formula, you will not find yourself sidetracked into defending your contributions so much:

• Prominent authority in their field X said Y about Z.
• Pioneering researcher A said B about it.
• Traditional spokesman C (representing D) said E about it.

The value of this form of writing is that everyone who reads it, whether they disagree or agree with Y, B, or E, will at least accept that X, A, or C advocate their respective points of view.

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I agree that most human rights discourse rejects cultural relativism, and have no objection to the claim made concerning the UDHR.
Nevertheless, the relationship between universal human rights, and cultural rights, is more complex. It is flat out false to claim that "Article 24.3 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child explicitly rejects cultural relativism". It states:

States Parties shall take all effective and appropriate measures with a view to abolishing traditional practices prejudicial to the health of children.

This implicitly rejects cultural relativism (as most human rights documents do) but it does not explicitly reject cultural relativism. To "explicitly" reject cultural relativism the document would have to use the words "cultural relativism."

Or a synonym. And what is "traditional practices" if not a synonym for cultural relativism?

Ark, do you carry a vaccuum cleaner around, or what? I seem to keep getting sucked into debates with you. *grin*

To review the definition of synonym: "one of two or more words or expressions of the same language that have the same or nearly the same meaning in some or all senses" (Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary, online, available here (http://www.merriamwebster.com/). Traditional practices is a phrase that means, roughly, cultural practices recognized by a particular community as being long-established within that community. Cultural relativism means, roughly speaking, the belief that all cultural practices must be evaluated within the context of the practicing culture.

How are these synonyms? One refers to actions, the other to evaluation; arguing that they're synonyms is like arguing that "symptom" and "diagnosis" are synonyms because the former is used by the latter to evaluate the former. Pgdudda

All human rights document reject cultural relativism by their very natures. The mere assertion of the supremacy and universality of a human rights document (eg, Universal Declaration of Human Rights) logically entails the rejection of cultural relativism. The human rights become absolute morality which rules over every human being, irrespective of cultural and societal boundaries.

Does the CRC do this? Yes, it does. It does this the moment it mentions inalienable rights. That is, rights which cannot ever be bargained, sold, granted, given or taken away from a person, but may only be secured or violated. Taken with the fact that the CRC takes its authority from the UDHR, and reasserts the universality of human rights found in the UDHR. It really couldn't be any more cut and dried.

That's what "implicit" means. Explicit means that some article rejects cultural relativism. Article 24.3 does this.

If you understand the difference between "traditional practices" and "cultural relativism", you'll see that the CRC rejects the latter implicitly only. See below for (general, but more constrained) agreement with slrubenstein's argument. Pgdudda

The definition you provide is good for an anthropologist but there's a more useful and popular definition around; it's that all cultures have equal value. This definition preserves almost all of the meaning of the other definition. I can see reading what you wrote below that you may not agree on this last point, but the transformation from one to the other is quite simple. "you can only judge a practice with respect to its culture" merely leaves implicit how you're supposed to judge the culture itself with respect to another. The answer is they're supposed to have equal value with our own; whether or not it's meaningful to say that a culture has value. In the reverse direction, if all cultures have the same value respective to each other, and if the given practice can have only one value, then it follows that each practice must be evaluated only with respect to its culture.

And it's pretty clear that Article 24.3 rejects "colloquial CR" completely. I would say it rejects it explicitly, with Article 24.3 explicitly giving negative value to many cultural practices, irregardless of their value in the cultures to which they belong.

But anyways, this is not very useful because I already took out 'explicit' from the article. And then adequately punished SR for forcing me to do it. :) The article reads more anti-relativism than ever and it's perfectly NPOV. -- Ark (I take my victories where I can get them, there're few enough of them)

*chuckle* Fair enough. :-) On the whole, though, we seem to me more in agreement than disagreement here - but I would have said "Article 24.3 rejects cultural relativism implicitly, by explicitly giving negative value to many cultural practices, regardless of their value in the cultures to which they belong." (emphases omissible in citation) Pgdudda

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In fact, the document hedges a bit.

A mistake. The UDHR contains a non-contradiction clause (Article 30) which says that you can't interpret any article to undermine rights given by other articles. The CRC lacks such a clause but that's just a mistake.

Article 29 (c) The development of respect for the child's parents, his or her own cultural identity, language and values, for the national values of the country in which the child is living, the country from which he or she may originate, and for civilizations different from his or her own;

You'd have to be pretty twisted to interpret this as culturally relativistic.

Actually, this shows ignorance of the roots of cultural relativism. The concept itself was a reaction against those who attempted to build racist and ethnocentric models of cultural evolution. The original point of cultural relativism was that so-called "primitive" practices, such as lip-piercing, had to be evaluated in the context of the practicioners' culture, not in the context of "traditional"/Christian "morality". Article 29(c) merely reinforces this concept, while simultaneously using Article 24 to reject the extreme form of cultural relativism that doesn't bat an eylash at people endangering the lives of others (on the basis of "but there's no such thing as ‘absolute morality’").

Further, Article 30 (below) takes Article 29(c) a step further, and mandates that merely allowing a child to have appreciation for his or her parents' culture is insufficient; the child must be allowed to freely practice and participate in any and all practices that do not directly harm him or her. This is without regard to whether the child belongs to a "dominant" or "minority" culture, and without regard to the "dominant" culture's evaluation of the (non-harmful) practices in question. Thus, the three articles together can be taken to advocate cultural relativism in its original sense, while clearly rejecting the extreme form often expounded in present-day literature. Pgdudda

You're stretching it. Article 29(c) does a lot of things. It seeks to promote respect for traditional cultures and identities but it places this on the same level as respect for national cultures and foreign civilizations. Yes, Article 29(c) protects some form of culture (ie, stupid ritual practices and delusional group fantasies, which I am totally against btw since on my list of human rights, culture is either absent or at the very bottom, below even the right to the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth), but anyways. So, yes Article 29(c) protects some culture, but it doesn't protect the particular culture a child belongs to any more than any other culture.

Heh, just now realized that the above paragraph conflicts with what I wrote later (plus, it doesn't seem to have much of a point). But it's still significant that the CRC tries to promote respect for so many different cultures simultaneously. Why? Because the best way to teach atheism to students is to have a class on comparative religions. Nothing demonstrates how false religion is than a demonstration of just how petty and arbitrary religious rituals are. The same applies for culture.

Article 30 is harder for me to explain away, though I got a brilliant insight when I examined its exact wording.

One of the things you have to understand about child abuse and child-parent relationships is the use of the possessive. When people say that a girl is her mother's child, that subtly says that the girl is the property of the mother. When you say that a woman is a girl's parent, that reverses the flow of responsibility. Instead of the child being responsible for being "good", it's the parent's responsibility to be good.

Now, if you'll examine Article 30, it says that a child has a right to enjoy his or her own culture, his or her own religion and his or her own language. Neat trick, huh? It means that there may be a difference between the child's culture and the parent's culture! And a child raised among foreigners since infancy most certainly has a different culture from one raised among the natives. What you have here isn't protection of culture in any meaningful sense, but rather protection of children from a very particular form of oppression. Exactly what you'd expect from the CRC.

I like this last paragraph above. It's sensible, and clearly derivative from the language of the Article. Especially the portion about "protection of children from a very particular form of oppression" - such as Christian Scientists refusing to immunize or provide other preventive and curative health care for their children. It certainly does help to resolve one particular type of ethical dilemma. Pgdudda

So what does this mean? It means that Article 30 protects adolescents who want to wear punk clothes, get their noses pierced, and talk in street slang. But it does not protect parents who want to teach children to have oral sex with them on the excuse that this is their (the parent's) culture. This probably wasn't the intent of the authors of Article 30, but it's impossible to protect culture in any meaningful way within the framework of children's rights. And the authors of the CRC were too focused on children's rights to abrogate them in favour of culture.

So we have that Article 24.3 calls for the abolition of many cultural practices, Article 30(c) undermines culture in favour of an abstract "respect for all cultures" deal, and Article 30 turns culture completely inside out. -- Ark

Article 30: In those States in which ethnic, religious or linguistic minorities or persons of indigenous origin exist, a child belonging to such a minority or who is indigenous shall not be denied the right, in community with other members of his or her group, to enjoy his or her own culture, to profess and practise his or her own religion, or to use his or her own language.

I am NOT claiming that the document promotes cultural relativism. I am pointing out that the document is more complex than Ark thihnks, or represents it to be. Accordingly, it is false to claim that it explicitly rejects "cultural relativism." slrubenstein

So the CRC doesn't reject all culture. So f-ing what? Rejecting cultural relativism and rejecting culture are two very different things. Apparently, you wouldn't accept rejecting of cultural relativism without simultaneous rejection of all culture. Which of course is BS.

Article 24.3 explicitly rejects cultural relativism. A couple of other articles try to preserve some culture. Given how extremely vague articles #29 and #30 are, the only natural way to resolve any contradictions between them and the very specific article 24, is to let 24 win. Why? Because that way you can interpret the situation as preserving some culture and still preserving article 24. In fact, it's worse (for SR) than that since nothing in articles 29 or 30 actually protects culture in any substantial way. Consider this:

Article 30 says that a child has the right to enjoy his or her own culture. That's a pretty important word there since it means the CRC doesn't defend the infliction of culture upon the child.

Aritcle 29 says that a child should have "respect for their cultural values". Guess what? That means nothing. "respect" can mean practically anything, including as little as knowing about tradition and having some warm fuzzy feelings about it. This is supposed to be hedging article 24 subsection 3?

SR, don't ever give up your day job because you would suck as a lawyer.

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I have removed this portion from the article -- not because it is wrong, but because it belongs in a different article:

Closely associated with this is the belief that objective moral standards and codes of conduct do not exist. Here, 'objective' means independence from social mores, no matter how widespread. So for example, infanticide would remain wrong in an objective moral system even if nobody on the planet believed it to be wrong.

Few people believe in extreme cultural relativism. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights does not recognize any cultural boundaries to its universal applicability. Article 24.3 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child rejects cultural relativism. It states:

States Parties shall take all effective and appropriate measures with a view to abolishing traditional practices prejudicial to the health of children.

And while the Convention does protect some limited aspects of culture (eg, Articles 29 and 30), it can't be said to substantially protect it. Article 29 enjoins the parties to develop respect for a child's cultural identity and values. (emphasis added) Similarly, Article 30 states that children have a right to enjoy their culture. (emphasis added)

It is fair to say that human rights documents accept only those cultural practices they deem compatible with human rights, abrogating those which contradict them. In doing so, they assert their own supremacy over mere cultural beliefs.

As the first two words suggest, this section is really about moral relativism, not cultural relativism. I suggest that parts of it be placed in that article, and parts placed in an article on Human Rights. Slrubenstein

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In the aftermath of the Ark/Slr war, I just redirected to moral relativism -- so Allan Bloom's book has someplace to link to. If someone wants to dig into the history and figure out how _cultural_ and _moral_ relativism is different, please do so. --Ed Poor

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We shouldn't have to dig into the history of this page to make the distinction; the world Wikipedia is trying to describe is much bigger than Wikipedia! :-) In fact, there are indeed two kinds of relativism, and this article should not have been redirected. Not all cultural relativisms need be kinds of ethical relativism (or moral relativism: you can believe the truth of something that doesn't include ethical creeds depends on the culture), and you certainly don't have to be a cultural relativist to be an ethical relativist (you can simply say that ethics depend upon our own individual attitudes, not those of our cultures).

Can somebody please change it back and do enough Google research to write a stub?

--Larry Sanger 21:42 Oct 13, 2002 (UTC)