Write on the Cultural Relativism in about 150 words. (10 Marks). UPSC MAINS 2022
- Cultural relativism defines that there is ethically, morally, and culturally no absolute truth, and that when observing another culture one must suspend all judgments because those judgments are inherently ethnocentric.
Cultural relativists claims the following:
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- Different societies have different moral codes.
- The moral code of a society determines what is right within that society; so, if a society says that a certain action is right, then that action is right, at least in that society.
- There is no objective standard that can be used to judge one society’s code as better than another’s. There are no moral truths that hold for all people at all times.
- The moral code of our own society has no special status; it is but one among many.
- It is arrogant for us to judge other cultures. We should always be tolerant of them.
- Universalists holds that more “primitive” cultures will eventually evolve to have the same system of law and rights as Western cultures. Cultural relativists hold an opposite, but similarly rigid viewpoint, that a traditional culture is unchangeable. “Cultural relativists” believe human rights should take account of cultural differences.
- Will Kymlicka argues that members of different cultures can share a commun political organization but justice may require that sorne of these groups be granted distinct rights or powers. He describes this as "group-differentiated citizenship" . His argument has been characterized as an attempt to defend a "Liberal Nationalism" .'' Kymlicka''s approach involves "special Iegal or constitutional measures. above and beyond the comrnon rights of citizenship", of which there are three basic types: "
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- self-government rights have as their central concem "political autonomy or territorial jutisdiction."
- polyethnic rights provide public funding for particular cultural practices and "exemptions from laws and regulations" that disadvantage minority cultures.
- special representation rights is the "proportional" or "guaranteed''. representation of certain groups in political deliberation.
- Bhikhu Parekh advocates moral diversity (manifested here as a different perception of the human being and the worth he/she represents by the fact of being human but also by the fact of being an individual) where it grows out of the cultural specificity of a given state/social unit.
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