Cultural Relativism In War

It is 6:00 at night the news comes on story after story delivers crime, anger, death, devastation, and little hope. In less then 2 minutes the broadcaster is able to delivering these stories that are missing layers of information and deep history. The clips are unsettling, incomplete and often bias but it is all that is given and opinions start to form. The news suffers from ethnocentrism, the likeliness to use their culture’s standards to judge other people and actions within another culture, and has a large influence on how their audience perceives and processes information. Through cultural relativism we can shed light on some of these issues, start to understand the big picture, and stop judging.

Cultural relativism is the belief

that other people and their ways of doing things can be understood only in terms of the cultural context of those other people. In other words diversity of cultures is not considered right and wrong or good and bad. Cultural relativism is widely used in sociology. Understanding that all cultures deserve their own rights and are of equal value is critical within the study. There is not universal moral code so what may be considered moral in one society can be immoral in another. Looking at a simple scenario (telling our kids the tooth fairy is real) or larger scenario (cannibalisms in some African villages) cultural relativism is needed to formulate an unbiased understanding. By taking a stance to agree or disagree in either of these cases based on personal cultural norms would be ethnocentrism. It is very important for sociologist to include cultural relativism in all their work; without it their studies would be incomplete, misleading, and not a complete understanding of the question at hand.
While trying to put meaning to the term cultural relativism the article, Bandidos vs.

Cossacks: Was the Texas biker shootout over territory? (CNN), stood out. Why in many cultures is it expectable to gain allies, send thousands of troops to war, fight for territory, loose lives, and make heroes out of the participants, but most people frown upon outlaws gaining allies, fighting, and causing death over territory? Applying cultural relativism in both cases is important. Going into a study about war with a preconceived belief that the war is a waist of resources, money, and life will lead to a very bias study. Likewise if cultural relativism is not practiced the cultural influences about outlaws can blur a sociologist study, even thought like war the outlaws are protecting territory, reputation, and culture. “Sociology does not agree or disagree with, or approve or disapprove of, behaviors; sociology seeks to understand and explain behavior. And understanding an explaining is difficult to do unless one is willing to look at things in their own context.” (McIntyre)

We live in a world that nothing is, as it seems. Every one is raised within societies that have different cultures and subcultures. We conform to the norm and judge the not norm as influences come from media, peers, authority, and so on because we grow into ethnocentrism people. It takes great self-awareness to separate ethnocentrism when looking at any subject matter because our social norm runs deep. But it is imperative to gain cultural relativism if you want to understand any culture outside your

own.

The next time you turn on the news remember the broadcaster is being paid for ratings. They are talking at you, adding shock value against your norms, confirming your social norms while passive aggressively judging other cultures, and making sure you stay tuned for more. There is always more to the story. By educating yourself outside of you societal norm you will get clearer understanding of our world, be more worldly, an not so ignorant. “Ethnocentrism can lead to shocking case of ignorance. During a debate over the merits of bilingual education, for example, one congressman quite seriously said to Dr. David Edwards (head of the Joint National Committee on Languages): ‘If English was good enough for Jesus Christ, it’s good enough for me.’” (Bill Bryson 1990 [McIntyre].