CULTURAL RELATIVISM

CULTURAL RELATIVISM
Such examples of social change and cultural diversity
demonstrate the need for cultural relativism, the con-
cept that different groups are best understood within
the social context of their own cultural expectations. A
key factor associated with ethnocentrism is an inability
among members of in-groups to acknowledge that cul-
tural differences are not intrinsic markers of the social
inferiority of others. However, extending cultural rela-
tivism beyond the social context into the political arena
should be done with caution. For example, if cultural
relativism is taken to a political extreme, Germans who
facilitated Jewish persecution were acting according to
social expectations, given that such abuse became an
institutionalized norm in Nazi Germany