Grief And A Headhunters Rage Analysis

Cultural relativism has long ben a key concept in anthropology. This term asserts the idea that because each culture holds its own values and practices. The most important aspect of cultural relativism is that one should not make any value judgments concerning cultural differences. Those in the field of anthropology stress that the study of customs and norms should be value-free, and that the appropriate role of the anthropologist is that of the observer and the recorder. When in the field it is imperative to withhold one’s own values and control one’s spontaneous reactions to a number of exotic phenomena. If an anthropologist in the field simply can not keep their own values and reactions to themselves, they will truly not learn or understand

the people under study. Without truly understanding the people under study, it would be impossible to establish and form of mutual trust. Simply put, our individual ideas and concepts as a society are true, but only so far as out society goes. Due to implicit biases, the practice of cultural relativism is easier to do in theory, however, we as a society must consider the idea of cultural relativism when observing and engaging with another society.
An excellent example of cultural relativism was documented in Renato Rosaldo’s article; Grief and a Headhunters Rage.

Rosaldo observed the Ilongot ritual of headhunting in northern Luzon, in the Philippines. When asked the question of why, and older Ilogot man stated, “to carry out his anger.” The act of decapitating the victim’s head and disposing of it allows the men of this society to vent, and cast off the anger. However, Rosaldo did not understand this ritual for quite some time during his fieldwork. He even stated, “Either you understand it, or you don’t.” If one (like Rosaldo initially had) were to look at this as a comparison between cultural and moral norms in the United States and the Ilogot, there are vast differences which can be perceived differently and incorrectly. However, to truly understand the ritual of headhunting, one must consider the subject’s position within a field of social relations. It wasn’t until 14 years after first recording the Ilogot ritual that Rosaldo began to grasp its, “overwhelming force.” It is true that life experiences both inhibit and enable particular kinds of insight. For example, Rosaldo did not place judgment on the Ilogot ritual of headhunting, however, he did not grasp the force of the Ilogot’s grief, rage, and headhunting until his wife, Michelle’s death in 1981. Moreover, Rosado’s article showed both excellent and poor signs of cultural relativism. There was never any judgment on the ritual or the people partaking in it. The

article was well documented and showed little signs of implicit bias aside from the explicit biases that hindered Rosaldo from truly understanding the practices and emotions involved in headhunting.
One other example can be found in Nancy Scheper-Hughes’ Death Without Weeping.

Hughes was a twenty-year-old Peace Corps volunteer when she went to northeast Brazil as a community health worker. She returned to the community fifteen years later as an anthropologist and conducted four field expeditions recording the lives of mothers and their children. She documented the sufferings of around one hundred women through family and reproductive histories, migration and employment histories. Factors such as poverty, hunger, rural medicine, death and illness, body image, and maternal-infant bonding were shown to be part of what can be referred to as a ritual as a busy intersection. Hughes recorded that in both the public and private sectors within the community, the death of a child is not seen as a serious or terribly urgent issue. She proposed that, “when conditions of high fertility and high infant mortality prevail, which is the case among the shantytown mothers, women distance themselves psychologically from their weak and vulnerable infants and withdraw love and care.” The article was well documented and showed little signs of implicit bias and displayed a relatively exemplary display of cultural

relativism.