2: Culture, difference and human rights Flashcards
Relativism
- any phenomenon can only be understood in relation to the particular framework in which it exists
• Nothing is absolutely true or untrue, its good/bad in relation to something. There is no position in which we can make absolute statements in a relative mind-set.
Cultural relativism
- we can only UNDERSTAND phenomena in relation to the cultural particular framework in which they exist (= an epistemological approach)
• Each culture has its own values, practices.
• An approach, ‘glasses’ anthropologist put on. About knowing, about trying to understand and explain something. We have to see it in relation to its cultural framework.
• To avoid problem of ethnocentrism.
Moral relativism
we should never JUDGE any phenomena which are part of other cultural frameworks (= a political-ethical stance). – Anthropologists have to try to understand views from others perspective and in their particular framework.
• Anthropologists should not make judgements across boundaries of cultures.
• A political ethical stance.
Cultural relativism as anthropology’s weapon against ethnocentrism
- against ‘biological’ claims of racism
- against hierarchical models of humanity
► through ethnographic fieldwork anthropologists showed that ‘other’ people
♣ do have culture
♣ that this culture is not ‘worse’ or ‘lower’ but different
♣ therefore are not ‘irrational’ or ‘uncivilised’ but have their own rationality and civilisation
The ‘mosaic’ model
- Idea that there are these three groups, neatly bounded. It is clear where one group ends and one group starts.
- Each group in this mosaic, has its own culture. And this is often related to a particular place where they presumably belong.
- A mosaic is that little pieces are really separate from each other, they are discreet with clear lines. This means that if we have a model of the human population across the world, you cant possibly impose something that is universal. As there are clear lines and boundaries between these different cultures. Different groups in these boundaries will be exposed to the rules and regulations of the particular group setting them.
- This is taking cultural relativism into a way where it underlies much of our thinking about the world population today, particularly the tolerant ways, liberal ways, to think about the world population today.
- E.g. UN – flags outside UN to show brotherhood and sisterhood of the peoples of the world. ‘States’ – only states have flags. Happens to be the case that some groups/cultures are acknowledges (this depends on if you have a state).
Critical anthropological approaches to culture and rights
go beyond ‘cultures’ as ‘bounded wholes’:
♣ beyond reification of ‘cultures’
♣ beyond ‘cultures’ as fixed, stable, homogenous
♣ beyond ‘cultures’ as independent from global processes
♣ Cultures separate – problematic because culture itself develops overtime, with global processes e.g. colonialism
♣ Culture isn’t something we simply know in advance
Abu-Lughod (2002)
Do Muslim women really need saving? Anthropological reflections on cultural relativism and its others
• They argue that there is a problem with this very ‘bounded’ way of looking at cultures, which is mosaic model. This idea that we know exactly where a culture starts and where it ends. Its very identifiable and clear.
• They want to go beyond the idea that culture is a ‘thing’. “reification’ of cultures. Making it a thing
•Key topic of Abu-Lughod :
•They try to show this idea of cultures as separate, out there and unchanging over the history of human kind – very problematic, because culture itself develops over time and it develops in relation to everything that’s going on the world. E.g. globalisation, colonialism, military interventions
• In that sense, we should move away from that view of culture.
• She is applying cultural relativism but is also pointing out some of the risks and dangers of it.
See quote in notes
Montgomery (2001)
Child prostitution in Thailand
- Child prostitution in Thailand
- EXAMPLE OF EMPLOYING CULTURAL RELATIVE APPROACH: She writes in this text that childhood is not a universal category. Being a child e.g. no responsibilities – this is not a universal thing. Different cultures have different conceptions of what it means to be a child and how long it takes to be a child and also that this changes over time. E.g. get married when you are 15 vs 25.
- Classical cultural relative approach: there is no universal definition of what being a child is. E.g. child labour is wrong – when when is someone deemed a child/not a child – is that a universal thing? No. Age is not absolute. There are contexts in which it does not make sense.
- But, Mongomary is quite careful not to argue in Thai culture, that certain people have a ‘thai; culture in which is s fine for children to be prostition. She places the issue of cukture and of rights in a might broader and much more dynamic context of power relations.
- From doing fieldwork, she was confronted with a conflict. On the one hand there is the right not to work. But on the other hand there is also the right to shelter, food etc. If that is the only way for some people to secure other rights.
- She says we should see this in a wider context. There are big migrations from villages to cities, creating these particulay challenges for these people as they are exposed to slum like conditions, harsh poverty, very often.
- We cant possibly understand child position in Thai land if we do not take into account those conditions, and the fact that the children themselves see this as a way to support their family, even to show respect to their mothers, and a way to achieve money and secturty – which is also considered part of their rights.
- Not necessarily a moral relativist approach – not at one point do you have a message in her text that says ‘can people stop moaning about thai prostitution’.
Abu-Lughod: Key quotes
- ‘When talking about accepting difference, she’s not implying we should resign ourselves to being cultural relativists who respect whatever goes on elsewhere as “just their culture” - what she is advocating is the hard work involved in recognising and respecting differences - as products of different histories, as expressions of different circumstances and as manifestations of of differently structured desires.
- We may want justice for women but can we accept that there might be different ideas about justice and that different women might want, or choose, different futures form what we envision best.
- My point is to remind us to be aware of differences, respectful o other paths towards social change that might give women better lives.
- Dangers of reifying cultures
- Why are these female symbols being mobilised in this “war against terrorism” in a way they were not in other conflicts?
- we need to be suspicious when neat cultural icons are plastered over messier historical and political narratives.
Carolyn Fluehr-Lobban:
- Cultural relativism challenged today by key human rights issues.
- anthropology in past withdrew from human rights discussions in the view that no such declaration would be applicable to all human beings, and have withheld judgement about specific human rights issues.
- More anthropologists are coming to recognise that violence cannot be excused or justified on cultural grounds.
- e.g. Suden - female circumsistin widespread - cultural ideology that uncircumcised women is not respectable.
- She felt trapped between her anthropologisical understanding of the custom and of the sensitivity about it among the people nom I was working with, and on the other hand, the feminist campaign in the West to eradicate what critics see as a “barbaric” custom.
- after a few years she came to realise that she felt the practice was harmful and wrong.
- We need to be sensitive to cultural differences but not allow them to override widery recognised human rights.
- anthropology beginning to change attitude to cultural relativism and human rights
- Issue: what authority do we westerners have to impose our own concept of universal rights on the rest of humanity?
e.g. Making money and age:
- Some parts of world it is seen as normal for children to work
- In the context we live in now, this would be considered a breach of human rights.
- CULTURAL RELATIVISM APPRAOCH:
- Try to understand in which context and settings, social relations etc, are these children sent to work? An anthropologist would try to see how this makes sense, how does it look from the perspective of the people themselves who are engaged in it?
What does it mean relative to their context? - Anthropologists would try to look for explanations, and understandings and try to see how certain factors that we might find disturbing, actually make sense from the context of which they are in.
- May try and explain how this entails certain relations of power –> may take into account local conditions of inequality, econ conditions.
- need extra income because they are poor.
