... ethical in one culture may be seen as unethical in another culture. In her article, "A Defense of Moral Relativism," Ruth Benedict states that "Morality is culturally relative. " (79) Morality depends on culture. " What one society approves may be disgraceful and unacceptable to another. " (79) An action is morally obligatory for a ... (1) If what is accepted by society, based on shared beliefs, as normal behavior varies from culture to culture, then morality would vary from culture to culture. (2) Each culture, based on shared beliefs, decides what is considered acceptable and normal be...

• Word Count: 962
• Approx Pages: 4
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... " (26). This is the basic premise of cultural relativism, that beliefs, values, and morals are all based on one's culture. Therefore, since morality is based on society and different societies have different views of right and wrong, there can be no moral absolutes. Since there are no absolutes, ... moral views determined by one's culture are deemed true whether they conflict or not. Upon first glance, relativism seems like a very appropriate concept of morality in the world. It is clear to see that there are differences of what is acceptable and unacceptable in different societies acros...

• Word Count: 1553
• Approx Pages: 6
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... " (26). This is the basic premise of cultural relativism, that beliefs, values, and morals are all based on one's culture. Therefore, since morality is based on society and different societies have different views of right and wrong, there can be no moral absolutes. Since there are no absolutes, ... moral views determined by one's culture are deemed true whether they conflict or not. Upon first glance, relativism seems like a very appropriate concept of morality in the world. It is clear to see that there are differences of what is acceptable and unacceptable in different societies acros...

• Word Count: 1553
• Approx Pages: 6
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... we want to be right by forming our own subculture with the appropriate value system. Some fear that the principle of cultural relativity will weaken morality. Cultural Relativism is one of the most controversial challenges to the study of social ethics. It comes from a methodological approach of the social ... 't matter what we do: anything goes!" (Ruggiero 1973, p. 17). We therefore cannot go around passing judgment on what other people do "if all morality is relative, then what moral objection could one make to the Nazi holocaust, to the economic deprivation of a Latin American undercla...

• Word Count: 1109
• Approx Pages: 4
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... arbiter. Leading politicians of the time, like Lord Palmerston or Lord Derby, for instance, tended to appear in our press quite often as specialists in matters, say, of education or morality. The patriarchal quality of the Bulgarian ethnic society ran in a somewhat parallel manner to the Victorian middle-class patriarchalism. Small wonder, then, that the British authors who enjoyed the greatest ... of the newspaper Pravo in 1867, and therefore came to figure in the mind of the reader as some sort of anonymous sacred reading, a set of important lessons in general morality and social opti...

• Word Count: 1720
• Approx Pages: 7
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... between Prince Henry the Navigator and Zheng He. "A major objective of [Henry the Navigator's] African expeditions was to 'get behind,' or outflank, the Moors by sea. Like other medieval Christians, he heard about the legendary Prester John, a Christian king in Africa somewhere south of the Sahara. If the Portuguese could reach Guinea, as they called black western Africa, they ... ...

• Word Count: 797
• Approx Pages: 3
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... to fight for themselves like the West did. "The west has achieved military dominance in a variety of ways that transcend mere superiority in weapons and has nothing to do with morality or genes. The Western ways of war is so lethal precisely because its so amoral- shackled rarely by concerns of ritual, tradition, religion, or ethics, by anything other tan military ... ...

• Word Count: 1113
• Approx Pages: 4
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... let no one suffer by too drastic a measure, nor pay too high a price in upheaval and devastation, for your innovation". It is evident that In taking over small-scale societies, morality and ethics were very much ignored. The justification was that of the 1960's Law of Cultural Dominance, which states that "whichever cultural system effectively exploits the energy resources of a given ... ...

• Word Count: 756
• Approx Pages: 3
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... by which the behavior of people can be judged." Like knowledge, the concept of culture can be abused and it is feared that cultural relativity will weaken the concept of morality. Ethnocentrism has three different but prominent levels: positive, negative, and extremely negative. Many people display a positive level of ethnocentrism in the fact that they believe their culture is "to be ... ...

• Word Count: 519
• Approx Pages: 2
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... , and not as something important in and of itself. This explains the articles I just read. While I condemn certain practices, I make an effort to separate fact from fiction and causation from morality. If we are to vilify Christopher Columbus then we must approve of human sacrifice. So who is Christopher Columbus? He was a product of the time and should be judged according ... ...

• Word Count: 265
• Approx Pages: 1
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... the country, and it is unsurprising that the ghetto replies with a culture shunning the aspirations of the society that rejected it. Hip hop's intention was to reject liberal middle class morality, providing deliberately offensive messages. Hip hop subsidised the underclass's culture of exclusion through music speaking of tales of the black man as criminal, as sexual predator, and as an outsider ... ...

• Word Count: 1886
• Approx Pages: 8
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... due to being removed from sacred and familiar land *breakdown in aboriginal communication because of the destruction of their languages by being forced to learn english *confusion about creation and morality as a result of forced replacement of the Dreaming with the bible and additionally, the *separation of families caused much turmoil as kinship groups and strong relationships form the fabric of ... ...

• Word Count: 453
• Approx Pages: 2
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... to say what is morally right and morally wrong for someone else? Therefore we would have to assume that "because many different cultures have different moral beliefs, the condition that morality is relative to culture seems unavoidable" (Doing Philosophy, 309). So once again this goes back to the point that we cannot tell a culture that their practices are wrong or immoral ... ...

• Word Count: 905
• Approx Pages: 4
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... behaviors are acceptable and which are not. Values provide us with criteria and conceptions by which we evaluate people, objects, and events as to their relative worth, merit, beauty, or morality. Let's move onto symbols and language: Norms and values are intangible aspects of social life, what scientists term nonmaterial culture. Symbols are acts or objects that have come to be ... ...

• Word Count: 1158
• Approx Pages: 5
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... on the television through these videos? That culture being the rap culture mostly represented by black rap artists. There is certainly much room for misunderstanding and interpretation in a negative way. Morality and modest actions are far from the focus of the rap videos. Perhaps I am just one to avoid a conflict, but I cannot see how this would have a serious harmful affect on ... ...

• Word Count: 787
• Approx Pages: 3
• Grade Level: Undergraduate