A study group is reviewing flashcards before an anthropology quiz. Which statement gives the meaning of cultural relativism as anthropologists use the term?
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Anthropology · Foundations
Cultural Relativism
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cultural relativism The practice of understanding a culture's beliefs and practices by that culture's own standards and context, rather than judging them by the observer's own standards. Full entry → is the practice of understanding a culture by its own standards rather than one's own. Anthropologists use it as a research tool: set aside your own judgments long enough to see what a belief or practice means inside the culture that holds it. Understanding is not endorsing, and relativism is not 'anything goes' — it is a discipline of the mind with real uses in medicine, business, and diplomacy.
Why this matters
Relativism is the habit behind almost everything else in anthropology: before you can describe a culture, you have to hold off judging it. It matters academically because it is the difference between studying people and rating them. It matters practically because doctors, businesses, and diplomats all work across cultural lines, and those who understand local beliefs first get further than those who assume their own way is the only way. And it matters honestly: relativism is a discipline of the mind, not a claim that every practice is equally good — which is why it is harder than it sounds.
The college version
The working definition
Cultural relativism is the practice of understanding a culture by its own standards rather than one's own. OpenStax's Introduction to Anthropology puts the idea in context: cultural relativism means understanding every element of culture within the broader whole of that culture, because each belief and practice is related to all the others around it. Anthropologists trace the idea to the tradition of Franz Boas, whose students argued that a culture's traits grow out of its own environmental, historical, and social circumstances — so measuring them with an outsider's yardstick misses the point. The word relativism is the key: a practice means what it means inside its culture, not in the abstract. What looks like waste from outside can look like wisdom from inside, and the anthropologist's job is to get the inside view first.
A research tool, not a verdict
Relativism is first of all a method. OpenStax describes it as a rigorous mode of holistic analysis requiring the temporary suspension of judgment The deliberate act of setting aside your own verdicts about a practice while you try to understand it. Full entry → for the purposes of exploration and analysis. In plain terms: hold your own verdicts in a drawer while you work, and open the drawer later if you like. Original example: Nadia, a graduate researcher, studies a highland farming community where households work one another's steep fields in rotating teams. Her first instinct is to call it wasteful — crews travel between scattered plots all day. Instead of writing that down, she suspends the judgment and asks what the rotation means to the people doing it. She learns it spreads the risk of a bad harvest, binds families together through mutual obligation, and turns planting season into the social high point of the year. The practice looked inefficient from outside and looks like insurance plus community from inside. The method is what made the difference.
Understanding is not endorsing
A common confusion is that understanding a practice means approving of it. It does not. OpenStax's relativism section is explicit that anthropologists do not think harmful or exploitative practices are just fine; they think the reasons behind such practices are more complex than an outsider's first judgment imagines. SAPIENS, the anthropology magazine, makes the same point: most anthropologists use relativism as a guide to approaching difference, and they draw their own ethical lines — they can and do speak out against practices they consider unjust. Original example: Ionuț, a public-health researcher, studies a community that treats childhood fevers with herbal steam baths before going to the clinic. He comes to understand exactly why — the baths fit the community's ideas about the body, about family care, and about a clinic where staff once mocked local remedies. Understanding all of that does not require him to claim the baths cure fevers, and he still works with local nurses to make the clinic a place families trust. Understanding and judgment are separate acts; relativism governs the first, not the second.
The limits: relativism is not 'anything goes'
Critics sometimes argue that relativism is amoral — a refusal to condemn anything, which amounts to 'anything goes.' OpenStax addresses this directly: for anthropologists, relativism does not mean permanently abandoning your own value system. It means setting your own norms aside for a while in order to understand practices you did not grow up with. Nothing about the method forbids a researcher from disagreeing with what they find, or from working for change afterward. What relativism does forbid is pretending you can understand a practice before you have seen it from the inside. The honest note: relativism answers a question about how to study cultures, not a question about what is morally right everywhere. That second question belongs to philosophy, where moral relativism is its own debate.
Where relativism does its work
The habit of understanding first has practical payoffs. In medicine, it shows up as cultural competence The ability of health-care and other professionals to work effectively with people whose cultural beliefs differ from their own. Full entry →: OpenStax's medical anthropology chapter recommends incorporating medical anthropology and cultural competence into the training of health-care professionals, because patients' beliefs about illness shape whether they accept treatment. In business, anthropologists in research and development study how people actually shop, cook, and use products — rather than assuming one set of habits fits every market — to design things that fit real lives. In diplomacy and international programs, the same principle appears in programs that acknowledge local customs instead of overriding them; Britannica notes that medical-anthropology programs have long encouraged exactly this. Relativism, in other words, is not an ivory-tower nicety. It is a discipline of the mind: notice your own standards, set them aside long enough to see another culture's logic, and understand before you judge.
Eli explains
The same idea, in plain words
Explain it like I’m 10
Cultural relativism is a rule for studying people: understand a culture by its own standards, not yours. When you meet a custom that seems strange or wrong, you do not rate it against your own habits — you first find out what it means to the people who live it. Anthropologists use it like a workbench rule: set your own judgments aside for a while so you can actually see what you are studying. It does not mean you must approve of everything, and it does not mean anything goes. It means understanding comes first, and judging comes later — if at all.
Picture it like this
Think of relativism as learning the rules of a card game you have never played. You cannot rate the players' moves until you know what the cards mean in this game. Watch first, ask how the game works, and only then can you say anything sensible about a play.
Where the picture stops working
The analogy breaks down because a card game's rules are written down and identical for everyone at the table. A culture's meanings are mostly unwritten, learned slowly, and not the same for every member — and unlike a game, culture is not something you can step out of to read the rulebook. So the 'learn the rules first' step is far harder in real life than in the analogy.
Worked example
When Nadia arrived in the highland farming village for her fieldwork, the first thing she noticed was the work parties: each morning, a dozen households walked to someone's steep field and spent the day weeding it together. Her first thought was that it was inefficient — crews lost hours traveling between plots. Instead of recording that judgment, she followed the method she had been taught: she suspended it and asked questions. The rotation, she learned, spread the risk of a bad harvest across many families, bound households together through mutual obligation, and turned planting season into the social high point of the year. By the end of her stay she could explain the work parties from the inside — and she had also noticed which families quietly skipped their turn, a detail her first judgment would have hidden from her entirely.
Key takeaway
Cultural relativism is the practice of understanding a culture by its own standards rather than one's own — a research method that suspends judgment in order to understand, never a demand to approve, and never 'anything goes.'
Quick check
3 questions here, of 5 in this lesson’s practice set. Answers stay hidden until you check.
Jonas is spending a year with a host family abroad. At dinner, the oldest person is always served first, with the largest portion. Jonas could dismiss this as unfair favoritism. Which response shows cultural relativism in action?
Choose an answer, then check it.
Mara has spent months with a coastal community where families take turns hosting the evening meal for the whole street. She understands the practice deeply: the reciprocity, the trust it builds, the way it spreads the cost of feeding people. Which statement best captures what her understanding requires and does not require?
Choose an answer, then check it.
Study tools & related lessonsYou’ll learn to · Common mistakes · Easily confused · Key vocabulary · Related
You’ll learn to
- Define cultural relativism as understanding a culture by its own standards rather than one's own, attributing the definition to OpenStax's Introduction to Anthropology and the Boas tradition.
- Explain cultural relativism as a research method that calls for the temporary suspension of judgment, with an original example.
- Distinguish understanding a practice from endorsing it, with an original example.
- Analyze the limits of cultural relativism — why it is not an 'anything goes' position.
- Apply relativist habits to real-world settings in medicine, business, and diplomacy, with an original example of each.
Common mistakes
Relativism means approving of every practice you study.
Understanding is not endorsing. You can understand exactly why a practice makes sense in its context and still hold your own views — anthropologists do it all the time.
Relativism means anything goes — no judgments, ever.
It means suspending judgment temporarily in order to understand. OpenStax is explicit that relativism does not mean permanently abandoning your own values, and anthropologists still draw their own ethical lines.
To practice relativism, you have to give up your own culture.
You set your own norms aside for a while, the way you take off muddy boots at the door. You do not discard them; you pick them up again when the work is done.
Relativism and ethnocentrism are the same idea looked at from two sides.
They point in opposite directions. Ethnocentrism judges another culture by your own standards; cultural relativism tries to understand it by its own. The sibling lesson on ethnocentrism covers the first in depth.
Easily confused
Cultural relativism vs. Ethnocentrism
Relativism tries to understand a culture by its own standards; ethnocentrism judges it by the observer's standards. One opens understanding; the other closes it.
Understanding a practice vs. Endorsing a practice
Understanding means you can explain why a practice makes sense in its context; endorsing means you agree it is good. Relativism requires the first and never assumes the second.
Anthropological cultural relativism vs. Moral relativism (philosophy)
Cultural relativism is a research method — suspend judgment to understand; moral relativism is a philosophical claim that no moral standard is objectively better than another. This lesson treats the first; the philosophy subject owns the second.
Key vocabulary
- cultural relativism
- The practice of understanding a culture's beliefs and practices by that culture's own standards and context, rather than judging them by the observer's own standards.
- ethnocentrism
- Judging another culture by the standards of one's own culture, often with the sense that one's own culture is superior.
- suspension of judgment
- The deliberate act of setting aside your own verdicts about a practice while you try to understand it.
- insider's point of view
- The understanding of a culture's meanings and practices as the people who live them understand them.
- cultural context
- The surrounding beliefs, practices, and circumstances that give a single element of culture its meaning.
- cultural competence
- The ability of health-care and other professionals to work effectively with people whose cultural beliefs differ from their own.
- applied anthropology
- The use of anthropological knowledge and methods to solve practical problems in settings such as medicine, business, and government.
Sources & references
- 1.6 Cross-Cultural Comparison and Cultural Relativism — Introduction to Anthropology — OpenStax, Rice University
- 1 Key Terms — Introduction to Anthropology — OpenStax, Rice University
- 17.4 Applied Medical Anthropology — Introduction to Anthropology — OpenStax, Rice University
- 20.3 What Anthropologists Can Do — Introduction to Anthropology — OpenStax, Rice University
- Cultural Relativism (anthropology) — Encyclopaedia Britannica
- What Is Cultural Anthropology? — SAPIENS (Wenner-Gren Foundation)
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Researched 2026-08-22
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