CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CONCLUSIONS

by Hugh M. Lewis

To acknowledge the reality of the way culture works in constituting social, psychological and even biological differences between people in the world, is to confer upon the notion of culture a certain theoretical legitimacy it otherwise lacks in the contemporary political state of academia. To acknowledge the continuing vitality and importance of ethnocultural realities in separating peoples of the world and to recognize the cultural factors and patterning which make people different, and often socially unequal, is to point to the empirical foundations of ethnocultural studies and cultural anthropology.

To emphasize the ethnocultural foundations of complex social realities as prevalent in radically plural societies and to play down racial categories and terms and ethnobiological attributions, as well as to refer to the symbolic organization of cultural life- in behavior, thought, feelings, belief and even in language itself, is to advance a new claim for a cultural relativism.

To say yes to relativism is itself an entirely different can of worms. There are more and less obvious differences between many distinguishable kinds of relativism which become largely lumped under at worst a single and sometimes a mutilated handful of different headings. Issues concerning linguistic relativity are not the same issues which concern social, cultural, psychological or ethical relativity. Likewise, issues of scientific relativity are not the same as issues of historical relativity. All of which leads back to the central question of what is relativity of knowledge in general, if there is even a common denominator for its conceptioning.

To ply the relativistic road is not to acknowledge what amount to absolute boundaries and absolutely irreconcilable differences separating peoples and realities in the world, nor is it to deny the reality of common and universal laws of nature which influence human behavior as much or more than the behavior of subatomic particles, nor is it to implicitly legitimate fascist regimes such as Nazi Germany, nor deny the necessity and possibility of a pan-human meta-ethical foundation for normative behavior in the world, nor is it merely a 'delight in diversity' or a 'celebration of difference' to the ignorance of the common foundations of human experience.

It requires a deliberate and concentrated effort to pay attention to the details, the differences, the inescapable contexts and the inherent and irresolvable complexities which invariably intrude upon the scientific question of what is human reality, but to do so is also a basic requirement of an empirical human science, especially of the anthropological science of culture. To systematically address the question of relativity in human reality is to push to its utmost logical limit the question "relative in relation to what," and the systematic attempt to answer this question adequately constitutes the scientific foundations of an authentic anthropology.

A strong emphasis upon cultural relativism does not entail a non-ethical stance for the researcher and theoretician alike nor the impossibility of a commonly shared meta-ethical norm. Recent political history in the 20th century, World War II and its aftermath, led to the formulation of certain international legal paradigms which define the rights of nations and peoples, which outline a common valuation of a foundation of human political order in the notion of human and state's rights.

We usually know the reality of human rights mostly by its massive and extreme violations, and the common repulsion we feel in such violation. Indeed, the moral and cultural legitimization of human rights lies in our own human capacities to empathize and sympathize with the plight of others, in the creative imagination to put ourselves in other peoples moccasins and to see ourselves in their tragic circumstances, and is, paradoxically, the direct outcome of the cultural relativist stance which urges tolerance and empathetic understanding of such differences and the suspension of cultural blinders and ethnocentric bias.

Thus, cultural relativism and the ethics of fieldwork puts the ethnographer, especially one from a rights-based cultural background, squarely upon the horns of an insoluble dilemma. On the one hand there is a universal call for human tolerance of human difference, and on the other are the paradoxes of morally tolerating cultural orientations in which the violation of human rights may be everyday and commonplace.

Somewhere between these two extremes lies a further dilemma which concerns the gray area where one society's definition of absolute, inalienable and universal human rights and freedoms becomes another society's definition of a threat to national security and gross social irresponsibility.

Thus, account must be made of significant variations in the patterns of different societies in definition and reinforcing different conceptions and kinds of human rights, and in differential emphasis between responsibilities and rights. Rights-based societies such as America are often short on the problem of cultivating a strong sense of responsibility in the individual, whereas in responsibility-based societies which are more historically hierarchical in orientation, the call for responsibility can often become the true-believers call for blind and unquestioning conformity and unfreedom of state control and censorship.

Gross or extreme violations of the doctrine of human rights--the propagation of violence--can be generally clearly recognized and such instances are almost uniformly condemned for the revulsion they cause in the human community. No society, no matter how non-violent, can tolerate mad dogs, homicidal maniacs, mass murderers or psycho-killers.

About the only pat formula one can reasonably offer is for each individual, anthropologist or else, to define for oneself the acceptable moral limits of one's own behavior in everyday contexts, and the principle of historical precedence in deciding the moral legitimacy of individual cases as they arise.