Joe Lodovico
Sep 8, 2018 · 3 min read

Joseph Lodovico 9/4/2018

ANT 102 001

The Importance of Cultural Relativism

Cultural relativism is a point of view-based concept that sits ideally between Absolute Cultural Relativism and Ethnocentrism. Cultural Anthropology as a whole, is influenced by cultural relativism through the Holistic and Comparative perspectives. Through holistic perspective, it can be inferred that the comparative perspective between different cultures is necessary, though it must be through unbiased, Anti-ethnocentric data collection and analysis.

In most culture there is a general standard for basic human rights and beliefs, most drawing the line at the standard of not taking human life (Bailey, pg15). After the line in the metaphorical sand is drawn, the cultural differences are so varied, that it is nigh impossible to remotely compare societies. To say one society in the middle east is less superior to America is not valid because of current and best events that lace the drastically different regions. America has not had a war on her soil since 1942 during the Aleutian Islands campaign in world war two, the last time the middle east, Syria in particular, was at peace, was 1918 when the ottoman empire ruled there. Syria has had numerous government coupes and cultural influences, and yet has thus far resisted globalization at a rate which is relatively unknown with American Culture. Americans, though stubborn in their quest to westernize the world, has become a global melting pot for combined cultural influence through the process of amalgamation, or the blending of cultures.

What is most surprising about the blending of cultures is that there is still stereotyping in the mix. In the study of culture that has become widely known, I can apply cultural relativism to my life through understanding the new age of cultural ridicule, the Meme. I have submersed myself in multi-sited research, which is a study of finite aspects (Mayberry, lecture 3, slide 5) , on the culturally global phenomenon that penetrates all aspects of cultures through stereotyping and creating unjust judgements based on a certain cultures’ value. This new world form of cultural blending and desensitization to the blatant offensiveness of some modern memes, shows the generalized audacity of some societies.

Despite the bad thing memes are known for, the original concept of the meme was the invent of the cultural meme. A cultural meme was a term coined by Richard Dawkins, an evolutionary biologist that is known for his work on The Selfish Gene, and his definition was that a meme occurs when one person copies a unit of cultural information comprising a meme from another person. This means that as culture evolves, so will memes. Memes serve as a bridge of sorts between cultures to serve a global effort of shared culture. This concept ties into cultural relativism through the fact that the meme may one day serve as something more than a bridge, perhaps someday it may serve as the binding to mass culture of the human civilization. The modern meme is actually a contradiction of Dawkins original idea, that memes will evolve naturally, just as genes do. The new definition of the meme is that now because of the spread of mass information, it has become apparent that certain individuals may become the pathrazers or creationists of the modern information construction through the forced Darwinism of cultural relativism. This being done through the direct editing of the information flow that reaches the direct public.

The concept of cultural relativism is shown through the usage of the holistic perspective by the use of seeing all meme culture. It has become prevalent in modern society for memes to be the sources of comedy and information, and it may well supersede its boundaries that restrict it to being a binding of the concept of cultural relativism to the world, it may someday become a true culture that is compromised of other cultures. Only time will tell.

Joe Lodovico

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Nerd, Theorist, and Author to be. Fiction over fact, for fact is boring.