Discuss the extent that cultural      relativism would be a useful approach to understanding and interacting      with people in your own society that did (or do) the same.

Cultural Anthropology gives three distinct meanings of cultural relativism: a moral stance that requires
anthropologists to suspend moral and ethical judgments when interacting with a
culture different from their own, a methodological strategy that allows the
anthropologist to pay specific attention to the uniqueness of a culture, and an
epistemological position that cultures are unique and therefore knowledge about
different cultures is almost inherently not comparable. (Sec. 1.3).

In your forum contribution:

Discuss what you see as the strengths
and weaknesses of each of these three kinds of relativism.

Identify one belief or practice in
another culture that you find puzzling, strange, or troubling, and then
discuss the extent that cultural relativism is a useful approach to
understanding and interacting with the people who hold it.

Discuss the extent that cultural
relativism would be a useful approach to understanding and interacting
with people in your own society that did (or do) the same.

Explore the extent to which whether
one is studying in one’s own country or in another makes a difference in
the applicability of cultural relativism to one’s research.

 

Choose one of the “Consider This” boxes that
Nowak and Laird present us with in Chapters 1 and 2 of Cultural
Anthropology
or discuss the topics below from the film Margaret Mead: Coming
of Age
, available in the Films
On Demand database, in the Ashford Online Library.

The
topics covered are:

Whether the UN’s Universal Declaration
of Human Rights should be applicable to all cultures

Whether it is possible to truly view a
culture without being influenced by the cultural constructs of our own
culture

How our understanding of what it means
to be a patient in the United States reflects our different cultural
backgrounds and affiliations

In the film Margaret Mead: Coming of
Age, it is mentioned that Mead’s initial research was criticized on
methodological grounds. Why was that? Do you consider the criticism
warranted or not warranted? What could she have done differently?

Based on the film and the book,
discuss the challenges of field work. What do you think would be the most
difficult? What has changed since the time of Mead?

 

 

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