Cultural relativism

Cultural relativism can become the last refuge of repression.

Those who are culture-blind by background are especially vulnerable to the intoxicating idea that systems of meaning differ profoundly, are justified by their own distinct standards, and are separated from each other by profound gulfs, the crossing of which is an arduous and even perilous performance. The result is a certain tendency to an unduly reverential, rather mystical explication of "meanings", in lieu of more ordinary style of social description and explanation.

Hermeneutic intoxication may be accompanied by a certain facile and self-congratulatory relativism. Systems of meaning are credited not merely with magical potency and efficacy, but also, each in its own zone, with a kind of automatic legitimacy. Such relativism is simply false and a grave mis-description of anthropological practice.

Cultures are not cognitively equal, and the one within which alone anthropology is possible cannot really be denied a special status. The nature and justification of that pre-eminence is a deep and difficult matter. But it springs from something far more important than the arrogance of an imperial class. It is linked to the very possibility of reason.