• What Are The Arguments For Cultural Relativism?

In the era of globalization, it has been more convenient for people to access to foreign culture and develop a better understanding towards its values and attitudes. Yet, being able to put away all preconceived ideas when exploring an unfamiliar culture is extremely critical. In this context, cultural relativism would be a useful anthropological approach to be adopted when one is trying to interpret a foreign culture. It is an aesthetics advocate that all cultures are of equal value that no single culture is uniquely privileged over any others. This essay will argue for cultural relativism because it encourages people to respect and comprehend a culture from a neutral point of view. This will be asserted by demonstrating how interpreting the

Ethnocentrism, on the other hand, is a contrasting idea to cultural relativism. It is a principle posit that people should see themselves metaphorically as being the center of the universe; one’s own culture as more superior and natural than the others. People adopted this particular mindset would develop negative judgments towards customs and cultures that violate their norms because they only see the culture they familiar with as ‘normal’ and ‘acceptable’. It leads to discrimination, racism or persecution, or worst and extreme cases, war and genocide. History has proven that miserable consequences could be brought out by people who are too arrogant to respect foreign cultures; European imperialism in the 19th and 20th century is the product of Ethnocentrism. “Ethnocentrism stems from the way that Europeans conquered and subdued the indigenous peoples of Africa, Central and South America and Australasia through the spread of colonialism”(Giddens, 1997). Europeans assumed they were more civilized and privileged than other countries. Therefore there was a need for them to control their colonies in order to help these countries to civilize up to their standards. It leads to serious racism phenomenon at that time since indigenous people were seen as savages by European, following the trend of slave trade. In addition, the most extreme and tragic example of ethnocentrism occurred in the history was the Nazi Germany. Hitler and many of his followers ignorantly believed that their race was the purest and was superior to the Jewish race. As a result of this prejudice, thousands of innocent Jewish people were slaughtered and tortured in concentration camps. The above examples are the evidence of how adopting an ethnocentrism principle instead of cultural relativism could cause racism, war or even