Baguio City National High School – Senior High School

First Semester, SY 2023-2024

Understanding Culture, Society and Politics (UCSP)
Quarter 1: Module 3: IMPORTANCE OF CULTURAL RELATIVISM IN
ATTAINING CULTURAL UNDERSTANDING
MELC: * Explain the importance of cultural relativism in attaining cultural understanding.

Activity 1. HIDDEN TREASURES. Testing, testing, let’s try to find out how high is your
vocabulary level on the topic we are going to discuss in this chapter. Find at least 10
words within the box referring to cultural relativism. You can find them across,
backwards or diagonal. You can start now whenever you are ready. GAME!
L A R U T L U C S S O R C R A M P S
S E T H N O C E N T R I S M O O N D
A L V E S W R V I E W N B R J S R L
O S E I T I L I B I S S O P U A A A
P E R S P E C T I V E T R I D N D C
S U M M E E R A C T I O B N G W I I
Q U O A B S O L U T E Y A T M E A T
D O C T I R N E F F G T H I E P L I
F R A M E D T R I E S S H U N I O R
M S I V I T A L E R L A R U T L U C
NAME GAME. After finding the words, how about you define them? Write the
correct term of what is being defined, described or asked based from the words
you looped in the activity above. Your time starts now. GO!
1. Belief of one’s own race or ethnic origin.
2. The principle that an individual person’s beliefs and
activities should be understood by others in terms of that
individual’s own culture.
3. Everything that happens within a culture must and should
not be questioned by outsiders.
4. Creates questions about cultural practices in terms of who
is accepting them and why.
5. The opposite of absolute.
6. The process of forming an opinion or evaluation
by discerning and comparing.
7. Ideas about morally correct and acceptable behavior.
8. Associated with political views, practices, and policies
of extreme change.
9. A thing that may happen or be the case.
10. Relating to different cultures or comparison between them
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 What Is It

PICTURE TALK. Study the picture below after which answer the question
that follows.

https://www.montageinternational.org/blog/2016/7/29/febj147xzht1lmu79glcp6mcpie4x2

1. What does the picture talks about?

2. How many languages can you speak and understand?

3. Do you appreciate other languages aside from your own spoken
language? Why?

LET’S DISCUSS. ETHNOCENTRISM and CULTURAL RELATIVISM. For you

to deepen your understanding of the lesson let’s start your journey of
discussion.

Despite how much humans have in common, cultural differences are

far more prevalent than cultural universals. For example, while all cultures
have languages, analysis of particular language structures and
conversational etiquette reveal tremendous differences. In some Middle
Eastern cultures, it is common to stand close to others in conversation.
North Americans keep more distance and maintain a larger “personal
space.” Even something as simple as eating and drinking varies greatly from
culture to culture. If your professor comes into an early morning class
holding a mug of liquid, what do you assume she is drinking? In the United
States, the mug is most likely filled with coffee, not Earl Grey tea, a favorite
in England, or Yak Butter tea, a staple in Tibet.

The way cuisines vary across cultures fascinates many people. Some
travelers pride themselves on their willingness to try unfamiliar foods, like

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celebrated food writer Anthony Bourdain, while others return home
expressing gratitude for their native culture’s fare. Often, people in the
United States express disgust at other cultures’ cuisine and think that it’s
gross to eat meat from a dog or guinea pig, for example, while they don’t
question their own habit of eating cows or pigs. Such attitudes are
an example of ethnocentrism, or evaluating and judging another culture
based on how it compares to one’s own cultural norms.

A high level of appreciation for one’s own culture can be healthy; a

shared sense of community pride, for example, connects people in a society.
But ethnocentrism can lead to disdain or dislike for other cultures and could
cause misunderstanding and conflict. People with the best intentions
sometimes travel to a society to “help” its people, because they see them as
uneducated or backward—essentially inferior.

KEY POINTS
 Ethnocentrism: often entails the belief that one’s own race or ethnic
group is the most important or that some or all aspects of its culture
are superior to those of other groups; the tendency to look at the
world primarily from the perspective of one’s own culture.
Within this ideology, individuals will judge other groups in
relation to their own particular ethnic group or culture, especially
with concern to language, behavior, customs, and religion.
 Xenocentrism: one’s exposure to cultural practices of others may
make one to give preferences to the ideas, lifestyle and products
of other cultures
 Cultural relativism: is the belief that the concepts and values of a
culture cannot be fully translated into, or fully understood in, other
languages; that a specific cultural artifact (e.g., a ritual) has to be
understood in terms of the larger symbolic system of which it is a part.
 Cultural relativism: is the principle that an individual person’s
beliefs and activities should be understood by others in terms of that
individual’s own culture.
THREE (3) IDEAS OF CULTURAL RELATIVISM:
a. moral relativism
b. situational relativism
c. cognitive relativism
Cultural relativism is a principle that was established as axiomatic in
anthropological research by Franz Boas in the first few decades of the
twentieth century, and later popularized by his students. Boas first
articulated the idea in 1887: “…civilization is not something absolute,
but… is relative, and… our ideas and conceptions are true only so far
as our civilization goes.”
 Culture Shock: an experience of personal disorientation when
confronted with an unfamiliar way of life
 Cultural Imperialism: the deliberate imposition of one’s own
cultural values on another culture

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 Ethnocentrism, a term coined by William Graham Sumner, is the
tendency to see and evaluate other cultures in terms of one’s own race, nation,
or culture. This rests on the belief of the superiority of one’s own culture or
ethnic group compared to others which leads to making incorrect assumptions
about others’ behavior based on your own norms, values, and beliefs. For
instance, reluctance or aversion to trying another culture’s cuisine is
ethnocentric. While societies have the tendency to display or manifest certain
amount of ethnocentrism, cultural sensitivity is also expected especially if one is
a visitor. Non-sensitivity to cultural practices of other groups may be
misinterpreted and this may lead to conflict with others or maybe seen by
others as a rude behavior especially when articulated or expressed in front of
others. Learning to take the role of the other person gives one the ability to see
the perspective of the other people articulating or giving judgment. To do this,
it is important: (1) study the cultural context in which the action occurs, (2)
determine the circumstances of place, time and condition surrounding it, and
(3) look into the reasoning behind any cultural element.

A good example of ethnocentrism is referring to parts of Asia as the

“Far East.” One might question, “Far east of where?”

An example of ethnocentrism in culture is the Asian cultures across all

the countries of Asia. Throughout Asia, the way of eating is to use chopsticks
with every meal. These people may find it unnecessary to find that people in
other societies, such as the American society, eat using forks, spoons, knives,
etc. Since these countries use chopsticks to eat every meal, they find it
foolish for other cultures to not use utensils similar to chopsticks; however,
they do accept the fact that they use different utensils for eating. This
example is not something extreme that could lead to genocide or war, but it
is a large enough gap between these cultures for people to see their way of
eating as the natural or best way to typically eat their food.

Ethnocentrism can be so strong that when confronted with all of the

differences of a new culture, one may experience disorientation and frustration.
In sociology, we call this culture shock. A traveler from Chicago might find the
nightly silence of rural Montana unsettling, not peaceful. An exchange student
from China might be annoyed by the constant interruptions in class as other
students ask questions—a practice that is considered rude in China. Perhaps
the Chicago traveler was initially captivated by Montana’s quiet beauty and the
Chinese student was originally excited to see a U.S.-style classroom firsthand.
But as they experience unanticipated differences from their own culture, their
excitement gives way to discomfort and doubts about how to behave
appropriately in the new situation. Eventually, as people learn more about a
culture and adapt to its norms, they recover from culture shock.

Culture shock may appear because people aren’t always expecting

cultural differences. Anthropologist Ken Barger (1971) discovered this when

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he conducted a participatory observation in an Inuit community in the
Canadian Arctic. Originally from Indiana, Barger hesitated when invited to
join a local snowshoe race. He knew he’d never hold his own against these
experts. Sure enough, he finished last, to his mortification. But the tribal
members congratulated him, saying, “You really tried!” In Barger’s own
culture, he had learned to value victory. To the Inuit people, winning was
enjoyable, but their culture valued survival skills essential to their
environment: how hard someone tried could mean the difference between life
and death. Over the course of his stay, Barger participated in caribou hunts,
learned how to take shelter in winter storms, and sometimes went days with
little or no food to share among tribal members. Trying hard and working
together, two non-material values, were indeed much more important than
winning.

OVERCOMING CULTURE SHOCK, an example

During her summer vacation, Caitlin flew from Chicago to Madrid to

visit Maria, the exchange student she’d befriended the previous semester. In
the airport, she heard rapid, musical Spanish being spoken all around her.
Exciting as it was, she felt isolated and disconnected. Maria’s mother kissed
Caitlin on both cheeks when she greeted her. Her imposing father kept his
distance. Caitlin was half asleep by the time supper was served—at 10 p.m.!
Maria’s family sat at the table for hours, speaking loudly, gesturing, and
arguing about politics, a taboo dinner subject in Caitlin’s house. They served
wine and toasted their honored guest. Caitlin had trouble interpreting her
hosts’ facial expressions, and didn’t realize she should make the next toast.
That night, Caitlin crawled into a strange bed, wishing she hadn’t come. She
missed her home and felt overwhelmed by the new customs, language, and
surroundings. She’d studied Spanish in school for years—why hadn’t it
prepared her for this?
What Caitlin hadn’t realized was that people depend not only on
spoken words but also on subtle cues like gestures and facial expressions, to
communicate. Cultural norms accompany even the smallest nonverbal
signals (DuBois 1951). They help people know when to shake hands, where
to sit, how to converse, and even when to laugh. We relate to others through
a shared set of cultural norms, and ordinarily, we take them for granted.
For this reason, culture shock is often associated with traveling abroad,
although it can happen in one’s own country, state, or even hometown.
Anthropologist Kalervo Oberg (1960) is credited with first coining the term
“culture shock.” In his studies, Oberg found that most people found
encountering a new culture to be exciting at first. But bit by bit, they became
stressed by interacting with people from a different culture who spoke another
language and used different regional expressions. There was new food to
digest, new daily schedules to follow, and new rules of etiquette to learn.
Living with these constant adaptive challenges can make people feel
incompetent and insecure. People react to frustration in a new culture, Oberg
found, by initially rejecting it and glorifying one’s own culture. An American

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visiting Italy might long for a “real” pizza or complain about the unsafe driving
habits of Italians compared to people in the United States.
It helps to remember that culture is learned. Everyone is ethnocentric
to an extent, and identifying with one’s own country is natural.
Caitlin’s shock was minor compared to that of her friends Dayar and
Mahlika, a Turkish couple living in married student housing on campus. And
it was nothing like that of her classmate Sanai. Sanai had been forced to flee
war-torn Bosnia with her family when she was fifteen. After two weeks in
Spain, Caitlin had developed a bit more compassion and understanding for
what those people had gone through. She understood that adjusting to a new
culture takes time. It can take weeks or months to recover from culture
shock, and it can take years to fully adjust to living in a new culture.
By the end of Caitlin’s trip, she’d made new lifelong friends. She’d
stepped out of her comfort zone. She’d learned a lot about Spain, but she’d
also discovered a lot about herself and her own culture.

Reluctance or aversion to trying another culture’s cuisine is

ethnocentric. Social scientists strive to treat cultural differences as neither
inferior nor superior. That way, they can understand their research topics
within the appropriate cultural context and examine their own biases and
assumptions at the same time.

This approach is known as “cultural relativism.” Cultural relativism is

the principle that an individual person’s beliefs and activities should be
understood by others in terms of that individual’s own culture. A key
component of cultural relativism is the concept that nobody, not even
researchers, comes from a neutral position. The way to deal with our own
assumptions is not to pretend that they don’t exist but rather to
acknowledge them, and then use the awareness that we are not neutral to
inform our conclusions.

An example of cultural relativism might include slang words from

specific languages (and even from particular dialects within a language). For
instance, the word “tranquilo” in Spanish translates directly to “calm” in
English. However, it can be used in many more ways than just as an adjective
(e.g., the seas are calm). Tranquilo can be a command or suggestion
encouraging another to calm down. It can also be used to ease tensions in an
argument (e.g., everyone relaxes) or to indicate a degree of self-composure
(e.g., I’m calm). There is not a clear English translation of the word, and in
order to fully comprehend its many possible uses, a cultural relativist would
argue that it would be necessary to fully immerse oneself in cultures where
the word is used.

The Cross-Cultural Relationship is the idea that people from different

cultures can have relationships that acknowledge, respect and begin to
understand each other’s diverse lives. People with different backgrounds
can help each other see possibilities that they never thought were there
because of limitations, or cultural proscriptions, posed by their own
traditions.
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Traditional practices in certain cultures can restrict opportunity because
they are “wrong” according to one specific culture. Becoming aware of these
new possibilities will ultimately change the people that are exposed to the
new ideas. This cross-cultural relationship provides hope that new
opportunities will be discovered but at the same time it is threatening. The
threat is that once the relationship occurs, one can no longer claim that any
single culture is the absolute truth.

Cultural relativism is the ability to understand a culture on its own

terms and not to make judgments using the standards of one’s own culture.
The goal of this is to promote understanding of cultural practices that are
not typically part of one’s own culture. Using the perspective of cultural
relativism leads to the view that no one culture is superior than another
culture when compared to systems of morality, law, politics, etc. It is a
concept that cultural norms and values derive their meaning within a
specific social context. This is also based on the idea that there is no absolute
standard of good or evil, therefore every decision and judgment of what is
right and wrong is individually decided in each society. The concept of
cultural relativism also means that any opinion on ethics is subject to the
perspective of each person within their particular culture. Overall, there is
no right or wrong ethical system. In a holistic understanding of the term
cultural relativism, it tries to promote the understanding of cultural
practices that are unfamiliar to other cultures such as eating insects,
genocides or genital cutting.

There are two different categories of cultural relativism:

Absolute: Everything that happens within a culture must and should not be
questioned by outsiders. The extreme example of absolute cultural
relativism would be the Nazi party’s point of view justifying the Holocaust.

Critical: Creates questions about cultural practices in terms of who is

accepting them and why. Critical cultural relativism also recognizes power
relationships.

Absolute cultural relativism is displayed in many cultures, especially

Africa, that practice female genital cutting. This procedure refers to the partial
or total removal of the external female genitalia or any other trauma to the
female reproductive/genital organs. By allowing this procedure to happen,
females are considered women and then are able to be married. FGC is
practiced mainly because of culture, religion and tradition. Outside cultures
such as the United States look down upon FGC, but are unable to stop this
practice from happening because it is protected by its culture.

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 by Unknown Artist
https://www.google.com/search?
published on 26 September
q=picture+of+a+lotus+feet+in+public+domain
2017
&tbm=isch&ved=2ahUKEwjm7aXj_oLqAhUYA6YKHbzvDKYQ2-

Cultural relativism can be seen with the Chinese culture and their
process of feet binding. Foot binding was to stop the growth of the foot and
make them smaller. The process often began between four and seven years
old. A ten-foot bandage would be wrapped around the foot forcing the toes
to go under the foot. It caused the big toe to be closer to the heel causing the
foot to bow. In China, small feet were seen as beautiful and a symbol of
status. The women wanted their feet to be “three-inch golden lotuses”. It was
also the only way to marry into money. Because men only wanted women
with small feet, even after this practice was banned in 1912, women still
continued to do it. To Western cultures the idea of feet binding might seems
torturous, but for the Chinese culture it was a symbol of beauty that has
been ingrained the culture for hundreds of years. The idea of beauty differs
from culture to culture.

Understanding the concepts of ethnocentrism, cultural relativism,

cultural imperialism, culture shock helps you to analyze and understand the
current trends in the society particularly in the community you belong
where people are no longer fully one custom-identity. Our communities
today is a composite of cross-cultural groups of people.