Okuzeka
Sociology vocabulary · Society and Culture

Cultural relativism

Meaning in sociology, with examples

nounCommon term

In sociology, cultural relativism means: The principle that a culture's beliefs and practices should be understood in their own context rather than judged by the standards of another culture.

In Turkish: kültürel görecelik, kültürel rölativizm

How it is used

Associated with the anthropologist Franz Boas and his students. In methods courses it is a research attitude; in ethics and human rights debates, people discuss whether it has limits. It is not the same as saying that everything is morally acceptable.

Example sentences

  1. Cultural relativism helped the fieldworker understand why gift-giving rules mattered so much in the village.

  2. The seminar debated whether cultural relativism is compatible with universal human rights.

Common collocations

  • practise cultural relativism
  • cultural relativism and human rights
  • moral relativism
  • ethnocentrismJudging other cultures by the standards of your own and treating your own group's way of life as normal or superior.
  • cultureThe shared beliefs, values, norms, language, practices and material objects that a group of people learn and pass on from one generation to the next.
  • ethnographyA research approach in which the researcher spends a long time with a group, observing and taking part in its daily life, in order to describe its culture from the inside.
  • valuesWidely shared beliefs about what is good, right, important or desirable in a society, which guide people's choices and the norms they follow.

More terms: Society and Culture

Practise with graded reading

Reading at the right level is the fastest way to make new words stick. Pick free English books by level: