Copyright: Lars Risan 1997. Last update 4. October 2000
The main thesis of this site is that the muddle in which the editors of Social
Text, with the help of Alan Sokal, brought themselves is due to their
allegiance to, and practice of, a particular kind of culture relativism. This
relativism has to a large extent been developed by anthropologists following on
from one of the founders of American culture anthropology, Franz Boas. I here
argue that this relativism is based on an exaggeration of two dichotomies, the
difference between Us and Them, and the difference between Nature and Culture.
When anthropologists and others within the cultural studies (not all of them, I
should hasten to add) turn their attention towards science itself, these two
radical distinctions collapes onto each other: The spokespersons of Culture and
Society become Us, and the spokespersons of Nature, the scientists, become
Them.
By maintaining the radical difference between Nature and Culture, the
combatants on both sides in the Sokal Affair also maintain the distinction
between Us and Them. Or vice versa: By maintaining the difference
between Us and Them, the Nature : Culture distinction is also reproduced. I
will show how this is done by examples from the debate, as well as from the
broader litterature of science studies. It is important to note that even
though my main critisism is directed towards the editors of Social Text,
this site is not a defence of the "other side" in the debate, the physicists.
Nor is it a total rejection of culture relativism, this direction of thought is
important. Too important, I am afraid, to be left to the combatants of the
American science war.
- I give a general, historical introduction to culture relativism. In order
to tell my history I have selected bits and pieces of the infinite stock of
known events sometimes labelled History with a capital H. These bits and pieces
point to how culture relativism is part of an old struggle between universal
Nature and particular Culture.
- I present two general arguments, relevant to the Sokal Affair, against culture
relativism as it has often been practiced. I first argue that culture
relativism, despite its ambition to be attentive to the pluralism of "the human
condition", can and sometimes does become culture imperialist. The second
argument is that culture relativism, generally, is based on a politically
motivated exaggeration of the Difference.
- I show, by reference to Stanly Fish' own account of the case, how the Sokal
Affair was a result of a culture relativist practice that suffers from the
flaws I outline in section 2. I go on to show the philosophical parallell
to this untenable relativist practice, also by reference to Stanley Fish'
defence. To further establish that this philosophy is not only held by Stanley
Fish, probably in a moment of great distress, I present a the the symmetry
principle and a similar
philosophy, argued for by sosiologists of science Harry Collins and Steven
Yearley.
- If the culture relativism of F Boas, Social text, and Collins & Yearley is
morally indefensible and empirically dubious, then what is the alternative? I
start this discussion by comparing how anthropologists Clifford Geertz and
Bronislav Malinowski understand cross cultural empathy. I then sketch out a
phenomenological, I guess "post-Cartesian", position where the distinction
between universal and particular does not follow the distinction between Nature
and Culture. Thus one can have "univeral culture".
- Finally, I briefly outline some human encounters where culture relativism
is indeed necessary.
"It is", the Danish philosopher Søren Christensen writes, "the German
theologist, philosopher of language and history, Johann Gottfried Herder who
invents cultural relativism."[1]
Herder's culture relativism was a reaction to the French Enlightenment. To
non-French, for example Germans, it was quite obvious that this philosophy
often made particularities of French culture into universal constants. Herder's
alternative to this universalism was to state that "... every nation has the
center of happiness in itself, just like any ball has the center of gravity in
itself."[2] To herder, any Volk
(people) had its unique and creative Volksseele (soul of the people).[3]
During the latter half of the 19. century the science of language was invented,
and with it the idea that every language had its own, underlying "structure" (a
notion particularily developed by Wilhelm von Humbolt). The advocates of
culture relativism were inspired by this, and "cultures" gradually became
something recognisable not by their particular, Herderian "spheres of
happiness", but by their inner "structure".[4] Societies were thus understood as both
being delineated from other such enteties, and as having their own, inner
logic. They became holistic and complete systems. By this, the basis for
the anthropological holism was founded, both the social-anthropological
emphasis on social systems' inner logic and coherence, and the
culture-anthropological weight on "systems of meanings" and "conceptual
schemes".
With Adolf Bastian (1826-1905), culture relativism adopts an important
universialist element from the Enlightenment, namely what Bastian called "the
psychic unity of mankind." With this concept, differences remain important, but
they are determined by the particular Culture, not the universal Nature. This
turn becomes particularly visible with the Amercam cultural anthropologist
Franz Boas. As America's best known anthropologists, Boas was one of the
leading critics of the "therapeutical" race-research of the 20's and 30's, the
Eugenics. Together with his student Margaret Mead and psychologist Otto
Kineberg, Boas was also a firm opponent of the IQ research. Margareth Mead
wrote a Master dissertation where she showed that the IQ of Italian immigrants
in the United States depended on their families' social status and lenght of
residence in the US, and also on the extent to which English was spoken at
home.[5] Within psychology Otto Klineberg,
inspiered by Boas and his own cross cultural studies, became a famous opponent
of such crude measures of universal intelligence as the IQ-test.[6] The general theme of this critisism was to
point out how the proposed univeral measures of natural difference
really only measured differences in a highly specific cultural adaption,
namely the adaption to the culture of the (white, male, English-speaking)
scientist. Following Fabian's emphasis on the psychic unity of mankind, Boas
and his circle explained proposed natural differences in behaviour as really
being cultural differences.
Moving to more contemporary anthropology I see the same pattern repeated.
Marshall Sahlins in his Culture and Practical Reason (1976), for
example, draws a sharp distinction between, on the one hand, utilitaristic,
materialistic, and univesialistic anthropological theories theories of
"practical reason" and, on the other hand, theories focusing on
culture-relative symbols and meanings. He thus separates meaningless, universal
Nature from meaningful, relative Culture. Moreover, he denies any causality
from Nature to Culture. The Culture is autonomous,[7] it cannot be reduced to organic or
ecological factors.[8] However, to reduce
Nature to Culture is OK; "... it is culture which constitues utility"[9]; "... the arbitrary nature of the sign,
which engages the objective only selectively, thus submits the natural
to a spicific logic of culture"[10]; and "..
I have tried to show the continuity of anthropology's struggle with its own
naturalism which is also to say its own inherited cultural nature."[11]
One thing struck me when I read Sahlins: His main concern with culture
relativism is not, following the scholars mentioned above, to say that there
are large cultural differences in the world, or even stronger, that
(all) human differences are cultural. That this is the case is something
Sahlins and I guess most of his readers take for granted. His
main concern is rather to refute proposed universal similarities as
ethnocentric expressions of the universalist's own culture. To Sahlins, the
concept of Culture is not only relativistic (following Herder) and
structuralistic (a "logic" or a "conceptual scheme", following Humbolt), it is
deterministic. In the fight of Nature against Culture, it is Culture that
determines Nature, not the other way around.
Absolute culture relativism is based on one important universal truth. This
truth is ours and it states that all truths are relative to a culture.
"We" (the hypothetical community of culture relativists) can not agree when
"They" claim that "P is true". The only thing we can do is to seay that "P is
true to Them.", and the only truth we can accept is that "It is true to
Us that 'P is true to Them'." We can never take Their statemnts at face
value, the only thing We can do is to say that what They say is, at most, true
in relation to the logic of Their culture. And the only kind of truths We can
accept or reject are truths that are relative to our own culture, including our
own (always our own) anthropological theories. The culture imperialism in this
kind of thinking lies in the fact that the only kind of truths We can accept in
our encounters with the Others are our own. We have to relativise Their truths.
The moment we take Their statements at face value, we take their statements
seriously on common premises, not on culture relative premises.
That this argument is not only an abstact, sholastic exercise will be clear
when when we turn to the Sokal affair. The section linearly following this
one is my second general argument against culture relativism.
Few anthropologist today would claim that the world is made up of a finite
number of distinct cultures, existing like islands in the sea. "A culture" is
an abstraction, and the boundaries between these abstract entities are fluent,
fuzzy and contested. The Other, the "primitives" or the "third world" etc., are
only analytically separatable from Us. Anthropologist Roger Keesing, however,
claims that despite this common realisation, many anthropologists, also the
"postmodernists"[13] still exaggerate the
Difference. An important reason to this is that it enables cultural critique:
[...] poststructuralist thought, too, urgently needs radical alterity, to show
that our takens_for_granted represent European cultural constructions. To argue
that our "logocentrism", our focus on reason, is a legacy of Greek philosophy,
for example, requires a nonlogocentric alterity - somewhere -
uncontaminated by Greeks. (Keesing 1994:302)
To argue that keesing is right or wrong generally is a complicated
affair. I will not do that. His argument, however, fits well into the Sokal
affair.
If you are not familiar with the Sokal affair, you may either try
this
site, or you may read the following summary. If you know the basics of the case, you
may jump right to my outline of the culture relative practice of Social
Text.
In the USA the fight of Nature against Culture, of "naturalists" against
"culturalists", has heated up during the 90's. As part of a emerging academic
field known (among other things) as "studies of technology and science",
"sociology of scientific knowledge" etc. Several sociologists, anthropologist
and historians have sought to describe the strategic, practical, social, and
cultural, aspects of science. If these studies have one thing in common, then
the rejection of objectivism probably stands a good chance. In 1994 two
physicists published a book where they raise fierce critisism of these science
studies. In this work they strongly defend a rather conservative objetivism.
Two years later, Social Text launched a special edition, called "Science Wars"
where they discussed and met this critisism.[14] In this number they also published an
article by the physicist Alan D. Sokal.[15]
At the same time, Sokal disclosed the article as a hoax in the journal Lingua
Franca.[16] In the hoax, Sokal claims that a
particular theory within physics known as "quantum gravity" is a "postmodern"
theory with a liboratory potential. He argues, in a deliberately foggy
language, that this branch of physics not only has the potential to liberate
humans from "the tyrrany of 'absolute truht' and 'objective reality', ...", but
also from "the tyrranny of other human beings"[17]
Sokal, who calls himself a "leftist in the old fashioned sense", wrote the
paper, according to himself, in order to save the Left from an academic
subculture that has developed an intelectually sloppy and arrogant style. He
also whishes to save the objective reality:
What concerns me is the profileration, not just of nonsense and sloppy thinking
per se, but of a particular kind of sloppy thinking: one that denies the
existence of objective realities, ...[18]
The editors of Soial Text probably did two major mistakes in this affair.
First, they published the article. Second, they did not just admit
quitly and without any reservations that they had made a bad mistake.
They set out to defend themselves in the major US newspapers. In these attemts
to "strike back" they only made their case worse. These defences, and the very
fact that they were made, are revealing an instance of a deep-seated culture
relativism of the kind that I critisise at this site.
The editors of Social Text, obviously, could not have understood the physics in
Sokal's article in which case they would have diclosed the fraud.
Moreover, the article was published without any kind of referee no
physicist was contacted to sheck the physics.[19] According to their own account they did
not do this because what they found interesting was that a physicist
made an attempt to deal with postmodern thoughts; "his article would have been
regarded as somewhat outdated if it had come from a humanist or a social
scientist."[20] The aditors of Social Text
did not take Sokal's writings at face value but in a relative way saw
his truths as something that did not really concern them. They
worked with two moral codexes, one concerning Themselves, another concerning
the Others.
The philosophical parallell to the practice described above can be found in the
Stanley Fish's defence published in The New York Times a couple of days
after the publication of Sokal's hoax. Fish writes:
What sociologists of science say is that of course the world is real and
independent of our observations but that accounts of the world are produced
by observers and are therefore relative to their capacities, education,
training, etc. It is not the world or its properties but the vocabularies in
whose terms we know them that are socially constructed - fashioned by human
beings - which is why our understanding of those properties is continually
changing.[21]
Fish further argues, in line with the well known argument of Peter L. Berger
and Thomas Luckmann 22, that the fact that something is socially
constructed does not make it unreal: "Facts [...] will be social constructions
and be real."[23] From these two qoutes of
Fish we may conclude that there are two kinds of (qually real) realities; the
one that is "independent of our observations", and the one consisting of
socially constructed facts. Fish' understanding of the relationship between
these realities is implicit in the following quotes from the New York
Times article:
Sociologists of science aren't trying to do science; they are trying to come up
with a rich and powerful explanation of what it means to do it. Their question
is, "What are the conditions that make scientific accomplishments possible?[24]
And then further, to reassure Sokal and his allied that they have nothing to
fear from sociology of science:
A research project that takes the practice of science as an object of study is
not a threat to that practice because, committed as it is to its own goals and
protocols, it doesn't reach into, and therefore doesn't pose a danger to, the
goals and protocols it studies.[25]
These two quotes may be in need of some interpretation. To me, "goals and
protocols" are almost synonymous to "cultures". "Goals" are one instance of the
meaning of an action, whereas "protocols", Fish would be the first to
agree, must be seen as more than the explicit method of a science. It rather
refers to the broader "conceptual sceme" or "system of thoughts" of a given
group. That is, it is a culture. Moreover, an important part of the
"protocol" of sociology is to study the socially constructed reality,
whereas the corresponding part of the protocol of physics is (at least to
physicists sharing Sokal's objectivism) to study the world which is real and
independent of our observations. So, there is, it seems, two clearly
separate cultures (that, to quote Fish, do not "reach into" each other);
sociology and physics, and there is two separate realities; the social and the
physical.
In the quotes above, Fish is seemingly democratic and tolerant; "We" (here: the
sociologists of science) have our goals, truths, and methods, "You" (the
physicists) have yours. We have our world of reference; the social, you have
yours; the physical. These cultures and worlds are equal; both exist on their
own premises.
Underneath this apparent tolerance there is, however, something lurking. It is,
according to Fish, the goal of sociology of science to understand how
"scientific accomplishments" is possible. The sociologist can understand these
accoplishments as "social constructions" that are relative to the scientist's
"capacities, education, training etc.", and without reference to what Fish
refers to as a physical nature "independent of our senses". If Fish was to
admit that this world has any impact on the vocabulary of the scientists, then
he would have had to try to understand this world on the premises of the
physicists, and that is exactly what he does not do. The sociologists have
their own criteria of truths, their own "protocol". When physicists claim that
their vocabulary not only depend on their education, intuitions and
skills (and few physicists would claim that these are unimportant), the Fishian
sociologist can only respond: "The physicists claim that their concepts are
dependent on an external world. True enough, to them, but that is really
their buisiness. All we can do, and this is a sufficient explanation, is to
explain their vocabulary by reference to social factors." So, "in the last
analysis" as a marxist sociologist might have phrased it, the relationship
between the two cultures isn't equal. The sociologists have access to a world,
the world of social facts, that determine the world of the physicists, and the
sociologist can explain the world of the physicist without ever entering into a
dialouge with the physicist without ever being ready, as one always have
to be in dialouges, to take the truths of the other at face value.
The physicists involved in the Sokal affair have on their side argued very
badly against the social dererminism. They have simply claimed that there is an
objective world, and, by implication, that one can gain "objective" knowledge
about this world. To Sokal, it is simply "sloppy thinking" to argue otherwise.
Physicist Steven Weinberg, who has given a resume of the Sokal Affair in New
York review of Books, "rebutts" Werner Heienberg's refusal of the objective
reality simply by stating that this is "dreadful examples of ... philosophical
wanderings"[26], and, besides that, that
Heisenberg was involved in the nuclear program of Nazi-Germany... (!)
It is by no means my intention to take side with this unsophistcated
objectivism. My concern her is to critisise culture relativism as it is
expressed in the fight between the "naturalists" and the "culturalists". In
this discourse the culture relativists exaggerates the Difference by claiming
that the differnt academic subcultures (especially the arts andd the sciences)
relates to radically differernt worlds or realities (the social and the
natural), and that they do this according to their respective "protocols" or
cultures, that is, "on their own premises". The Culture:Nature dichotomy is
thus reproduced when the difference between Us and Them is turned "inward",
against the academic community itself. By doing this the culture relativist
reserves a space to him or herself where there is room for radicalism. When
truths are socially determined, they can also be changed. This is, however,
also a space from where the culture relativist has to relate to others
without ever relating to the truths of the other. The Other is excluded as
equal partner in a dialouge. As to whether this radicalism is leading in a
productive direction I am more uncertain, all the time those to whom it gives
good arguments are a group of relentless and naive objectivists.
The story I have told above is based on one, short newspaper article that was hastily written in response to Sokal's two publications. If the "philosophy" I have extracted from it was just expressed in this single case, it would not be of much interest.
Fish' New York Times article is, however, an expression of a widespread interpretation of the so-called symmetry principlewithin sociology of science. The symmetry principle states that failures and successes within scientific research should be explained by reference to the same processes. When confronted with scientific arguments of the kind that Weinberg (above) raises, one can understand the need for something like such a principle: According to Weinberg, his own objective truths are given to him by an almost divine source: the Objective Nature. The truths of Weinberg's opponent, Werner Heisenberg, is however totally infused by subjectivity, a subjectivity which is perverted by Nazism. Weinberg's world of physicists, it seems, is highly asymmetrical: The subjectivity of those with whom he agree is transparent. These physicists are merely representatives of the transcendental Objective Nature. The truths of his opponents within physics are, however, highly dependent on the subjectivity of the spokespersons, and to the degree that Weinberg doesn't bother to rebut their claims critically; he only refers to their subject position (which in Heisenberg's case was his involvement with Nazism).
The symmetry principle is a way to explain such asymmetries without having to accept them. The particular symmetry principle that underlies Fish' article is one that states that both the successes and failures of science - both the established truths and the established failures - should be explained by reference to social factors only. Hence, one drifts into social determinism.
I am not happy with this social determinism. But I am no more found of Weinberg's alternations between divine objectivity and unreliable subjectivity either. To get out of this muddle we have to get out of thinking in terms of Society versus Nature, Subjectivity versus Objectivity.
You can read more about the social-deterministic symmetry principle (as defended by sociologists Harry Collins and Steven Yearley), and about Bruno Latour and Michel Callon's alternative to it, by clicking here. Or you can read on, to see the alternative that I present at this site.
A typical trait of people of North American culture (if I may allow myself to
use such a term!) seem to me to be a particular way to relate to differences.
In America differences of which Europeans are also aware tend to be blown up
be it the opposition between "decent" Hollywood films and "dirty"
pornography, between (light) "health" food and (fat) "junk", between Man and
Woman, or, as in the present case, between Nature and Culture. How can "we" (or
"you")[27] get out of this kind of moralist
dichotomisation of almost everything? Well, I will restrict myself to
suggesting some way out of the strong Nature:Culture dichotomy, and I will
approach this alternative by first looking at different ways in which to
understand cross-cultural encounters.
How can communication between the great Differnce be possible if we live within
radically separated worlds? One of the most famous culture relativistic answers
to this question is formulated by anthropologist Clifford Geertz: "You don't
have to be one to know one."[28] This
formulation is part of Geertz arument against the need for empathy in our
attemps to understand others. We do not need empathy or einfühlen
in order to understand the Other because the culture of the other is a set of
publicly available symbols and signs that, as it where, can be read as poem.[29]
Anthropologist Bronislav Malinowski is one of the defenders of empathy that
Geertz arues against. After having given a picturesque description of how a
Kula-canoe, the wind, the heaven and the ocean is experienced on board of such
a canoe Malinowski writes:
The natural reflection of this description is that it represents the feelings
of the Ethnographer, not those of the native. Indeed there is a great
difficulty in disentangeling our own sensations from a correct reading of the
innermost native mind. But if an investigator, speaking the native's language
and living among them for some time, were to try to share and understand their
feelings, he will find that he can gauge them correctly. Soon he will learn to
distinguish when the native's behaviour is in harmony with his own, and when,
as it sometimes happens, the two are at variance.[30]
I follow Malinowski rather than Geertz in this controversy; we have to
acknowledge the necessity of empathy, even if it, as in Malinowski's
scientistic rhetoric, does not have to be understood as a "correct reading ot
the innermost native mind." But empathy presumes similarity. In his attempt to
avoid this similarity Geertz reifies the culture into an objective text that
can be read independently of the position of the reader. But what Geertz
does, for example when he "reads" the Balinese cock fight, is not to read this
event as a defender of animal rights or as a pietist opponent of money bet. He
does his best to read the cock fight the way a Balinese reads it.You do
have to be one to know one. Geertz is partly Balinese when he reads the cock
fight, partly American., and above all, he, as the Balinese, is a human being
with the capacity to be both American and Balinese.
Rather than conceiving of culture as a bounded "system of meanings" or a
"conceptual sceme", a first step in a more sound direction is to see culture as
encounter. A heuristic definition might be to to see culture as that which
makes communication possible. All communication presume a certain degree og
symmetry; something is common between the "sender" and the "reciever".
If not, all communication would have been totally arbitrary. When someone is
cracking a secret code such a hermeneutic symmertry is established.
Communication also presumes a certain degree of complementarity; something is
different. If not, there would be nothing to communicate. In terms of
communication theory, the information content would be zero, no
information will be transferred.
Anthropologists have searched out the most radical human difference they have
been able to imagine. The results of these encounters are thick monographs
about their way of life. Collins and Yearley are using this as evidence of the
culture-relativistic sociologist's unique capability to "alternate" between
different worlds.[31] But people all over
the world alternate between different cultures. The culture relativist has just
been unable to see this, in their quest for the singular cultures. Following
Søren Christensen, we ought rather to see anthropological "alternation"
as a proof of the capacity of all human being to somehow transcend their own
"culture".[32] We are not slave of our
cultures. Now, since trans-cultural communication across the largest
cultural diffences ever encountered is indeed possible, this proves the
existence of what I for the occation call universal culture.
There are many possible ways to get around the Nature:Culture dichotomy. One
may deconstruct the dichotomy historically (as Shapin and Schaffer have done[33]) or one may develop an analytical language
that does dot give this difference any significance (as Latour and Callon has
done[34]). One may look at how the
distinction is reproduced in scientific practice (as I have previously done[35]), or one may play a bit around with the
words. the last alternative is explored here.
From Herder to Sahlins culture has been seen in opposition to the universal and
natural. Nature is to culture as the universal is to the particular.
Anthropologist have written a lot about particular natures. These are the many
"etnoscientific" world views of different people. Account of a universal
culture is less common among culture and social anthropologists. Some of the
French enlightenment philosophers held that French were really a univsral
culture, and childeren would "naturally" start to speak French if they were not
thought otherwise. The American philosopher Allan Bloom wants a universal
culture to be a canon of books which, as it happens, all are taken from the
West.[36] I want to talk about universal
culture, but I want to do it without lapsing into such blatant
entoncentrisms.
Let us take Malinowski's canoe ride as an example of universal culture. When
the "Ethnographer" after some while learns to sail the canoe, and feels how
elegantly its stem cuts the water while its sail captures the wind, then he
relates with his physical ("natural") body to a material world, a "nature".
There exists no more natural or objective world than this world. (the world of
particle physics, of chemistry and experimental biology may be as real as this
world, but it is never more real than our everyday world.) At the same
time this is a world in which more and more differences in weather
conditions, in the response of the canoe to bodily movement, as well as in the
bodily responses of the canoe movement start to make a difference to the
etnographer. These differnces are information, meaning if you like. A
single bit of information can be defined as a "difference that makes a
difference".[37] Hence, the "natural" world
of sea, wind and movement is in itself a meaningful world, a world not
only of energy and matter, but of distinctions. It is meaningful it is
"culture" long before ocean becomes "ocean" in a local cosmology. We
are all equipped with roughly equal bodies and we relates to roughly the equal
physical realities. By focusing on this "being-in-the-world" there is a
possibility for a (holistic) understanding of human universals. These
universals are as much "univeral culture" as "universal nature". They are our
point of departure. With them, and with training, we are also able to
understand that which is different in human lives. (See
A
note on the human-centered perspective.)
I agree with Geertz that the anthropologist in order to grasp foreign
meanings should not try to place him or herself "into someone else's
skin". Geertz is right in critisising Malinowskis attempt to understand "the
innermost native mind". Meanings are, as Geertz points our, a quite "public"
affair. But it is not objectively present in the environment. It needs empathy
in order to emerge. This empathy can be trained by developing the skills needed
in order to live in a material world which is also a meaningful world. Many
scholars have empasised the need for skilled empathy in order to understand
others, from early Buddhist teachers to contemporary Western phenomenologists.
I cannot go further into this philosophy here, I can only hope that
I have argued convincingly that some such philosophy is preferable to the
everlasting alternations betwen nature and culture determinism. (Philosophy of
the kind I am talking about can be further explored from Ronald Lemmen's
Non
Cartesian Cognitive Science page.)
Throughout this site the dialogue has been my alternative to a culture
relativism which is both deterministic and imperialistic. In its Socratic form
the dialogue is not about understanding the other on his or her own premises.
It is about showing the inadequacy of these premises and in leading the other
along on our own direction of thought. We are free not to accept the premises
of the other, but along with this we have to accept the rights of the other in
not accepting our premises. We may persuade the other, but the other may also
persuade us. In the case of Science Studies this means that we cannot assume
a priori that the truths of the scientists are only true to them and of
no relevance to how we understand that they "construct" their worlds. As
sociologists of science we must be ready, when we find it necessary, to accept
the truths of the scientist to be of relevance in the telling of our own
sociological and anthropological stories about how science is enacted and made.
This last section of the site briefly discuss, for the balance of it, some
encounters where culture relativism may be desirable. By and large, I think
some sort of relativism (cultural or otherwise) is necessary where the
dialogue, in the egalitarian Socratic sense, is not possible. Here is a couple
of examples.
First, we cannot establish a dialogue with dead persons. To moralise about the
sexism and ethnocentrism of Aristotle, without trying as best as one can to
understand him on his own premises, only leads to self righteousness. To
contextualise him may however lead to some kind of insight, perhaps even
critical self-reflection.
Second, a good deal of culture relativism may be necessary when the encounters
are asymmetrical in terms of power, and when we (who employ a culture
relativist attitude) are the powerful partner of the encounter. The
subordinated cannot enforce his or her premises on the powerful, obviously
that's why there is a power relationship. The encounter does not become
a dialogue. (After all, Plato's dialogues took place among the equal Men of the
Agora.) To apply culture relativism in such a case is not only a way to
understand the other, it may also be a way to give the other a voice with which
to be heard. If, say, the anthropologist can "translate" the culture of the
powerless into the language of the powerful, then, perhaps, the anthropologist
can become a spokesperson of the powerless and a culture imperialist invasion
can be tweaked in the direction of a dialogue.
This outline of the necessity of culture relativism is far from complete, but
it has perhaps given a glimpse of a more fruitful relativism. This is a
relativism which is subordinated the engaged and interactive dialogue rather
than the Grand Tale of culture determinism.
