Cultural
Relativism Undermines Human Rights
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Anthropologists invented cultural relativism. Founding figures of
American anthropology, Franz Boas and Ruth Benedict, the latter in her
famous pre-war book Patterns of Culture, argued that you can only
understand other peoples' lives if you consider their cultures and their
actions from their own points of view.
In the latter decades of the 20th century, the idea of cultural
relativism was expanded to moral or ethical relativism. As we have our
own values, and other people have different ones, no one being on neutral
ground, the argument goes, on what basis can we pass judgment on the
beliefs or actions of those in another culture? Every judgment is cultural.
From this perspective, ethical judgment being culturally-based and thus
inapplicable cross-culturally, every value or practice must be seen as
good as every other practice. There is no way that we can judge some
better or worse. Judgment of other cultures and those in them must be
suspended entirely. There are no objective, non-cultural criteria to
allow us to decide whether giving a widow a pension is better or worse
than burning her alive on the pyre of her dead husband.
The shift from individuals to
collectivities is a major transformation of Western political
philosophy.
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Cultural relativism has been built into public policy through
"multiculturalism," the official policy of Canada and the
unofficial policy of many European countries. Multiculturalism is often
thought of as the opposite of assimilation; that is, multiculturalism
allows immigrants to live in their own culture, with their own values,
rules, and customs. Cultural communities, rather than individual citizens,
would be the operative units of society. The shift from individuals to
collectivities is a major transformation of Western political philosophy,
with people being judged not on their individual merits, but on the
characteristics of their community. However, there is an alternative,
assimilationist understanding of multiculturalism, one that is held,
according to repeated polls, by a large majority of the Canadian
population: we welcome people from all cultures to come to Canada and
adopt Canadian ways.
In the case of multiculturalism, Canadian common sense is on firmer
ground than collectivist multicultural political philosophers, for
multiculturalism is an incoherent concept. A culture is a distinct way of
life; different cultures are distinct ways of life. For people to live
together in society, they must at least to a degree share a common
culture. An obvious example is language; people must be able to
communicate in a common language.
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The
Shafia family's four honor killing victims
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The previous Conservative Government of Canada advised immigrants
that, whatever the laws, customs, and practices of their countries and
cultures of origin, they must obey Canadian law. For example,
"honor" killings of family members, regarded as proper in
cultures of the Middle East and South Asia, are not acceptable in Canada.
Three members of the Afghan Shafia family of Montreal were recently
convicted of murdering four female family members who they deemed to have
been insufficiently modest, or too Canadian.
We are urged by champions of multiculturalism to acknowledge that each
immigrant cultural community has a right to pursue its vision, values,
customs, and practices. So increasingly public institutions, such as the
Toronto schools, are providing space and time for Friday prayers, with
girls required to sit in the back, and menstruating girls excluded
altogether. Demands in Ontario for Sharia family courts enforced by the
state were almost instituted by the provincial government, but for a
clamorous public opposition by an informal group of young Muslim women.
Should we recognize the right of South Asian families to force marriages
to insure that the caste hierarchy is respected? Recently two South
Asians in British Columbia were convicted of murder of the daughter of
one of them, having killed in retaliation for marriage to a man of an
"inappropriate" caste. Is forced marriage acceptable as the
custom of a cultural community? Are hierarchies of purity, as in the
caste system, acceptable in North America?
The exact nature of American and Canadian values is rightly subject to
debate. But American and Canadian values support individual freedom over
community dictates, representative democracy over traditional despotism,
individual achievement over hereditary status, equality over hierarchy,
laws from legislatures over those in sacred texts, science over
traditional knowledge, gender equality over gender hierarchy, respect for
sexual diversity over repression. Will we bow to multiculturalism and
accept collectivism, despotism, hereditary status, hierarchy, religious
law, anti-scientific traditional knowledge, gender hierarchy, and
repression of sexual diversity?
The most important idea countering relativism and multiculturalism is
human rights, as elaborated in the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights. The position of human rights is an
absolute one, arguing that everyone has certain rights by virtue of being
a human being, irrespective of their origin or cultural community.
Incoming immigrants and their cultural communities should be measured in
their practices by the standards of UDHR.
Philip Carl Salzman is a
professor of anthropology at McGill University and a fellow at the Middle
East Forum.
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