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Understanding Cultural Relativism and Its Importance

Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the "Everything Psychology Book."

Akeem Marsh, MD, is a board-certified child, adolescent, and adult psychiatrist who has dedicated his career to working with medically underserved communities.

Bartosz Hadyniak/E+/Getty

Beliefs of Cultural Relativism

• Limitations
• In Mental Health

Cultural Relativism vs. Ethnocentrism

• How to Promote

Cultural relativism suggests that ethics, morals, values, norms, beliefs, and behaviors must be understood within the context of the culture from which they arise. It means that all cultures have their own beliefs and that there is no universal or absolute standard to judge those cultural norms. 

"Cultural relativism leads us to accept that cultures are foundationally different, with differing social and ethical norms. This includes understanding that a person’s place of birth, including where or how a patient was raised during their formative years, is the basis of a person’s approach to the world and emotional self," says Anu Raj, PsyD , a clinical psychologist at New York Institute of Technology.

Advocates of cultural relativism suggest that one culture's values, beliefs, and norms should not be judged through the lens of another culture.

It is the opposite of ethnocentrism, which involves judging or understanding cultural beliefs from the perspective of your own. Instead, cultural relativism suggests that observers and researchers should focus on describing those practices without attempting to impose their own biases and judgments upon them.

History of Cultural Relativism

The concept of cultural relativism was introduced by anthropologist Franz Boas in 1887. While he did not coin the term, it later became widely used by his students to describe his anthropological perspective and theories.

Cultural relativism suggests that:

• Different societies have their own moral codes and practices.
• Norms, beliefs, and values must be judged and understood from the context of the culture where they originate.
• No culture is objectively better than others; cultures and their customs and beliefs are not objectively superior or inferior to any other culture.
• Practices and behaviors considered acceptable or unacceptable vary from one culture to the next.
• Cultural relativism aims to help promote acceptance, tolerance, and an appreciation for diverse cultural beliefs and practices.
• No universal ethical or moral truths apply to all people in all situations.
• What is considered right and wrong is determined by society’s moral codes.
• Researchers and observers should strive to observe behavior rather than pass judgments on it based on their own cultural perspective.

Different Types of Cultural Relativism

There are two distinct types of cultural relativism: absolute cultural relativism and critical cultural relativism.

Absolute Cultural Relativism

According to this perspective, outsiders should not question or judge cultural events. Essentially, this point of view proposes that outsiders should not criticize or question the cultural practices of other societies, no matter what they might involve.

Critical Cultural Relativism

Critical cultural relativism suggests that practices should be evaluated in terms of how and why they are adopted. This perspective suggests that cultural practices can be evaluated and understood by looking at factors such as the historical context and social influences.

It also recognizes that all societies experience inequalities and power dynamics that influence how and why certain beliefs are adopted and who adopts them.

Strengths of Cultural Relativism

Cultural relativism has a number of benefits that can help people gain greater insight into different cultures. This perspective can help:

• Promote cultural understanding : Because cultural relativism encourages seeing cultures with an open mind, it can foster greater empathy , understanding, and respect for cultures different from ours. 
• Protect cultural respect and autonomy : Cultural relativism recognizes that no culture is superior to any other. Rather than attempting to change other cultures, this perspective encourages people to respect the autonomy and self-determinism of other cultures, which can play an important role in preserving the heritage and traditions of other cultures.
• Foster learning : By embracing cultural relativism, people from different backgrounds are able to communicate effectively and create an open dialogue to foster greater learning for other cultures of the world.

Cultural relativism can also be important in helping mental health professionals deliver culturally competent care to clients of different backgrounds.

"What’s considered “typical and normal versus pathological” depends on cultural norms. It varies between providers and patients; it impacts diagnosis, treatment, and prognosis," Raj explains.

When mental health professionals account for the differences in values, and attitudes towards and of marginalized people (including communities of color and LGBTQ+ communities), providers develop respect for individual patients. Consequently, patients are less likely to be misdiagnosed and more likely to continue treatment.

Limitations of Cultural Relativism

While cultural relativism has strengths, that does not mean it is without limitations.

Failure to Address Human Rights

This perspective has been criticized for failing to address universal rights. Some suggest that this approach may appear to condone cultural practices that constitute human rights violations. It can be challenging to practice non-judgment of other cultures while still protecting people’s right to live free from discrimination and oppression.

Cultural relativism may sometimes hamper progress by inhibiting the examination of practices, norms, and traditions that limit a society’s growth and progress.

Reducing Cultures to Stereotypes

Cultural relativism sometimes falls victim to the tendency to stereotype and simplify cultures. Rather than fully appreciating the full complexity and diversity that may exist within a culture, people may reduce it to a homogenous stereotype. This often prevents outsiders from seeing the many variations that may exist within a society and fully appreciating the way cultures evolve over time.

Individual Rights vs. Cultural Values

This perspective may sometimes lead observers to place a higher priority on a culture’s collective values while dismissing individual variations. This might involve, for example, avoiding criticism of cultures that punish political dissidents who voice opposition to cultural norms, and practices.

Examples of Cultural Relativism

In reality, people make cultural judgments all the time. If you've ever eaten food from another culture and described it as 'gross' or learned about a specific cultural practice and called it 'weird,' you've made a judgment about that culture based on the norms of your own. Because you don't eat those foods or engage in those practices in your culture, you are making culture-biased value judgments.

Cultural differences can affect a wide range of behaviors, including healthcare decisions. For example, research has found that while people from Western cultures prefer to be fully informed in order to make autonomous healthcare conditions, individuals from other cultures prefer varying degrees of truth-telling from medical providers.

An example of using cultural relativism in these cases would be describing the food practices of a different culture and learning more about why certain foods and dishes are important in those societies. Another example would be learning more about different cultural practices and exploring how they originated and the purpose they serve rather than evaluating them from your own cultural background. 

In medical settings, healthcare practitioners must balance the interests and autonomy of their patients with respect and tolerance for multicultural values.

Cultural Relativism in Mental Health

Cultural relativism can also play an important role in the practice and application of mental health. "An individual’s perception of mental health, including stigma, is often influenced by their cultural identity and social values," explains Raj.

People who experience cultural discrimination are also more likely to experience higher stress levels, which can seriously affect mental health. Research has shown that perceived discrimination increases psychological distress and predicts symptoms of anxiety and depression. It also contributes to worse physical health, including a higher risk for heart disease, diabetes, cancer, and stroke.

Therapists must strive to understand people from different backgrounds to provide culturally competent care. "Through the lens of cultural competency, providers can educate themselves and elevate the plethora of coping mechanisms that a patient already might possess," says Raj. 

Cultural relativism and ethnocentrism are two contrasting perspectives that can be used to evaluate and understand other cultures.

Ethnocentrism involves judging other cultures based on the standards and values of one's own culture, often leading to a biased or prejudiced perspective .

Where cultural relativism suggests that all cultures are equally valid, ethnocentrism involves seeing your own culture as superior or more correct than others.

Cultural relativism emphasizes the importance of diversity and recognizes that values, beliefs, and behaviors can vary across societies. This can be contrasted with ethnocentrism, which promotes the idea that your own culture is the norm or benchmark against which others should be evaluated. This can limit understanding and decrease tolerance for people of different backgrounds. 

How Do You Promote Cultural Relativism?

There are a number of strategies that can help promote cultural relativism. This can be particularly important for mental health professionals and other healthcare practitioners. 

"Therapists must be able to view the world through the eyes of their patients. Most importantly, culturally competent therapists understand their patient’s behavior through the cultural framework in which they live," Raj says.

Promoting cultural relativism involves adopting an open-minded and respectful approach toward other cultures. Some things you can do to foster greater cultural relativism:

• Embrace cultural diversity : Strive to appreciate other cultures, including their unique values, traditions, and perspectives. Remember that diversity enriches our lives, experiences, and world knowledge.
• Learn more about other cultures : Take the time to explore cultures other than your own, including histories, traditions, and beliefs. Resources that can help include books, documentaries, and online resources.
• Practice empathy : Seek to understand others by imagining things from their perspective. Try to understand their experiences, challenges, and aspirations. Cultivate empathy and respect for the differences between people and cultures.
• Seek diversity : Make an active effort to spend more time with people from different walks of life. Talk to people from diverse backgrounds and approach these discussions with an open mind and a desire to learn. Be willing to share your own perspectives and experiences without trying to change others or impose your beliefs on them.
• Challenge biases : Try to become more aware of how your unconscious biases might shape your perceptions and interactions with others. Practicing cultural relativism is an ongoing process. It takes time, open-mindedness , and a willingness to reflect on your biases.

Promoting Cultural Relativism Among Mental Health Professionals

How can therapists apply cultural relativism to ensure they understand other cultural perspectives and avoid unintentional biases in therapy?   

A 2019 study found that the ideal training for therapists included graduate coursework in diversity, supervised clinical experiences working with diverse populations, experiential activities, didactic training, and cultural immersion when possible.

Avoiding Bias in Therapy

Raj suggests that there are important questions that professionals should ask themselves, including:

• How do I identify?
• How does my patient identify? 
• What prejudices or biases am I holding? 
•  Are there biases or stereotypes I hold based on my own upbringing and culture? 

She also suggests that therapists should always be willing to ask about client involvement in treatment planning. She recommends asking questions such as: 

• What approaches have been successful or failed in the past? 
• How does the patient perceive their ailment? 
• What were the results of the patient’s previous coping mechanisms? 
• How does the patient’s culture drive their behavior, coping skills, and outcomes?

By making clients an active part of their treatment and taking steps to understand their background better, therapists can utilize cultural relativism to deliver more sensitive, informed care.

The New Republic. Pioneers of cultural relativism )

Kanarek J. Critiquing cultural relativism . The Intellectual Standard. 2013;2(2):1.

Rosenberg AR, Starks H, Unguru Y, Feudtner C, Diekema D. Truth telling in the setting of cultural differences and incurable pediatric illness: A review . JAMA Pediatr . 2017;171(11):1113-1119. doi:10.1001/jamapediatrics.2017.2568

Williams DR, Lawrence JA, Davis BA, Vu C. Understanding how discrimination can affect health . Health Serv Res . 2019;54 Suppl 2(Suppl 2):1374-1388. doi:10.1111/1475-6773.13222

Benuto LT, Singer J, Newlands RT, Casas JB. Training culturally competent psychologists: Where are we and where do we need to go ? Training and Education in Professional Psychology . 2019;13(1):56-63. doi:10.1037/tep0000214

By Kendra Cherry, MSEd Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the "Everything Psychology Book."

Cultural Relativism: Definition & Examples

Charlotte Nickerson

Research Assistant at Harvard University

Undergraduate at Harvard University

Charlotte Nickerson is a student at Harvard University obsessed with the intersection of mental health, productivity, and design.

Learn about our Editorial Process

Saul Mcleod, PhD

Editor-in-Chief for Simply Psychology

BSc (Hons) Psychology, MRes, PhD, University of Manchester

Saul Mcleod, PhD., is a qualified psychology teacher with over 18 years of experience in further and higher education. He has been published in peer-reviewed journals, including the Journal of Clinical Psychology.

On This Page:

Key Takeaways

• Cultural Relativism is the claim that ethical practices differ among cultures, and what is considered right in one culture may be considered wrong in another. The implication of cultural relativism is that no one society is superior to another; they are merely different.
• This claim comes with several corollaries; namely, that different societies have different moral codes, there is no objective standard to judge how good or bad these moral codes are, and that the job of those who study cultures is not to compare these customs to their own, but to describe them.
• Moral relativism claims that what is customary in a culture is absolutely right in that culture. Cultural relativism is not as strong, sometimes asserting that there is no real way to measure right or wrong.
• Cultural relativism is contrary to ethnocentrism, which encourages people to look at the world from the perspective of their own culture.
• While cultural relativism has been the subject of controversy — especially from philosophers — anthropological and sociological studies have led to a widespread consensus among social scientists that cultural relativism is true.

Cultural relativism is the principle of regarding the beliefs, values, and practices of a culture from the viewpoint of that culture itself.

It states that there are no universal beliefs, and each culture must be understood in its own terms because cultures cannot be translated into terms that are accessible everywhere.

The principle is sometimes practiced to avoid cultural bias in research and to avoid judging another culture by the standards of one’s own culture. For this reason, cultural relativism has been considered an attempt to avoid ethnocentrism.

Cultural Relativism refers to the ability to understand a culture on its own terms and consequently not make judgments based on the standards of one’s own culture.

Implications

From the cultural relativist perspective, no culture is superior to another when comparing their systems of morality, law, politics, etc.

This is because cultural norms and values, according to cultural relativism, derive their meaning within a specific social context.

Cultural relativism is also based on the idea that there is no absolute standard of good or evil. Thus, every decision and judgment of what is right or wrong is individually decided in each society.

As a result, any opinion on ethics is subject to the perspective of each person within their particular culture.

In practice, cultural relativists try to promote the understanding of cultural practices that are unfamiliar to other cultures, such as eating insects and sacrificial killing.

There are two different categories of cultural relativism: absolute and critical. Absolute cultural relativists believe that outsiders must and should not question everything that happens within a culture.

Meanwhile, critical cultural relativism questions cultural practices regarding who is accepting them and why, as well as recognizing power relationships.

Cultural relativism challenges beliefs about the objectivity and universality of moral truth.

In effect, cultural relativism says that there is no such thing as universal truth and ethics; there are only various cultural codes. Moreover, the code of one culture has no special status but is merely one among many.

Assumptions

Cultural relativism has several different elements, and there is some disagreement as to what claims are true and pertinent to cultural relativism and which are not. Some claims include that:

Different societies have different moral codes;

There is no objective standard that can be used to judge one societal code as better than another;

The moral code of one’s own society has no special status but is merely one among many;

There is no “universal truth” in ethics, meaning that there are no moral truths that hold for all people at all times;

The moral code of a society determines what is right and wrong within that society; that is, if the moral code of a society says that a certain action is right, then that action is right, at least within that society and;

It is arrogant for people to attempt to judge the conduct of other people. Instead, researchers should adopt an attitude of tolerance toward the practices of other cultures.

Illustrative Examples

Food choices.

Cultural relativism does not merely relate to morality and ethics. Cultural relativism, for example, explains why certain cultures eat different foods at different meals.

For example, traditionally, breakfast in the United States is markedly different from breakfast in Japan or Colombia. While one may consist of scrambled eggs and pancakes and the other rice and soup or white cheese on a corn arepa, cultural relativists seek to understand these differences, not in terms of any perceived superiority or inferiority but in description (Bian & Markman, 2020).

Mental Illness

One of the biggest controversies concerning classification and diagnosis is that the ICD (the manuals of mental disorders) are culturally biased because they are drawn up and used by white, middle-class men. This means they tend to use definitions of abnormality that are irrelevant to all cultures.

For example, Davison & Neale (1994) explain that in Asian cultures, a person experiencing some emotional turmoil is praised & rewarded if they show no expression of their emotions.

In certain Arabic cultures, however, the outpouring of public emotion is understood and often encouraged. Without this knowledge, an individual displaying overt emotional behavior may be regarded as abnormal when in fact, it is not.

Cross-cultural misunderstandings are common and may contribute to unfair and discriminatory treatment of minorities by the majority, e.g., the high diagnosis rate of schizophrenia amongst non-white British people.

Cochrane (1977) reported that the incidence of schizophrenia in the West Indies and the UK is 1 %, but that people of Afro-Caribbean origin are seven times more likely to be diagnosed as schizophrenic when living in the UK.

Hygienic Rituals

Another phenomenon explained by cultural relativism is hygienic rituals. Different cultures may use different modes or methods of disposing of waste and cleaning up afterward.

Ritualized ablution, or washing, also differs across cultures. Catholics may dip their fingers into blessed water and anoint themselves at church, and Jewish people may pour water over their hands in a specific way during Shabbat.

Although toilet and washing practices vary drastically across cultures, cultural relativists seek to describe these differences, noting that what is customary to culture is not necessarily “right” or “wrong.”

Cultural vs. Moral Relativism

Cultural relativism is a claim that anthropologists can make when describing how ethical practices differ across cultures; as a result, the truth or falsity of cultural relativism can be determined by how anthropologists and anthropologists study the world.

Many sociologists and anthropologists have conducted such studies, leading to widespread consensus among social scientists that cultural relativism is an actual phenomenon (Bowie, 2015).

Moral relativism, meanwhile, is a claim that what is really right or wrong is what that culture says is right or wrong. While moral relativists believe that cultural relativism is true, they extend their claims much further.

Moral relativists believe that if a culture sincerely and reflectively adopts some basic moral principle, then it is morally obligatory for members of that culture to act according to that principle (Bowie, 2015).

The implication of moral relativism is that it is absolutely necessary for someone to act according to the norms of the culture in which they are located.

For example, when asking whether or not it is ethical to bribe government bureaucrats, a moral relativist would look for the answer in the norms of how people within their country deal with bureaucracy.

If people bribe government officials, then the moral relativist would consider bribery not to be wrong in that country.

However, if people do not normally bribe bureaucrats, offering them a bribe would be considered morally wrong.

A cultural relativist would posit that while bribery is an ethical norm in the cultures where it is practiced, it is not necessarily morally right or wrong in that culture (Bowie, 2015).

Cultural Relativism vs. Ethnocentrism

Ethnocentrism is the tendency to look at the world largely from the perspective of one’s own culture.

This may be motivated, for example, by the belief that one’s own race, ethnic, or cultural group is the most important or that some or all aspects of its culture are superior to those of other groups.

Ethnocentrism can often lead to incorrect assumptions about others’ behavior based on one’s own norms, values, and beliefs (Worthy, Lavigne, & Romero, 2021a).

Cultural relativism, meanwhile, is principled in regarding and valuing the practices of a culture from the point of view of that culture and avoiding making judgments stemming from one’s own assumptions.

Cultural relativism attempts to counter ethnocentrism by promoting the understanding of cultural practices unfamiliar to other cultures. For example, it is a common practice for friends of the same sex in India to hold hands while walking in public.

In the United Kingdom, holding hands is largely limited to romantically involved couples and often suggests a sexual relationship.

Someone holding an extreme ethnocentrist view may see their own understanding of hand-holding as superior and consider the foreign practice to be immoral (Worthy, Lavigne, & Romero; 2021a).

Controversy

Cultural Relativism has been criticized for numerous reasons, both theoretical and practical.

According to Karanack (2013), cultural relativism attempts to integrate knowledge between one’s own culture-bound reality. The premise that cultural relativism is based on that all cultures are valid in their customs is vague in Karanack’s view.

Karanack also criticizes cultural relativism from a theoretical perspective for having contradictory logic, asserting that cultural relativism often asserts that social facts are true and untrue, depending on the culture in which one is situated.

Nonetheless, cultural relativism also has several advantages. Firstly, it is a system that promotes cooperation. Each individual has a different perspective that is based on their upbringing, experiences, and personal thoughts, and by embracing the many differences that people have, cooperation creates the potential for a stronger society.

Each individual definition of success allows people to pursue stronger bonds with one another and potentially achieve more because there are no limitations on a group level about what can or cannot be accomplished (Karanack, 2013).

Secondly, cultural relativism envisions a society where equality across cultures is possible. Cultural relativism does so by allowing individuals to define their moral code without defining that of others. As each person can set their own standards of success and behavior, cultural relativism creates equality (Karanack, 2013).

Additionally, Cultural relativism can preserve cultures and allow people to create personal moral codes based on societal standards without precisely consulting what is “right” or “wrong.”

However, it can do so while also excluding moral relativism. This means that the moral code of a culture can be defined and an expectation implemented that people follow it, even as people devise goals and values that are particularly relevant to them.

Lastly, cultural relativism has been praised for stopping cultural conditions — the adoption of people to adapt their attitudes, thoughts, and beliefs to the people they are with on a regular basis (Karanack, 2013).

Despite these advantages, cultural relativism has been criticized for creating a system fuelled by personal bias. As people tend to prefer to be with others who have similar thoughts, feelings, and ideas, they tend to separate themselves into neighborhoods, communities, and social groups that share specific perspectives.

When people are given the power to define their own moral code, they do so based on personal bias, causing some people to follow their own code at the expense of others (Karanack, 2013).

Nonetheless, cultural relativism promotes understanding cultures outside of one’s own, enabling people to build relationships with other cultures that acknowledge and respect each other’s diverse lives.

With cultural relativism comes the ability to understand a culture on its own terms without making judgments based on one’s own cultural standards. In this way, sociologists and anthropologists can draw more accurate conclusions about outside cultures (Worthy, Lavigne, & Romero, 2020).

Bian, L., & Markman, E. M. (2020). Why do we eat cereal but not lamb chops at breakfast? Investigating Americans’ beliefs about breakfast foods. Appetite, 144, 104458.

Bowie, N.E. (2015). Relativism, Cultural and Moral. In Wiley Encyclopedia of Management (eds C.L. Cooper and ). Culture and Psychology. (2021). Glendale Community College.

Brown, M. F. (2008). Cultural Relativism 2.0 .  Current Anthropology, 49 (3), 363-383.

Cochrane, R. A. Y. M. O. N. D. (1977). Mental illness in immigrants to England and Wales: an analysis of mental hospital admissions, 1971.  Social psychiatry, 12 (1), 25-35.

Davison, G. C., & Neale, J. M. (1994). Abnormal Psychology . New York: John Willey and Sons.

Kanarek, Jaret (2013) “ Critiquing Cultural Relativism ,” The Intellectual Standard: Vol. 2: Iss. 2, Article 1.

Spiro, M. E. (1992). Cultural relativism and the future of anthropology .  Rereading cultural anthropology , 124, 51.

Tilley, J. J. (2000). Cultural relativism .  Hum. Rts. Q. , 22, 501.

Worthy, L. D., Lavigne, T., & Romero, F. (2020). Self and Culture. Culture and Psychology .

Zechenter, E. M. (1997). In the name of culture: Cultural relativism and the abuse of the individual .  Journal of Anthropological Research, 53 (3), 319-347.

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17 Cultural Relativism Advantages and Disadvantages

People change. Cultures change. Humanity is constantly evolving, developing, and adapting. When cultural relativism is implemented, then the ability to evolve and adapt is encouraged because the definitions of ethical and moral “right” and “wrong” can change as people change. Cultural relativism eliminates the rigidity that societies have in place regarding ethics, conduct, and reasoning.

It also means that there are no actual definitions that are in place for a society. Cultural relativism promotes an individualistic perspective which governs how a person acts, thinks, and responds. Each person can set their own moralistic codes which they follow.

There are additional cultural relativism advantages and disadvantages to consider when looking at this theory. Here are some of the key points to consider.

What are the Advantages of Cultural Relativism?

1. It is a system which promotes cooperation. For the most part, humanity is strong because of the differences we all have. Every individual has a different perspective that is based on their upbringing, experiences, and personal thoughts. By embracing the many differences we have, the cooperation creates the potential for a stronger society. Each individual definition of success allows us to pursue stronger bonds with one another and potentially achieve more because there are no limitations from a group level and what can or cannot be accomplished.

2. It creates a society where equality is possible. In any society, people rise by climbing on top of other people. It is a socially acceptable way of creating discrimination. We see this today in the wage gap that women face, the educational opportunities that minority groups face, and the violence we see because of political oppression. Cultural relativism allows the individual to define their moral code without defining the moral code of others. Each person is separate in such a society. That separation creates equality because each person can set their own definition of success.

3. People can pursue a genuine interest. In the modern society, people are funneled toward certain career options because of their circumstances. If you can’t afford to go to college, then you pursue a vocational career or some sort of entrepreneurship instead of a career that requires a graduate degree. If you can’t afford to buy a house, you go rent an apartment. In cultural relativism, you get to pursue your own interests without restriction. You set the definitions of what you can have and what you cannot have. When implemented successfully, each person would get to focus on their strengths instead of their weaknesses.

4. Respect is encouraged in a system of cultural relativism. People come from different cultures. They have different ideas. They pursue different definitions of success. Because such a system promotes the individual’s definition instead of a group definition, a society can evolve because there is a natural level of respect built into the process. Each person is naturally given the right to pursue life through their own specific perspective and then learn from their experiences in a way that works best for them.

5. It preserves human cultures. Humanity is a very diverse set of thoughts, traditions, ideas, and practices. Many times, the traditions of humanity are set aside so that a group set of standards can be appeased. Native and First Nations tribes in North America did this by signing treaties which would help them to preserve some lands, but limit their rights by being subject to a new governmental authority. They were forced to trade some of their culture. Under the theory of cultural relativism, such a trade would not be necessary. It wouldn’t even be a consideration.

6. Cultural relativism creates a society without judgment. We are so trained to judge others in today’s world that we don’t even give it a second thought. Looking at someone and saying, “Glad that isn’t me,” is a judgment. Under the theory of cultural relativism, judgment goes away. The only person that judges you is yourself. People who might disagree with you are able to set their own codes and standards for their own individualistic bubble. Instead of worrying about others, you only worry about yourself.

7. Moral relativism can be excluded from cultural relativism. Each culture can be treated as an individual under the theory of cultural relativism. This means the moral codes of a culture can be defined and an expectation implemented that people follow it. Although other cultures may not setup such a restriction, and others might say such a restriction isn’t a true form of cultural relativism, people in such a system can do what makes the most sense for them. You’re focusing on the customs of a culture, not the morality that is imposed upon those customs.

8. We can create personal moral codes based on societal standards with ease. To determine if a decision would be “right” or “wrong,” cultural relativism allows individuals to consult with the standards of their society or culture. It is a simple test to determine the course that a person should take in such a circumstance. By consulting with the moral code of the culture, one question must be asked: does the action conform to the cultural moral code? If it does, then the action is permitted. Although this process can allow for disturbing results, most cultures are based on inclusion instead of exclusion. It is only in structures where apartheid, segregation, or purging where disturbing outcomes are typically present.

9. It stops cultural conditioning. People tend to adapt their attitudes, thoughts, and beliefs to the people they are with on a regular basis. This is cultural conditioning and it prevents people from having an individualistic perspective. Cultural relativism stops this.

What Are the Disadvantages of Cultural Relativism?

1. It creates a system that is fueled by personal bias. Every society has a certain natural bias to it because of how humanity operates. People tend to prefer to be with others who have similar thoughts and feelings, so they segregate themselves into neighborhoods, communities, and social groups that share specific perspectives. When people are given the power to define their own moral code, then they will do so based on their own personal bias. There is no longer a group perspective. People follow their own code at the expense of others.

2. It would create chaos. People who can follow their own moral code because there is no “wrong” or “right” would be allowed to pursue any life they preferred under the theory of cultural relativism. If you’re upset with your neighbor, then you can kill that person without consequence if your moral code allows for murder. Instead of purchasing something, you could steal it if you see stealing as “right” to do. There is no real way to protect people in such a society, so each person becomes responsible to protect themselves. It creates a system that is Darwinian in practicality, where only the strongest can survive.

3. It is an idea that is based on the perfection of humanity. Many people strive to do good every day. Most want to see everyone have the chance to pursue happiness in some way. That is why the idea of cultural relativism often seems to be inviting. The only problem is that people are not perfect. We can be forgetful. We can lie. We can become aggressive when a driver cuts you off while driving and puts your family at risk. Without a group moral code in place to govern decisions, anything could happen when we experience these moments of imperfection.

4. It could promote a lack of diversity. Cultural relativism promotes an individualistic point of view, so although it seems to promote diversity, it actually removes it from a society. Cultural relativism would allow slavery to return to the US South. It would allow men to exclude women from voting once again. It would stop employers from paying someone a fair wage – or even paying them a wage at all. The only standards that are in place are those which are set by the individual involved, which means everyone is pursuing their own position of strength. We cannot create diversity when the emphasis of a society is individualistic gain that can come at the expense of others.

5. It draws people away from one another. Although cultural relativism can promote people coming together to share their strengths, it can also encourage people to draw apart from one another. C.S. Lewis, in his description of Hell from The Screwtape Letters, envisions a place where people are constantly going away from each other to avoid the demons that each person has. Because each person is uncertain of what codes and standards another is following, the natural inclination for self-preservation causes people to draw away. You might develop a close-knit community at first, but as Lewis describes, each demon causes people to back away from one another instead of coming closer.

6. It could limit moral progress. When we look at the idea of moral progress, we think of becoming more inclusionary instead of exclusionary. This inclusion is reflected in the laws and customs of the culture. The current debate on the transgender bathroom laws in North Carolina and Texas is a good example of this. In cultural relativism, everyone would be able to use their bathroom of choice OR a culture could state that everyone must use a specific bathroom without exception and there would be complete agreement in either choice. Within the society, either choice would be seen as moral progress, but in reality, it could hold people back.

7. It could limit humanity’s progress. We often think of the concept of cultural relativism as progression, but it isn’t necessarily that way. When you remove the ability to judge one standard from another, then the comparative process of placing a current society or culture against a past one is removed as well. No definition of success can be implemented because each is successful in its own way. We might consider the ability for women to vote as the “right” thing to do today, but in past societies, not allowing women to vote was also “right” from a cultural standpoint. Because both are “right,” there’s no way to judge progress.

8. Cultural relativism can turn perceptions into truths. It’s a dark night and it is warm outside. An African-American teen is walking down an alley wearing a hoodie and the hood is up. His hands are jammed into his pockets and there is a bulge in one of them. In this scenario, some people may automatically assume that the teen is up to “no good.” The bulge might even be a weapon under that assumption. In the world of cultural relativism, that bias becomes a truth that can be acted upon. It doesn’t matter if the bulge is a gun or a package of Skittles. The decision to act becomes a righteous one because of the individual truth that the culture allowed through the bias it perpetrates.

The cultural relativism advantages and disadvantages which are discussed are based on the theoretical implementation of such a system. Originally proposed by Franz Boas in 1887, it is an idea that has never been implemented on a large scale. Moral standards make sense in a person’s culture. By creating individualized cultures, on singular or larger scales, it does become easier to keep and embrace the traditions that humanity has developed over the millennia.

Definition of Cultural Relativism in Sociology

How Breakfast Foods and Rules About Nudity Help Explain It

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Cultural relativism refers to the idea that the values, knowledge, and behavior of people must be understood within their own cultural context. This is one of the most fundamental concepts in sociology , as it recognizes and affirms the connections between the greater social structure and trends and the everyday lives of individual people.

Origins and Overview

The concept of cultural relativism as we know and use it today was established as an analytic tool by German-American  anthropologist Franz Boas in the early 20th century. In the context of early social science, cultural relativism became an important tool for pushing back on the ethnocentrism that often tarnished research at that time, which was mostly conducted by white, wealthy, Western men, and often focused on people of color, foreign indigenous populations, and persons of lower economic class than the researcher.

Ethnocentrism is the practice of viewing and judging someone else's culture based on the values and beliefs of one's own. From this standpoint, we might frame other cultures as weird, exotic, intriguing, and even as problems to be solved. In contrast, when we recognize that the many cultures of the world have their own beliefs, values, and practices that have developed in particular historical, political, social, material, and ecological contexts and that it makes sense that they would differ from our own and that none are necessarily right or wrong or good or bad, then we are engaging the concept of cultural relativism.

Cultural relativism explains why, for example, what constitutes breakfast varies widely from place to place. What is considered a typical breakfast in Turkey, as illustrated in the above image, is quite different from what is considered a typical breakfast in the U.S. or Japan. While it might seem strange to eat fish soup or stewed vegetables for breakfast in the U.S., in other places, this is perfectly normal. Conversely, our tendency toward sugary cereals and milk or preference for egg sandwiches loaded with bacon and cheese would seem quite bizarre to other cultures.

Similarly, but perhaps of more consequence, rules that regulate nudity in public vary widely around the world. In the U.S., we tend to frame nudity in general as an inherently sexual thing, and so when people are nude in public, people may interpret this as a sexual signal. But in many other places around the world, being nude or partially nude in public is a normal part of life, be it at swimming pools, beaches, in parks, or even throughout the course of daily life (see many indigenous cultures around the world).

In these cases, being nude or partially nude is not framed as sexual but as the appropriate bodily state for engaging in a given activity. In other cases, like many cultures where Islam is the predominant faith, a more thorough coverage of the body is expected than in other cultures. Due in large part to ethnocentrism, this has become a highly politicized and volatile practice in today's world.

Why Recognizing Cultural Relativism Matters

By acknowledging cultural relativism, we can recognize that our culture shapes what we consider to be beautiful, ugly, appealing, disgusting, virtuous, funny, and abhorrent. It shapes what we consider to be good and bad art, music, and film, as well as what we consider to be tasteful or tacky consumer goods. The work of sociologist Pierre Bourdieu features ample discussion of these phenomena, and the consequences of them. This varies not just in terms of national cultures but within a large society like the U.S. and also by cultures and subcultures organized by class, race, sexuality, region, religion, and ethnicity, among others.

• Franz Boas, Father of American Anthropology
• An Introduction to Cultural Anthropology
• Definition of the Sociological Imagination and Overview of the Book
• Sociological Xenocentrism
• What Is Cultural Capital? Do I Have It?
• What Is Ethnomusicology? Definition, History, and Methods
• How Different Cultural Groups Become More Alike
• Introduction to Discourse in Sociology
• So What Is Culture, Exactly?
• Definition of Cultural Materialism
• What Is Racial Formation Theory?
• What Is the 'American Melting Pot?'
• The Challenges of Ethical Living in a Consumer Society
• An Introduction to Medical Anthropology
• The Sociology of Race and Ethnicity
• How to Tell If You've Been Unintentionally Racist

Module 3: Culture

Ethnocentrism and cultural relativism, learning outcomes.

• Describe and give examples of ethnocentrism and cultural relativism

Despite how much humans have in common, cultural differences are far more prevalent than cultural universals. For example, while all cultures have language, analysis of particular language structures and conversational etiquette reveal tremendous differences. In some Middle Eastern cultures, it is common to stand close to others in conversation. North Americans keep more distance and maintain a larger “personal space.” Even something as simple as eating and drinking varies greatly from culture to culture. If your professor comes into an early morning class holding a mug of liquid, what do you assume she is drinking? In the United States, the mug is most likely filled with coffee, not Earl Grey tea, a favorite in England, or Yak Butter tea, a staple in Tibet.

The way cuisines vary across cultures fascinates many people. Some travelers pride themselves on their willingness to try unfamiliar foods, like celebrated food writer Anthony Bourdain, while others return home expressing gratitude for their native culture’s fare. Often, people in the United States express disgust at other cultures’ cuisine and think that it’s gross to eat meat from a dog or guinea pig, for example, while they don’t question their own habit of eating cows or pigs. Such attitudes are an example of  ethnocentrism , or evaluating and judging another culture based on how it compares to one’s own cultural norms. Ethnocentrism, as sociologist William Graham Sumner (1906) described the term, involves a belief or attitude that one’s own culture is better than all others,  and should therefore serve as the standard frame of reference.   Almost everyone is a little bit ethnocentric. For example, Americans tend to say that people from England drive on the “wrong” side of the road, rather than on the “other” side. Someone from a country where dog meat is standard fare might find it off-putting to see a dog in a French restaurant—not on the menu, but as a pet and fellow patron’s companion. A good example of ethnocentrism is referring to parts of Asia as the “Far East.” One might question, “Far east of where?”

A high level of appreciation for one’s own culture can be healthy; a shared sense of community pride, for example, connects people in a society. But ethnocentrism can lead to disdain or dislike for other cultures and could cause misunderstanding and conflict. People with the best intentions sometimes travel to a society to “help” its people, because they see them as uneducated or backward—essentially inferior. In reality, these travelers are guilty of  cultural imperialism , the deliberate imposition of one’s own ostensibly advanced cultural values on another culture. Europe’s colonial expansion, begun in the sixteenth century, was often accompanied by a severe cultural imperialism. European colonizers often viewed the people in the lands they colonized as uncultured savages who were in need of European governance, dress, religion, and other cultural practices.

A more modern example of cultural imperialism may include the work of international aid agencies who introduce agricultural methods and plant species from developed countries while overlooking indigenous varieties and agricultural approaches that are better suited to a particular region. Another example would be the deforestation of the Amazon Basin as indigenous cultures lose land to timber corporations.

Figure 1 . Experiencing an entirely new practice may lead to a high degree of interest or a level of criticism. The Indegenous people of Sagada, in the Philippines, have for thousands of years placed the bodies of deceased people into coffins hung on the cliffs near their villages. Some visitors may find this practice admirable, while others may think it’s inappropriate. (Credit: Arian Zwegers/flickr) Sagada, Echo Valley, hanging coffins.

Ethnocentrism can be so strong that when confronted with all of the differences of a new culture, one may experience disorientation and frustration. In sociology, we call this  culture shock . A traveler from Chicago might find the nightly silence of rural Montana unsettling, not peaceful. An exchange student from China might be annoyed by the constant interruptions in class as other students ask questions—a practice that is considered rude in China. Perhaps the Chicago traveler was initially captivated by Montana’s quiet beauty and the Chinese student was originally excited to see a U.S.-style classroom firsthand. But as they experience unanticipated differences from their own culture, their excitement gives way to discomfort and doubts about how to behave appropriately in the new situation. Eventually, as people learn more about a culture and adapt to its norms, they recover from culture shock.

Culture shock may appear because people aren’t always expecting cultural differences. Anthropologist Ken Barger (1971) discovered this when he conducted a participatory observation in an Inuit community in the Canadian Arctic. Originally from Indiana, Barger hesitated when invited to join a local snowshoe race. He knew he’d never hold his own against these experts. Sure enough, he finished last, to his mortification. But the tribal members congratulated him, saying, “You really tried!” In Barger’s own culture, he had learned to value victory. To the Inuit people, winning was enjoyable, but their culture valued survival skills essential to their environment: how hard someone tried could mean the difference between life and death. Over the course of his stay, Barger participated in caribou hunts, learned how to take shelter in winter storms, and sometimes went days with little or no food to share among tribal members. Trying hard and working together, two nonmaterial values, were indeed much more important than winning.

During his time with the Inuit tribe, Barger learned to engage in cultural relativism.  Cultural relativism  is the practice of assessing a culture by its own standards rather than viewing it through the lens of one’s own culture. Practicing cultural relativism requires an open mind and a willingness to consider, and even adapt to, new values and norms. However, indiscriminately embracing everything about a new culture is not always possible. Even the most culturally relativist people from egalitarian societies—ones in which women have political rights and control over their own bodies—would question whether the widespread practice of female genital mutilation in countries such as Ethiopia and Sudan should be accepted as a part of cultural tradition. Sociologists attempting to engage in cultural relativism, then, may struggle to reconcile aspects of their own culture with aspects of a culture they are studying.

Sometimes when people attempt to rectify feelings of ethnocentrism and to practice cultural relativism, they swing too far to the other end of the spectrum.  Xenocentrism   is the opposite of ethnocentrism, and refers to the belief that another culture is superior to one’s own. (The Greek root word xeno , pronounced “ZEE-no,” means “stranger” or “foreign guest.”) An exchange student who goes home after a semester abroad or a sociologist who returns from the field may find it difficult to associate with the values of their own culture after having experienced what they deem a more upright or nobler way of living.

Perhaps the greatest challenge for sociologists studying different cultures is the matter of keeping a perspective. It is impossible for anyone to keep all cultural biases at bay; the best we can do is strive to be aware of them. Pride in one’s own culture doesn’t have to lead to imposing its values on others. And an appreciation for another culture shouldn’t preclude individuals from studying it with a critical eye.

Overcoming Culture Shock

Figure 2. Experiencing new cultures offers an opportunity to practice cultural relativism. (Photo courtesy of OledSidorenko/flickr)

During her summer vacation, Caitlin flew from Chicago to Madrid to visit Maria, the exchange student she’d befriended the previous semester. In the airport, she heard rapid, musical Spanish being spoken all around her. Exciting as it was, she felt isolated and disconnected. Maria’s mother kissed Caitlin on both cheeks when she greeted her. Her imposing father kept his distance. Caitlin was half asleep by the time supper was served—at 10 p.m.! Maria’s family sat at the table for hours, speaking loudly, gesturing, and arguing about politics, a taboo dinner subject in Caitlin’s house. They served wine and toasted their honored guest. Caitlin had trouble interpreting her hosts’ facial expressions, and didn’t realize she should make the next toast. That night, Caitlin crawled into a strange bed, wishing she hadn’t come. She missed her home and felt overwhelmed by the new customs, language, and surroundings. She’d studied Spanish in school for years—why hadn’t it prepared her for this?

What Caitlin hadn’t realized was that people depend not only on spoken words but also on subtle cues like gestures and facial expressions, to communicate. Cultural norms accompany even the smallest nonverbal signals (DuBois 1951). They help people know when to shake hands, where to sit, how to converse, and even when to laugh. We relate to others through a shared set of cultural norms, and ordinarily, we take them for granted.

For this reason, culture shock is often associated with traveling abroad, although it can happen in one’s own country, state, or even hometown. Anthropologist Kalervo Oberg (1960) is credited with first coining the term “culture shock.” In his studies, Oberg found that most people found encountering a new culture to be exciting at first. But bit by bit, they became stressed by interacting with people from a different culture who spoke another language and used different regional expressions. There was new food to digest, new daily schedules to follow, and new rules of etiquette to learn. Living with these constant adaptive challenges can make people feel incompetent and insecure. People react to frustration in a new culture, Oberg found, by initially rejecting it and glorifying one’s own culture. An American visiting Italy might long for a “real” pizza or complain about the unsafe driving habits of Italians compared to people in the United States.

It helps to remember that culture is learned. Everyone is ethnocentric to an extent, and identifying with one’s own country is natural.

Caitlin’s shock was minor compared to that of her friends Dayar and Mahlika, a Turkish couple living in married student housing on campus. And it was nothing like that of her classmate Sanai. Sanai had been forced to flee war-torn Bosnia with her family when she was fifteen. After two weeks in Spain, Caitlin had developed a bit more compassion and understanding for what those people had gone through. She understood that adjusting to a new culture takes time. It can take weeks or months to recover from culture shock, and it can take years to fully adjust to living in a new culture.

By the end of Caitlin’s trip, she’d made new lifelong friends. She’d stepped out of her comfort zone. She’d learned a lot about Spain, but she’d also discovered a lot about herself and her own culture.

Further Research

In January 2011, a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America presented evidence indicating that the hormone oxytocin could regulate and manage instances of ethnocentrism. Read the full article “Oxytocin promotes human ethnocentrism” here .

Think It Over

• Do you feel that feelings of ethnocentricity or xenocentricity are more prevalent in U.S. culture? Why do you believe this? What issues or events might inform this?
• Modification, adaptation, and original content. Authored by : Scott Barr for Lumen Learning. Provided by : Lumen Learning. License : CC BY: Attribution
• What is Culture?. Authored by : OpenStax CNX. Located at : https://openstax.org/books/introduction-sociology-3e/pages/3-1-what-is-culture . Project : Sociology 3e. License : CC BY: Attribution . License Terms : Access for free at https://openstax.org/books/introduction-sociology-3e/pages/1-introduction

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1.6: Cultural Relativism

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The Cross-Cultural Relationship is the idea that people from different cultures can have relationships that acknowledge, respect and begin to understand each others diverse lives. People with different backgrounds can help each other see possibilities that they never thought were there because of limitations, or cultural proscriptions, posed by their own traditions. Traditional practices in certain cultures can restrict opportunity because they are “wrong” according to one specific culture. Becoming aware of these new possibilities will ultimately change the people that are exposed to the new ideas. This cross-cultural relationship provides hope that new opportunities will be discovered but at the same time it is threatening. The threat is that once the relationship occurs, one can no longer claim that any single culture is the absolute truth.

Cultural relativism is the ability to understand a culture on its own terms and not to make judgments using the standards of one’s own culture. The goal of this is promote understanding of cultural practices that are not typically part of one’s own culture. Using the perspective of cultural relativism leads to the view that no one culture is superior than another culture when compared to systems of morality, law, politics, etc. [11] It is a concept that cultural norms and values derive their meaning within a specific social context. This is also based on the idea that there is no absolute standard of good or evil, therefore every decision and judgment of what is right and wrong is individually decided in each society. The concept of cultural relativism also means that any opinion on ethics is subject to the perspective of each person within their particular culture. Overall, there is no right or wrong ethical system. In a holistic understanding of the term cultural relativism, it tries to promote the understanding of cultural practices that are unfamiliar to other cultures such as eating insects, genocides or genital cutting.

There are two different categories of cultural relativism : Absolute : Everything that happens within a culture must and should not be questioned by outsiders. The extreme example of absolute cultural relativism would be the Nazi party’s point of view justifying the Holocaust.

Critical : Creates questions about cultural practices in terms of who is accepting them and why. Critical cultural relativism also recognizes power relationships.

Absolute cultural relativism is displayed in many cultures, especially Africa, that practice female genital cutting. This procedure refers to the partial or total removal of the external female genitalia or any other trauma to the female reproductive/genital organs. By allowing this procedure to happen, females are considered women and then are able to be married. FGC is practiced mainly because of culture, religion and tradition. Outside cultures such as the United States look down upon FGC, but are unable to stop this practice from happening because it is protected by its culture.

Cultural relativism can be seen with the Chinese culture and their process of feet binding. Foot binding was to stop the growth of the foot and make them smaller. The process often began between four and seven years old. A ten foot bandage would be wrapped around the foot forcing the toes to go under the foot. It caused the big toe to be closer to the heel causing the foot to bow. [4] In China, small feet were seen as beautiful and a symbol of status. The women wanted their feet to be “three-inch golden lotuses”三寸金蓮 [3] It was also the only way to marry into money. Because men only wanted women with small feet, even after this practice was banned in 1912, women still continued to do it. To Western cultures the idea of feet binding might seems torturous, but for the Chinese culture it was a symbol of beauty that has been ingrained the culture for hundreds of years. The idea of beauty differs from culture to culture.

• “African People & Culture – Ashanti”.
• “Japanese Hip Hop and the Globalization of Popular Culture” Ian Condry
• Southern California Quarterly “Cinco de Mayo’s First Seventy-Five Years in Alta California: From Spontaneous Behavior to Sedimented Memory, 1862 to 1937” Spring 2007 (see American observation of Cinco de Mayo started in California) accessed Oct 30, 2007
• “Health and Human Rights”, World Health Organization www.who.int/hhr/HHRETH_activities.pdf (pdf) Accessed June 2009
• “Discussion Group 10 Week 2- Marisa Mikelsons”
• Condry, Ian, 2001 “Japanese Hip-Hop and the Globalization of Popular Culture.” In Urban Life: Readings in the Anthropology of the City. George Gmelch and Walter Zenner, eds. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press.
• Democracy in Dakar, Nomadic Wax, 2008
• courses.wwu.edu/webapps/porta...82_1&frame=top
• Barton Wright Cruz Bay Publishing, Inc. http://www.collectorsguide.com/fa/fa040.shtml
• Schultz, Emily A., and Robert H. Lavenda. Cultural Anthropology : A Perspective on the Human Condition. New York: Oxford UP, Incorporated, 2009.pg.79.
• Philosophy Home, 2009. http://www.cultural-relativism.com/
• Zmago Šmitek and Božidar Jezernik, “The anthropological tradition in Slovenia.” In: Han F. Vermeulen and Arturo Alvarez Roldán, eds. Fieldwork and Footnotes: Studies in the History of European Anthropology. 1995.
• American Anthropological Association Statement on “Race”(May 17, 1998) http://www.aaanet.org/stmts/racepp.htm
• Peter L. Berger, Invitation to Sociology: A Humanistic Perspective, Anchor, 1963, ISBN 0385065299
• C. Wright Mills, The Sociological Imagination, Oxford University Press, 1961, ISBN 0195133730
• Louisa Lim, Painful Memories for China’s Footbinding Survivors www.npr.org/templates/story/s...toryId=8966942
• James A. Crites Chinese Foot Binding, http://www.angelfire.com/ca/beekeeper/foot.html
• www.allaboutphilosophy.org/cu...relativism.htm
• Justin Marozzi, The son of the Father of History, 2007, www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/b...f-History.html
• Introduction to The Journey of Friar John of Pian de Carpine to the Court of Kuyuk Khan, 1245-1247, as translated by William Woodville Rockhill, 1900,depts.washington.edu/silkroad...s/carpini.html
• Schultz, Emily A., and Robert H. Lavenda. Cultural Anthropology A Perspective on the Human Condition. 7th ed. New York: Oxford UP.
• “RACE – The Power of an Illusion . What Is Race |.” PBS. 08 Mar. 2009 <www.pbs.org/race/001_WhatIsRa...01_00-home.htm>.
• Miller, Barabra. Cultural Anthropology. 4th ed. Boston: Pearson Education Inc., 2007.
• Lorber, Judith. “Night to His Day”: The Social Construction of Gender.” From Inquiry to Academic Writing: A text and Reader. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2008. 617-30.
• Bourgois, Philippe. “Workaday World, Crack Economy.” The Nation (1995): 706-11.

External Links

• What is Anthropology? – Information from the American Anthropological Association
• SLA– Society for Linguistic Anthropology
• ^ Schultz, Emily A., and Robert H. Lavenda. Cultural Anthropology : A Perspective on the Human Condition. New York: Oxford UP, Incorporated, 2009. pg.79.
• ^ Schultz, Emily A., and Robert H. Lavenda. Cultural Anthropology : A Perspective on the Human Condition. New York: Oxford UP, Incorporated, 2009. pgs. 332-333

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25 What is Cultural Relativism?

WIKIBOOKS History of Anthropological Theory, Cultural Anthropology/Introduction https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Cultural_Anthropology/Introduction

Cultural relativism is the ability to understand a culture on its own terms and not to make judgments using the standards of one’s own culture. The goal of this is promote understanding of cultural practices that are not typically part of one’s own culture. Using the perspective of cultural relativism leads to the view that no one culture is superior than another culture when compared to systems of morality, law, politics, etc 1 .

It is a concept that cultural norms and values derive their meaning within a specific social context. This is also based on the idea that there is no absolute standard of good or evil; therefore, every decision and judgment of what is right and wrong is individually decided in each society. The concept of cultural relativism also means that any opinion on ethics is subject to the perspective of each person within their particular culture. Overall, there is no right or wrong ethical system. In a holistic understanding of the term cultural relativism, it tries to counter ethnocentrism by promoting the understanding of cultural practices that are unfamiliar to other cultures such as eating insects, genocides or genital cutting.

There are two different categories of  cultural relativism :

• Absolute : Complete acceptance and tolerance for any type of cultural practice.
• Critical : Critiquing cultural practices in terms of human rights.

Absolute cultural relativism is displayed in many cultures, especially Africa, that practice female genital cutting. This procedure refers to the partial or total removal of the external female genitalia or any other trauma to the female reproductive/genital organs. By allowing this procedure to happen, females are considered women and then are able to be married. FGC is practiced mainly because of culture, religion and tradition. Outside cultures such as the United States look down upon FGC as inhumane, but are unable to stop this practice from happening because it is protected by its culture.

A Chinese woman with her feet unbound

Cultural relativism can also be seen with the Chinese culture and their process of  feet binding . Foot binding was to stop the growth of the foot and make them smaller. The process often began between four and seven years old. A ten foot bandage would be wrapped around the foot forcing the toes to go under the foot. It caused the big toe to be closer to the heel causing the foot to bow 2 . In China, small feet were seen as beautiful and a symbol of status. The women wanted their feet to be “three-inch golden lotuses”三寸金蓮 3 . It was also the only way to get married. Because men only wanted women with small feet, even after this practice was banned in 1912, women still continued to do it. To Western cultures the idea of feet binding might seem like torture, but for the Chinese culture it is symbol of beauty that has been ingrained in the culture for hundreds of years. The idea of beauty differs from culture to culture.

• Miller, Barabra. Cultural Anthropology. 4th ed. Boston: Pearson Education Inc., 2007.
• James A. Crites Chinese Foot Binding,  http://www.angelfire.com/ca/beekeeper/foot.html
• Louisa Lim, Painful Memories for China’s Footbinding Survivors  http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=8966942

What is Cultural Relativism? Copyright © 2020 by WIKIBOOKS History of Anthropological Theory, Cultural Anthropology/Introduction https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Cultural_Anthropology/Introduction is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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1.6 Cross-Cultural Comparison and Cultural Relativism

Learning outcomes.

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

• Define the concept of relativism and explain why this term is so important to the study of anthropology.
• Distinguish relativism from the “anything goes” approach to culture.
• Describe how relativism can enlighten our approach to social problems.

Recall our earlier discussion of cultural styles of clothing. American clothing style is related to American values. Ghanaian clothing style is related to Ghanaian values. We have seen how different realms of culture are interrelated, fitting together to form distinctive wholes. Anthropologists use the term cultural relativism to describe how every element of culture must be understood within the broader whole of that culture. Relativism highlights how each belief or practice is related to all of the other beliefs and practices in a culture. The anthropological commitment to relativism means that anthropologists do not judge the merits of particular beliefs and practices but rather seek to understand the wider contexts that produce and reinforce those elements of culture. Even when studying controversial topics such as piracy and guerilla warfare, anthropologists set aside their personal convictions in order to explore the complex web of cultural forces that determine why we do the things we do.

Relativism Is Not “Anything Goes”

Critics of the notion of relativism, believing so strongly in their own cultural norms that they cannot set them aside, even temporarily. They argue that relativism is amoral, a refusal to condemn aspects of culture considered to be wrong and harmful. For them, relativism means “anything goes.”

For anthropologists, cultural relativism is a rigorous mode of holistic analysis requiring the temporary suspension of judgment for the purposes of exploration and analysis. Anthropologists do not think that violent or exploitative cultural practices are just fine, but they do think that the reasons for those practices are a lot more complex than we might imagine. And frequently, we find that the judgmental interventions of ethnocentric outsiders can do more harm than good.

Morality, Activism, and Cultural Relativism

A striking example of the application of cultural relativism in anthropology is the controversy surrounding female genital cutting (FGC) , sometimes called female genital mutilation. FGC is a cultural practice in which an elder cuts a younger woman’s genitalia, removing all or part of the clitoris and labia. The practice is common in parts of Africa and the Middle East. FGC is not only extremely painful; it can also lead to infection, urination problems, infertility, and complications in childbirth.

The World Health Organization and the United Nations condemn the practice as a form of violence against children, a danger to women’s health, and a violation of basic human rights. These organizations view FGC as a form of discrimination against women, enforcing extreme inequality among the sexes. Efforts to ban FGC have focused on educating parents and children about the medical harms associated with the practice. Local governments are encouraged to enact laws banning FGC and impose criminal penalties against the elders who perform it.

Despite decades of campaigning against FGC, however, the practice remains widespread. If condemning FGC has not been effective in reducing it, then what can be done? Anthropologist Bettina Shell-Duncan has taken a more relativist approach, attempting to understand the larger cultural norms and values that make FGC such an enduring practice. Setting aside her personal opinions, Shell-Duncan spent long periods in African communities where FGC is practiced, talking to people about why FGC is important to them. She learned that FGC has different functions in different sociocultural contexts. Among the Rendille people of northern Kenya, many people believe that men’s and women’s bodies are naturally androgynous, a mix of masculine and feminine parts. In order for a girl to become a woman, it is necessary to remove the parts of female genitalia that resemble a man’s penis. Likewise, in order for a boy to become a man, the foreskin must be removed because it resembles the folds of female genitalia.

Other societies value FGC for different reasons. Some Muslim societies consider FGC a form of hygiene, making a girl clean so that she can pray to Allah. Some communities see FGC as a way of limiting premarital sex and discouraging extramarital affairs. In the colonial period, when FGC was banned by the colonial government, some Kenyan girls practiced FGC on themselves as a form of resistance to colonial authority. As FGC is promoted and carried out by senior women in most contexts, the practice becomes a way for senior women to solidify power and exert influence in the community.

People in communities practicing FGC are often aware of the efforts of outside groups to ban the practice. They know about medical complications such as the risk of infection. But the denunciations of outsiders often seem unconvincing to them, as those denunciations tend to ignore the cultural reasons for the endurance of FGC. People who practice FGC do not do it because they despise women or want to harm children. Shell-Duncan argues that parents weigh the risks and benefits of FGC, often deciding that the procedure is in the best interest of their child’s future.

Personally, Shell-Duncan remains critical of FGC and works on a project with the Population Council designed to dramatically reduce the practice. Cultural relativism does not mean permanently abandoning our own value systems. Instead, it asks us to set aside the norms and values of our own culture for a while in order to fully understand controversial practices in other cultures. By suspending judgment, Shell-Duncan was able to learn two important things. First, while campaigns to eradicate FGC frequently target mothers, providing them with educational material about the medical risks involved, Shell-Duncan learned that the decision to go ahead with the procedure is not made by parents alone. A large network of relatives and friends may pressure a girl’s parents to arrange for the cutting in order to ensure the girl’s chastity, marriageability, and fertility. Secondly, Shell-Duncan learned that people who practice FGC do it because they want the best for their girls. They want their girls to be respected and admired, considered clean and beautiful, fit for marriage and childbearing.

Shell-Duncan argues that outside organizations should reconsider their efforts, focusing more on communities than on individual parents. Awareness campaigns will be more effective if they resonate with local norms and values rather than dismissively condemning them as part of the whole culture of FGC. Some researchers urge anti-FGC activists to connect with local feminists and women’s groups in an effort to empower local women and localize the movement against FCG. Some alternative approaches press for more incremental forms of change, such as moving the practice to more sanitary conditions in clinics and hospitals and reducing the severity of the procedure to smaller cuts or more symbolic nicks.

As this example illustrates, cultural relativism is not an amoral “anything goes” approach but rather a strategy for forming cross-cultural relationships and gaining deeper understanding. Once this foundation has been established, anthropologists are often able to revise their activist goals and more effectively work together with people from another culture in pursuit of common interests.

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15 Cultural Relativism Examples

Cultural relativism is a philosophical approach to cultural differences that tries not to judge other cultures based upon your own culture’s values. Instead, people are expected to suspend moral judgment of other cultures’ beliefs and practices.

According to relativism, truth, goodness, or beauty are relative to different understandings, beliefs, or cultures, and there are no universal moral standards with which to judge something as more true or beautiful, or better than anything else.

Gairdner (2008) writes that cultural relativism is relativism applied to groups of people. It means:

what is believed or practiced as true, or right, or wrong for any culture is whatever that culture believes or practices as true, or right, or wrong (p. 29).

 The cultural relativist perspective stands against ethnocentrism . It defends the principle that one should not impose one’s values on the values and practices of others and judge them as right or wrong.

Origins of Cultural Relativism

The idea of cultural relativism sprang from the research and writings of Frank Boas (1887; 1901). Known as the “Father of American Anthropology,” Boas’s framework paved the way for a social science research method called ethnography.

Ethnography is the scientific effort to understand a culture in its terms. This is useful in the name of avoiding bias in research.

There is an ongoing debate among scholars between relativism and cultural universalism . In contrast to relativism, universalism emphasizes a fundamental human unity and permanent universal truths.

Cultural Relativism Examples

• Doing business with dictatorships : Western democracies have embraced cultural relativism when it comes to doing business with dictatorships. While the suppression of democratic values offends them, they still want to do business, so cultural relativism becomes convenient to endorse.
• Genital mutilation: This practice – for both boys and girls – occurs worldwide. Some cultures find it offensive while others embrace it. Cultural relativists would take a backseat and choose not to judge.
• Gender discriminating cultural conventions: Some societies enforce gender roles more than others. It is hard for liberal nations to accept the treatment of women in some more traditionalist cultures because gender equality is a core value of liberalism .
• Women’s dress codes: Enforced coverings for women has long been a touchpoint for cultural relativist debates. On the one hand, western liberals might see the practice as patriarchal, but they still respect a woman’s right to participate in their own culture’s modes of dress.
• Hand holding: Same-sex friends holding hands and walking in public, though they are not in a romantic relationship, may be frowned upon in one culture but okay in the next.
• Eating habits: The eating of animals like horse and dog are frowned upon in some cultures but accepted in others. A cultural relativist would defend each culture’s right to set their own moral rules here.
• Diverse marriage arrangements: Historically, some cultures have embraced polygamy; while today, same-sex marriage is increasingly accepted in the west. Cultural relativism would observe but not judge each culture’s approach to marriage.
• Public Breastfeeding: Suspending judgment of another culture’s approach to public breastfeeding is an example of cultural relativism.
• Child Labor: Whereas developed nations tend to see child labor as inappropriate, people in developing countries often see it as a necessity for family survival.
• Public nudity: European nations have been known to accept public nudity far more than the United States. Suspending judgment of one another’s cultures’ practices related to nudity would be an example of cultural relativism.

 5 Best Examples

1. opposition to the universal declaration of human rights.

  A cultural relativist may oppose the universal declaration of human rights on the grounds that it imposes Western values upon all cultures around the world.

At its 183 rd session, the United Nations General Assembly accepted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on 10 December 1948. International Human Rights rose over the principle of Universalism.

Accordingly, all individuals are entitled to inalienable natural rights by the virtue of common humanity, regardless of race, sex, caste, language, and religion. Universalism treats an individual as a social unit, whereas Cultural Relativism regards the community as the basic social unit (Jain, 2020).

Since 1970s, cultural relativists have begun to question and criticize the universality of human rights on the grounds that it is a Western concept and not reflecting a culturally diverse world.

Joining them are certain academics, Asian and Islamic governments, various regimes of the Global South among others (Zechenter, 1997, pp. 322-323), which claim that universal human rights are designed to extend Western imperialism.

Zechenter claims that many governments in the Global South instrumentalize relativism to suppress women and minorities, and forestall political reform at home (pp. 338-39).

2. Suspending Judgment of Female Genital Mutilation

Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) refers to the removal of various parts of the female genitalia.

The World Health Organization (WHO) defines four types and lists a list of complications as a result of the practice, including severe pain, excessive bleeding, death, infections, sexual problems, increased risk of childbirth difficulty, and newborn death (World Health Organization, 2018).

International agencies report that it is practiced in 30 countries in Asia, Middle East, and Africa, and among migrant communities in the West stemming from practicing countries. It is a cultural practice in patriarchal and hierarchical societies, but with no religious mandate.

It is mostly the girls or young women subject to the practice as part of a rite of passage . Kalev (2004) explains that through the practice “a girl usually gains social status within her group and becomes a legitimate candidate for marriage” (p. 339). Kalev states that the Western feminist perspective condemns the practice, advocating and campaigning that it is banned (p. 340).

Supporters of FGM would not accept arguments around “right to bodily integrity” and the “right to sexuality,” considering these as part of Western colonial discourse (Gosselin, 2000).

Followed by CEDAW (the 1979 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discriminations against Women) and the 1993 UN Conference on Human Rights in Vienna, FGM has been increasingly characterized as a violation of human rights.

3. Suspending Judgment of Public Breastfeeding

Public breastfeeding is considered culturally acceptable and normal in some cultures and offensive in other cultures. A person who believes it to be acceptable based on their culture’s worldview but suspends judgment of other cultures that suppress it (and vice versa), is practicing cultural relativism.

Breastfeeding is a natural way for an infant to get nutrition. WHO strongly recommends infant breastfeeding. With the Industrial Revolution, baby formulas became alternatives in industrializing societies in the West.

Over the course of the 20th century, there was unfavorable reception to breastfeeding, especially in Canada and the United States. The public started to regard it as uncultured behavior (Nathoo & Ostry, 2009).

Breastfeeding in public is common practice in different corners of the world, but is moralized and associated with sexuality in some countries.

The moralization of a health issue (e.g. weight or healthy lifestyle) may end up stigmatizing individuals not acting within the norm and compromising social cohesion (Täuber, 2018).

As a result, under the pressure of social stigma, many women feel uncomfortable breastfeeding in public. This is despite the health benefits for infants who feed 8-10 times a day.

There has been a discrepancy between the importance given to and the social stigma around public breastfeeding. Recently, however, both public and legal support are on the rise in the United States, Canada, and Great Britain, as well.

4. Child Labor

Child labor is widespread in the Global South, but not confined to it. Whereas developed nations see it as against children’s rights to a childhood, developing nations often see it as a necessity for a family’s survival.

According to the International Labor Organization (ILO), 1 in 10 of all children worldwide are in child labor, or 160 million children in absolute terms (ILO, 2020). Poverty and adult unemployment force children to work in various sectors of the global economy:

“The worst forms of child labor involve children being enslaved, separated from their families, exposed to serious hazards and illnesses and/or left to fend for themselves on the streets of large cities – often at a very early age.”

From a universalist perspective, the UN and ILO conventions and agencies strive to eliminate the worst forms of child labor and set global standards on children’s rights.

Yet, household and children’s conditions vary in various parts of the world. Certain economic actors benefit from local variations and from the wanting protective mechanisms.

It is not only the local business that exploits children in defiance of international standards and rights. Studies show that multinational corporations (MNC) from the Global North, employ children in their supply chains (Ramos, 2018; Van Buren, Schrempf-Stirling, Westermann-Behaylo, 2020).

Despite pledges, corporations have yet to improve working conditions and eliminate exploitation of children, prevalence of which anchor MNCs to modern slavery.

5. Eating Habits

Different cultures around the world have different eating habits. For cultural relativists, no one habit is better or no diet is more delicious than any others.

Italians customarily eat marmalades and other sweet stuff at breakfast along with a cup of espresso or two. This is not a typical breakfast in Greece, Turkey, or Lebanon, although both are Mediterranean countries and share not so dissimilar a table for lunch and dinner.

In some countries, it is common to eat insects as part of the daily food and vitamin intake. Some cultures regard finishing the plate and others leaving leftovers on the plate as inappropriate behavior.

Chinese people traditionally eat noodles and peaches for celebrating one’s birthday, while in Western culture people typically eat cakes. In sweeping overgeneralizations , people from South America commonly refrain from drinking milk while many people from East Asia are reluctant to consume dairy products because of lactose intolerance.

In both Judaism and Islam, there are strict codes (Kosher and Halal, respectively) for butchering animals and preparing meat-based food. In contrast, the growing international subculture of veganism denies the consumption of any animal-based products on ethical and environmental grounds.

Kip Andersen’s documentary “ Cowspiracy ” portrays the environmental consequences of industrial animal agriculture.

Criticisms of Cultural Relativism

Of course, cultural relativism is a controversial issue. On the one hand, we have the compulsion not to judge others; while on the other hand, we have a sense of universal justice and human rights.

Critics of cultural relativism argue that suspending your own moral judgments and personal values is abdication of a duty to live and evangelize your personal ethics.

Furthermore, it could be seen as eroding morality. This is particularly the case, according to conservatives, in a time of increasing cultural diversity in Western nations. A cultural relativist would have non-discriminatory immigration policies , whereas a cultural universalist would show migration preference for cultures with similar morals to your own.

As you can see, this topic is thorny: taking a stance on either side of the debate leaves you open to accusations of illiberalism, undermining morality, and even mistreatment of others.

The liberal concept of tolerance clashes with another core liberal value of “human rights”, causing cognitive disequilibrium and discomfort when trying to come to a coherent perspective on the issue.

Cultural relativism is the idea that advocates understanding of other cultures on their own terms and refraining from making value judgments using references from one’s own culture.

Accordingly, there is no absolute reference to judge truth, beauty, or goodness other than one’s own culture. What is right or wrong is whatever a culture perceives as right or wrong.

Such a principle is established as a countermeasure to ethnocentrism and to promote understanding of practices, values, and perceptions of people who are not part of our culture.

Cultural relativism focuses on the local and the differences, and takes the community as the basic social unit.

Cultural relativists disagree with the principle of universalism, which emphasizes the individual, a fundamental human unity, and permanent universal truths.

Boas, F. (1887). Museums of ethnology and their classification. Science 9 , 589.

Boas, F. (1901). The mind of primitive man. Science , 13 (321), 281-289.

Gairdner, W. D. (2008). The book of absolutes: a critique of relativism and a defence of universals. London: McGill-Queen’s University Press.

Gosselin, C. (2000). Feminism, anthropology and the politics of excision in Mali: Global and local debates in a postcolonial world. Anthropologica 42 (1), 43-60. https://doi.org/10.2307/25605957 .

International Labor Organization (2020). Child labour: Global estimates 2020, trends and the road forward. June 2021. Accessed October 28, 2022. https://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/—ed_norm/—ipec/documents/publication/wcms_797515.pdf

 Jain, D. (2020). Cultural relativism and its influence on human rights. International Journal of Law Management & Humanities 3 (6), 1118-1131.

 Kalev, H. D. (2004). Female Genital Mutilation and Human Rights. Sex Roles , 51 (5-6), 339-348. https://doi.org/10.1023/B:SERS.0000046617.71083.a6 .

Nathoo, T. and Ostry, A. (2009). The one best way?: Breastfeeding history, politics, and policy in Canada . Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press.

Ramos, A.K. (2018) Child labor in global tobacco production: A human rights approach to an enduring dilemma. Health and Human Rights Journal 20 (2), 235–248. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6293346/ .

Täuber, S. (2018). Moralized health-related persuasion undermines social cohesion. Frontiers in Psychology , 9, (909). https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00909/full .

Van Buren III, H. J., Schrempf-Stirling, J., & Westermann-Behaylo, M. (2020). Toward ethical commitment: Avoiding MNC entanglement in modern slavery. AIB Insights 20 (2),   https://doi.org/10.46697/001c.13540 .

World Health Organization (2018). Female genital mutilation. January 2022. Accessed October 27, 2022. http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs241/en/ .

Zechenter, E. M. (1997). In the name of culture: Cultural relativism and the abuse of the individual. Journal of Anthropological Research , 53 (3), 319-347. https://doi.org/10.1086/jar.53.3.3630957 .

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Ethnocentrism and Cultural Relativism

Ethnocentrism is the tendency to look at the world primarily from the perspective of one’s own culture. Part of ethnocentrism is the belief that one’s own race, ethnic or cultural group is the most important or that some or all aspects of its culture are superior to those of other groups. Some people will simply call it cultural ignorance.

Ethnocentrism often leads to incorrect assumptions about others’ behavior based on your own norms, values, and beliefs. In extreme cases, a group of individuals may see another culture as wrong or immoral and because of this may try to convert, sometimes forcibly, the group to their own ways of living. War and genocide could be the devastating result if a group is unwilling to change their ways of living or cultural practices.

Ethnocentrism may not, in some circumstances, be avoidable. We often have involuntary reactions toward another person or culture’s practices or beliefs but these reactions do not have to result in horrible events such as genocide or war. In order to avoid conflict over culture practices and beliefs, we must all try to be more culturally relative.

Cultural relativism is the principle of regarding and valuing the practices of a culture from the point of view of that culture and to avoid making hasty judgments. Cultural relativism tries to counter ethnocentrism by promoting the understanding of cultural practices that are unfamiliar to other cultures such as eating insects, genocides or genital cutting. Take for example, the common practice of same-sex friends in India walking in public while holding hands. This is a common behavior and a sign of connectedness between two people. In England, by contrast, holding hands is largely limited to romantically involved couples, and often suggests a sexual relationship. These are simply two different ways of understanding the meaning of holding hands. Someone who does not take a relativistic view might be tempted to see their own understanding of this behavior as superior and, perhaps, the foreign practice as being immoral.

D espite the fact that cultural relativism promotes the appreciation for cultural differences, it can also be problematic. At its most extreme, cultural relativism leaves no room for criticism of other cultures, even if certain cultural practices are horrific or harmful. Many practices have drawn criticism over the years. In Madagascar, for example, the famahidana funeral tradition includes bringing bodies out from tombs once every seven years, wrapping them in cloth, and dancing with them. Some people view this practice disrespectful to the body of the deceased person. Today, a debate rages about the ritual cutting of genitals of girls in several Middle Eastern and African cultures. To a lesser extent, this same debate arises around the circumcision of baby boys in Western hospitals. When considering harmful cultural traditions, it can be patronizing to use cultural relativism as an excuse for avoiding debate. To assume that people from other cultures are neither mature enough nor responsible enough to consider criticism from the outside is demeaning.

The concept of cross-cultural relationship is the idea that people from different cultures can have relationships that acknowledge, respect and begin to understand each other’s diverse lives. People with different backgrounds can help each other see possibilities that they never thought were there because of limitations, or cultural proscriptions, posed by their own traditions. Becoming aware of these new possibilities will ultimately change the people who are exposed to the new ideas. This cross-cultural relationship provides hope that new opportunities will be discovered, but at the same time it is threatening. The threat is that once the relationship occurs, one can no longer claim that any single culture is the absolute truth.

Culture and Psychology Copyright © 2020 by L D Worthy; T Lavigne; and F Romero is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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16 Cultural Relativism Advantages and Disadvantages

If there is one universal truth to be found in life, it is that people are continually changing. Humanity is continually evolving and adapting to new circumstances. This evolutionary process allows us to develop in ways that our ancestors never thought possible.

Cultural relativism is a process which encourages the individual to define the rightness or wrongness of their ethics and morality on their own circumstances. It gives people an opportunity to change who they are at a core level without suffering consequences because of those actions. It eliminates the rigid rules that societies often create, sometimes unwritten, that require people to think, speak, and act in specific ways.

In the process of cultural relativism removes all definitions from a society. It always promotes an individualistic perspective. Every person must have their own moral code which they choose to follow.

There are specific advantages and disadvantages to review when looking at a society that is based on this concept. These are the critical cultural relativism pros and cons to consider.

List of the Pros of Cultural Relativism

1. Cultural relativism removes the power of societal conditioning. There is no longer a need to conform to society as an individual when cultural relativism is the driving force. You are no longer required to adapt to the beliefs, thoughts, or attitudes of the groups that surround you. It is up to you to charge your own course through life. This process stops the slow degradation that all societies face when everyone tries to be just like anyone else.

2. Cultural relativism allows for the creation of individual moral codes. The structures of cultural relativism allow each person to consult with the expectations of their culture or society to determine what they believe is right or wrong. This process creates a simple test which dictates how each individual reacts when they counter specific circumstances. You are always in charge of what you believe is a moral choice. You decide of actions are permitted or disallowed. Although this structure can define morality outside of what would be considered traditional rules, societies create a culture which invites inclusion over structure exclusion in almost every circumstance.

3. Cultural relativism does not rely on moral relativism. The theory of cultural relativism treats each culture as an individual. The moral codes of each person, along with each expectation, are implemented by those who defined themselves through that individuality. Some cultures may prefer restrictions. Others might prefer full inclusion. It is a process which encourages each person to do what makes the most sense for them to achieve their definition of ethics and morality in each situation.

4. Cultural relativism creates a society which is free from judgment. One of the primary advantages of cultural relativism is that it completely removes negative judgments from individual interaction. We’ve become so trained as humans to judge others when we see something different that half the time we don’t even think about it. Anytime we push someone down to lift ourselves up, we have judged that person to be inferior to our superiority.

Cultural relativism takes this all the way. Even if someone disagrees with how you define your moral code in the structure, your morality equates to their morality exactly. You both have the opportunity to define the expectations of life that you follow.

5. Cultural relativism preserves human culture. When you trace the history of humanity through time, you find that societies are diverse in their ideas, traditions, and practices. We often set aside this history because we’re attempting to conform to the expectations that third parties place upon us. This structure does not require anyone to trade any of their culture at any time. You decide, just like everyone else chooses, what is the best course of action to take in every situation.

6. Cultural relativism encourages respect. Even though there is a focus on individuality within a society that practice is cultural relativism, there is also respect for their diversity. Different ideas and ethnicities are frequently celebrated. This system promotes individual definitions instead of group definitions as an evolutionary process, which allows each person to pursue goals through their own perspective while focusing on their natural strengths. No one is ever forced to conform to a specific set of rules or values as a way to achieve success.

7. Cultural relativism promotes cooperation. Humanity is strong because we are diverse. Each person offers a different perspective on life that is based on their thoughts, education, and experiences. These differences should not be a foundation for fear. They ought to be the basis of cooperation. We are able to do more as a team then we are as individuals. By combining each unique set of values with individualized moral descriptions, productivity levels quickly rise.

8. Cultural relativism creates a society which is authentically equal. The traditional society forces people to rise to the top by climbing over other people along the way. You are encouraged to discriminate against anyone if success as your primary goal. Cultural relativism prevents this because it encourages each person to define the path they must follow. There will still be people who choose a skin color preference, or a gender preference, or a sexual orientation preference over others. What you will find with the structure, however, is that the plethora of individual perspectives melts into a society which is able to create great things.

List of the Cons of Cultural Relativism

1. Cultural relativism creates a society that is fueled through personal bias. People grow up in specific environments where different truths are taught. Some families are incredibly inclusive, while others focus on racial bias. Cultural relativism encourages individuals to form alliances with those who have similar perspectives instead of sharing different outcomes. Community segregation occurs frequently because of the discomfort levels which occur when different definitions are present. People will always follow their own moral codes and ethics at the expense of others in a society with the structure.

2. Cultural relativism only works if humanity is perfect. Most people would agree that the average person tries to do good things every day. The average individual would like to see everyone have the opportunity to pursue their dreams or goals in some way. It is these concepts which create a temptation to follow the processes is defined by cultural relativism. The issue in doing so is that every person is fallible. Humans lie, cheat, and steal. We can get angry when something doesn’t go our way, and that puts ourselves and our families at risk. There must be a moral code that governs groups in society to create enough checks and balances to deal with these imperfections.

Without this accompanying structure, the moral codes of the individual would reign supreme. That means we would be operating on the idea of perfection while pursuing imperfection.

3. Cultural relativism drives people away from one another. C.S. Lewis described what environment focused on cultural relativism would be like in his work called “The Screwtape Letters.” Each person what attempt to get as far away as possible from every other individual to escape whatever personal demons they would have. There would be no guarantees in a society like this that you would ever be safe. Someone’s moral code could dictate that you need to die because that will help that person feel better. Although the theory suggests that it would embrace diversity, the reality is that people would isolate themselves as a way to protect their lives.

4. Cultural relativism would create a world of chaos. The idea that someone could follow their own moral code at any time because there is no concrete definition of right or wrong would create chaos. Anyone could harm any other person at any time. You could take something from the store because you felt like it was the right thing to do. You could disobey any of the laws (assuming there were some enforced) because you felt that they were unjustly applied. Only the strongest would survive this type of situation, which brings it closer to an apocalyptic version of the future instead of something that is realistic.

5. Cultural relativism would promote a lack of diversity. The only diversity that cultural relativism promotes is the individual perspective. All of the rights that so many of our ancestors fought to have for generations would disappear instantly with this societal format. The only standards that people could follow in this scenario would be the ones that they set for themselves. Each person will then pursue their own position of strength. It is impossible to create a society that is diverse when the emphasis on success is based on selfish accomplishments.

6. Cultural relativism allows opinions and perceptions to become universal truths. Any theory becomes the truth if cultural relativism is implemented for society. What you think or feel becomes a reality, even if you imagined things. That is the most significant disadvantage of this concept. An opinion instantly becomes fact. Perceptions become real. You could make up a story, included in your personal morality, and there would be nothing that anyone could do to stop you from achieving whatever outcome it is that you wanted.

7. Cultural relativism would limit the progress of humanity. Some people see the concept of cultural relativism as an evolution of the human experience. The reality of this idea, however, is that it would limit our progress. If you remove judgment from a society completely, then there are no standards to follow. We would no longer have the ability to effectively compare different societies, past or present, to chart away toward the future. There could be no real definition of success for humanity because we would all be operating within an individual culture. Even though each person could see personal progress, there would be billions of people all going in different directions at the same time.

These cultural relativism pros and cons our reflection of the possible outcomes which would occur should this theoretical system be implemented at some point. It is an idea which was initially proposed by Franz Boas in the late 19th century and has never been implemented on a scale that would affect alarm society. If we were to follow this idea, then we would be creating individualized cultures, not group societies, and that would change the world as we know it.

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Cultural Relativism (Essay Sample)

Cultural relativism.

We all come from different cultures and therefore, have our own sets of beliefs and norms that we ascribe to. To some of us, it is accurate that we are slaves of our cultural beliefs. Often, people look at things and even pass judgement while being guided or being influenced by their cultural background. Therefore, it is indeed possible to find or say something from another culture is right or wrong or ethical and unethical especially when our cultures guide us. The above is often referred to cultural bias, and cultural relativism is the opposite of such thinking. Cultural relativism seeks to have people judge or view values, beliefs, principles, and practices within the confines of a particular culture. This means that while the norms may vary from culture to culture, everyone is right or equal simply because there is no single system which is fit enough to be used as a yardstick. Cultural relativism was born from the idea that the world lacks an ultimate standard measure of right or wrong and good or evil. Consequently, whatever people regard as right or wrong and good or evil is indeed the product of the society. Therefore, every deed in society is subject to an individual’s cultural perspective or simply an individual’s cultural background.

Currently, it appears that cultural relativism is almost upheld all over the world of course except a few societies. Today, use of words such as tolerance, pluralism, as well as acceptance has become rampant, and people are culturally creating space for others. People seem to understand each other better and are willing to seek to comprehend the workings of other cultures. To a large extent, cultural relativism has helped us to co-exist and to accommodate each other despite our diverse cultural backgrounds. People do not question or out-rightly say something is evil or good unless the action in question is universally considered good or evil.

However, it is essential to consider all factors that relate to cultural relativism. Initially, we had cultural perspective, and it brought about a willingness to seek to understand politics, history as well as psychology. People used to want to understand another culture’s actions rather than opt for the easy way out and say “we need to understand and accept the morals of other cultures.” The universal truths, lies, good as well as evil were coined because we had cultural perspective. Gradually, however, the world has moved on from seeking to understand history and psychology to simply accepting everything as it is. The world has slowly eroded the aspect of reason, and currently, it is almost impossible to categorize something as morally right or wrong.

In conclusion, it is true to say that cultural relativism has helped to become accommodative. However, it is also true that it is gradually robbing us off the ability to make or pass any judgements whatsoever. We have become more tolerant as well as accommodative to more bizarre and incomprehensible activities in the name of cultural relativism. As is always the case, people have turned what cultural relativism originally meant to something contradictory. The incorporation and global adoption of the words tolerance, acceptance, and pluralism have also helped to dilute the matter at hand. It is fair to say that absolute relativism is nearly impossible and that its basic premise of truth being relative is flawed.

Cultural Relativism in Alice in Wonderland (1951) Essay

Representation of different cultures and subcultures is a common tool in filmmaking to develop a conflict between the characters and relay themes and ideas. It often emphasizes character traits associated with different cultures in a given society due to long-lasting prejudices and experiences. Building a character around a distinctive set of values and traits is much simpler by relying on the viewer’s pre-existing perceptions of different cultures and subcultures by the viewer. This way, by presenting some specific visual or narrative clues, the filmmaker can non-verbally describe, at least to some extent, certain character traits and predict conflicts in the story. Character interactions play a significant role in this process, allowing the intended cultural differences to surface and do their part in characterization and conflict development. Usually, at least one of the heroes is associated with the culture or subculture relatable to the viewer while others are represented as foreign, serving as a potential basis for a conflict.

Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland and the subsequent film adaptations, particularly the one from 1951, masterfully incorporate different national cultures and subcultures, primarily English, French, and vaguely Arabian, into the plot (Geronimi et al., 1951). It is used primarily for assigning certain character traits throughout the story by relying on the viewer’s preconceived perception of these cultures. However, cultural interactions are more important in representing some of the story’s hidden meanings, including the discovery of foreign and colonialism (Power et al., 2023). An example is the meeting between Alice and the Caterpillar, where Alice encounters someone who represents her preconceptions of a Middle Eastern person. Alice, a well-educated child from a wealthy English family, meets a giant Caterpillar, an exotic-looking creature with pointy shoes and a hookah, covered in clouds of colorful smoke and singing in an unknown language (Geronimi et al., 1951, 0:32:33). In this interaction there is a clear and deliberate distinction between the two characters’ backgrounds and associated cultural norms and values.

Alice’s cultural background as a young, intelligent English aristocrat shows early on through her initial respectful and gallant approach towards the “other” by addressing the Caterpillar as sir and being polite and composed despite the Caterpillar’s disrespectful attitude (Geronimi et al., 1951, 0:32:43). Alice, knowing well that she is the “interloper,” keeps her frustration down and speaks politely. The Caterpillar’s most striking cultural identifier is his hookah, usually associated in English minds with the Middle East (Power et al., 2023). In this case, the exotic and mysterious strangeness is supposed to mirror the popularly perceived image of an Arabian person. His relaxed and slightly disrespectful attitude towards Alice and how he quickly loses his temper are uncomfortable for Alice and represent her perception of the foreign. It is also speaking of her inability to grasp Caterpillar’s cultural norms and values.

However, it is worth noting that this image of the Caterpillar is more telling about Alice’s cultural norms and values coming from the culture of colonizers and viewing others from this perspective. The Caterpillar is a shocking figure due to his otherness being shown through constant changes in mood and in form, causing persistent discomfort in Alice. His behavior is foreign to Alice, and she is uncertain how to approach and interpret it (Power et al., 2023). For a child from an aristocratic English family with the ideals of respect, dignity, and active attitude, facing a character who is the total opposite of these cultural norms and values is striking and uncomfortable. This encounter is, therefore, a prominent example of Lewis Carroll’s and the film authors’ masterful representation of a cultural conflict.

Geronimi, C. (Director), Jackson, W. (Director), & Luske, H. (Director). (1951). Alice in Wonderland [film]. Walt Disney Productions.

Power, A. J., Albawab, E. I., & Muwafi, D. W. (2023). Encountering the Foreign in Alice in Wonderland and its Arabic Translations . International Journal of Arabic-English Studies, 23(1). 45–62. Web.

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Conducting sustainability research in the anthropocene: toward a relational approach

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• Published: 24 May 2024

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• Jessica Böhme   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-4591-3754 1   na1 ,
• Eva-Maria Spreitzer 2 &
• Christine Wamsler   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-4511-1532 3   na1  

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Scholars and practitioners are urgently highlighting the need to apply a relational approach to effectively address societal crises. At the same time, little is known about the associated challenges, and there is little advice regarding how to operationalize this approach in sustainability science. Against this background, this article explores how we can break out of our current paradigms and approaches, and instead apply relational thinking, being, and acting in the way we conduct research. To achieve this, we systematically list all major research phases, and assess possible pathways for integrating a relational paradigm for each step. We show that moving toward a relational paradigm requires us to methodically question and redefine existing theories of change, concepts, and approaches, for instance by combining abductive reasoning, first-person inquiries, and decentering the human through critical complexity theory. Challenging mainstream thought, and daring to ask different questions in each step is crucial to ultimately shift scientific norms and systems. Hence, we offer a catalog of questions that may help to systematically integrate relational being, thinking, and acting into the process, as a tool for transforming current paradigms in research, and associated education and practice. Finally, we highlight the importance of further research to develop and refine our outcomes.

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Introduction

The anthropocene is characterized by significant human impact on the Earth’s geology and ecosystems; examples include biodiversity loss, climate change, social inequalities, and conflicts (IPCC 2021 ). These challenges are part of an underlying metacrisis of accelerating, causally entangled, complex grand challenges (Jørgsen et al. 2023 ; Rosa 2019 ). In fact, there is mounting evidence that today’s societal crises have one common denominator, or root cause: they are a reflection of an inner, human crisis of disconnection or separation from self, others, and nature, which is grounded in modern societies’ social paradigm (Ives et al. 2023 ; Leichenko and O’Brien 2020 ; Rowson 2021 ; Wamsler et al. 2021 ; Wamsler and Bristow 2022 ). Hence, the current focus on external, technological approaches is insufficient to support transformation toward sustainable and just futures (ibid).

Consequently, there is also a need for sustainability science to re-consider and expand its ontological, epistemological, and ethical foundations, and associated approaches for researching and engaging with complex, wicked sustainability challenges (Alford and Head 2017 ; Ives et al. 2023 ; Lang et al. 2012 ; Lönngren and van Peock 2020 ; Mauser et al. 2013 ; Wiek and Lang 2016 ; Xiang 2013 ). Accordingly, an increasing number of scholars and practitioners argue that effectively addressing and researching sustainability challenges requires a shift in paradigms Footnote 1 to address societal crises differently (Ives et al. 2023 ; Walsh et al. 2020 ; Wamsler et al. 2021 ).

The dominant social paradigm in the modern, industrialized world is what we refer to in the following as the ‘mechanistic paradigm’.Scholars and practitioners highlight that current mechanistic approaches, and associated reductionist strategies and perspectives, are inadequate for tackling sustainability issues (Leichenko and O’Brien 2020 ; Porter and Reischer 2018 ). Furthermore, it can be argued that the paradigm’s underlying values (individualism, materialism, capitalism) and the associated norms, Footnote 2 mechanisms, and structures enhance separation from self, others and nature, and a kind of alienation, as an integral element of modern life, forms (Wamsler and Bristow 2022 ; Rosa 2019 ).

The core pattern that emerges from the mechanistic paradigm, which is especially relevant in the context of todays’ sustainability crises and associated research, is that we are increasingly exhausting and exploiting ourselves, others, and nature (Wamsler and Bristow 2022 ). This is based on the perception that humans are separate from each other, that they are separate and superior to the rest of the natural world, and that nature, like any other system, behaves like a machine, and can be controlled and known by reducing it to its parts (Capra and Luisi 2014 ; Redclift and Sage 1994 ; Rees 1999 ; Walsh et al. 2020 ). The result is separation between self, others, and the more-than-human world (Ives et al. 2019 ; Wamsler and Bristow 2022 ).

The mechanistic paradigm has dominated both policy-making and research. It favors “outer” approaches and solutions (IPCC 2022a ; b ; Wendt 2015 ; Todd 2016 ; Wamsler and Bristow 2022 ), while largely ignoring the inner dimension of sustainability, which includes people’s individual and collective mindsets, beliefs, values, worldviews, and associated inner qualities/capacities (Capra and Luisi 2014 ; Redclift and Sage 1994 ; Rees 1999 ; Wamsler 2020 ; Wamsler et al. 2021 , 2022a ). This has, in turn, narrowed the possibilities for deeper change that can tackle the underlying root causes of today’s crises, while fostering mechanistic and unsustainable interactions with the living world around us (Leal Filho and Consorte McCrea 2019 ; Wamsler et al. 2021 ).

To address this gap, an increasing number of scholars advocate for a shift toward a relational paradigm (e.g., Audouin et al. 2013 ; Böhme et al. 2022 ; Hertz et al. 2020 ; Ives et al. 2023 ; Mancilla Garcia et al. 2020 ; Stalhammar and Thorén 2019 ; Walsh et al. 2020 ; Wamsler et al. 2021 , 2022a ; West et al. 2020 ). A relational paradigm Footnote 3 attempts to understand complex phenomena in terms of constitutive processes and relations and recognizes the intricate interconnectedness of humans and the more-than-human world, as well as the associated nonlinear dynamics, uncertainty, and the emergence of change (West et al. 2020 ; Walsh et al. 2020 ). It builds on the ontological premise that inner and outer phenomena are entangled and interconnected across individual, collective, and system levels, and recognizes the multiple potential that is latent within each of us to enable transformative change across these scales (Ives et al. 2023 ). From an epistemological point of view, it requires the inclusion of diverse perspectives, and the expansion of knowledge systems for enhanced “transformation” Footnote 4 toward more sustainable futures (Ives et al. 2023 ; Künkel and Ragnarsdottir 2022 ).

On these premises, relational research should not be understood as simple introspection, but as a new form of praxis for integrative inner–outer transformation that includes different modes of activating the inner human dimension across individual, collective, and system levels, and the generation of so-called transformative capacities through intentional practices (Ives et al. 2023 ; Spreitzer 2021 ). “Such cognitive, emotional and relational capacities support the cultivation of values, beliefs, and worldviews regarding how people relate (or reconnect) to themselves, others, nature, and future generations in ways that can support transformation” (Wamsler et al. 2022a , b , p. 9).

In contrast, current scientific mainstream approaches and methods risk reproducing and strengthening the dominant social paradigm that underlies today’s sustainability crises, instead of questioning and reframing the underlying assumptions (Fischer et al. 2015 ; Walsh et al. 2020 ). While these challenges are increasingly addressed in emerging frameworks and perspectives that may form the foundations of transformative approaches toward more sustainable and just futures (e.g., Ison 2018 ; Gearty and Marshall 2020 ; Hertz et al. 2020 ; Wamsler et al. 2021 ), there is little knowledge on how to systemically conduct sustainability science from a relational paradigm perspective (Fischer et al. 2015 ; Walsh et al. 2020 ; West et al. 2020 ).

Sustainability science is both an inter- and transdisciplinary field, and it is concerned with addressing complex challenges that threaten humanity and the planet (Wiek and Lang 2016 ). It bridges natural and social sciences and the humanities in the search for creative solutions to these challenges (Jerneck et al. 2010 ; Kajikawa et al. 2014 ; Miller 2012 ; van Kerkhoff 2013 ). Accordingly, sustainability research tends to combine “descriptive-analytical” and “transformational” approaches with different methodologies, based on systems thinking as an epistemological frame (Miller et al. 2013 ; Wiek and Lang 2016 ). While the descriptive-analytical stream draws mostly on systems modeling for describing and analyzing the causes and effects of complex sustainability challenges, the transformational stream often focuses on evidence-based solutions, by accommodating systems thinking for generating actionable insights into how to address sustainability challenges more effectively (Abson et al. 2017 ; Wiek and Lang 2016 ). Hence, both approaches are built on the premise of addressing un/sustainability by identifying and “solving” wicked problems. In general, however, these premises and their corresponding understanding of systems, and systems change, operate within the dominant social paradigm (Latour 2005 ; Poli 2013 ). In other words, they typically do not align with, or support, a relational paradigm, notably its epistemological, ontological, and praxis dimensions (Ives et al. 2023 ). Despite the above-described call for a relational turn in sustainability science, related endeavors are still in their infancy, and there is a need for further efforts to learn how to nurture more relational and, thus, transformative approaches.

Put together, there is an urgent need for a move toward more relational thinking, being and acting, and thus a related shift in: (1) how we see the world; and (2) how we get to know, (3) engage, and (4) ensure quality and equity considerations across these aspects (Ives et al. 2023 ; Walsh et al. 2020 ; Wamsler et al. 2021 , 2024 ). This involves examining how ethical considerations shape our understanding of reality (ontology), influence the ways we acquire, validate, and apply knowledge (epistemology), and translate it into action (praxis).

Against this background, in this article we explore how we can break out of societies’ dominant social paradigm and apply a relational paradigm to the conduct of sustainability research in more transformative ways. More specifically, we identify key implications and possible ways forward for all major steps typically found in any scientific research process.

Methodological considerations

In the next section, we describe the particularities that result from a relational paradigm for each of the following research steps: (1) identifying the research problem and niche; (2) reviewing the literature; (3) creating research hypotheses; (4) designing the overall approach; (5) data collection and analyses; (6) writing up the results; and (7) disseminating them (Booth et al. 2016 ; Cohen et al. 2018 ; Creswell 2018 ). For each of these steps, we compare: (1) how sustainability research is generally conducted based on the mechanistic paradigm; and (2) how the approach might change if a relational paradigm is applied. Related analyses are based on an exploratory analysis Footnote 5 of the literature that calls for a relational shift in sustainability and social sciences. While our comparison relates to mainstream sustainability approaches that are built on a mechanistic paradigm, we recognize the existence of alternatives (cf. Bradbury 2015 , 2022 ; Drawson et al. 2017 ; Goodchild 2021 ; Mbah et al. 2022 ; Romm 2015 ; Rowell et al. 2017 ).

We do not attempt to present a comprehensive overview of research methodologies based on a relational paradigm. Instead, we critically reflect on existing approaches and review how a relational paradigm could be operationalized in sustainability research, particularly as there is no single, coherent relational paradigm to build upon (Alvesson and Sandberg 2020 ; Böhme et al. 2022 ).

To do so, we do not present tools, methods, or steps with specific prescriptions and instructions for how to move toward a more relational paradigm and overcome related challenges—instead, we offer a proposition that could trigger conditions of emergence (Springgay 2015 ). This is important, because the idea that specific actions lead to defined outcomes is not aligned with a relational perspective and thus on how transformation can be supported in complex systems (Smartt Gullion 2018 ). Moreover, relational epistemologies question the idea that tools can be used to represent reality, without acknowledging the entanglement of the researcher who is co-creating the knowledge (Latour 2005 ). Ultimately, “tools are never ‘mere’ tools ready to be applied: they always modify the goals you had in mind” (Latour 2005 , p. 143). Offering a practical tool runs the risk of offering a simplistic conceptualization that narrows understanding and changes our object of study (Mancilla Garcia et al. 2020 ).

Instead, in each section, we conclude with some questions that can be used to make the implicit explicit when conducting research within a relational paradigm. Making the implicit explicit is an important strategy for dealing with complexity (Audouin et al. 2013 ; Cilliers 2005 ). We thus follow Puig de la Bellacasa ( 2017 ), who suggests that the aim should be a commitment to asking how things could be different, as developing processes and practices of asking can challenge the status quo and, thus, help to increasingly integrate the relational paradigm into current approaches.

Pathways toward a relational paradigm in research

Step 1: identifying the research problem and niche.

The first step in the process is the identification of the research problem and niche.

From a mechanistic paradigm, the problem and niche can be found by identifying and isolating certain parts of a system that relate to a particular sustainability challenge. For example, a focus on carbon emissions in a particular sector (e.g., transportation).

A relational paradigm would require adding a perspective that is based on an understanding of sustainability challenges as evolving, complex adaptive systems marked by interdependencies, connectedness, nonlinearity, uncertainty, and emergence (Ives et al. 2023 ; Turner and Baker 2019 ). Instead of focusing on individual parts of systems—such as carbon emissions in transportation—a relational approach thus also requires looking into relationships, and the quality of these relationships, within and between systems, and how this influences or prevents integrative inner–outer transformation processes across individual, collective, and system levels (Wamsler et al. 2021 , 2022a , b ). In this context, “boundaries” do not define a research problem or theoretical puzzle, but “interfaces” do, which are understood as dynamic interchanges that form the edges of systems, and, are, at the same time, the focus; that is, “the appropriate center of interest in a particular system, process, or mind” (Bateson 1979 ; Charlton 2008 , p. 41).

An important aspect to consider during the first research step is the fact that paradigms form frames and language, and vice versa (Lakoff 2014 ; Ives et al. 2019 ). Reframing sustainability challenges is thus crucial for supporting transformation (Lakoff 2014 ) and must be accounted for when conducting research. While formulating the problem, it is for instance essential to consider which pre-defined concepts the problem is based upon, as moving toward a relational paradigm asks us to question established norms and understandings.

A relational paradigm also requires special attention to the wording of the research gap and associated niche, including the use of expressions that can foster or challenge dominant beliefs, values, and worldviews. Examples of wording that aims to support more relational understandings are natureculture and intra-action (Barad 2007 ; Hertz and Mancilla Garcia 2021 ), socialecological (Böhme 2023 ), thinking-with (Vu 2018 ), or the more-than-human world (Haraway 2016 ). In contrast, Hertz et al. ( 2020 ) point out that current sustainability research often employs “the environment” or “nature” and “the social” or “culture” as separate entities or phenomena, which can reinforce a reductionist paradigm. The separation between the social and the ecological also manifests in research in the so-called socio-ecological systems, a conceptualization that has strongly been influencing related research, frameworks, theories, methods, and policy insights.

In summary, identifying the problem through the lens of a relational paradigm involves a shift from focusing only on analyzing certain parts of a system, to the quality of relationships, associated meaning-making, and integrative inner–outer transformation processes. It also involves identifying and developing appropriate frames, language, and concepts that align with these characteristics.

A study on reducing carbon emissions from transportation might, for instance, be framed within a continuum and integrative understanding that links analyses at the level of behavior, at the level of systems and structures, and at the level of individual and collective mindsets. Moreover, employing a relational paradigm might involve framing emission and transportation-related challenges also around concepts of community well-being, social connectivity, and environmental justice.

In conclusion, the following questions can help in moving toward a relational paradigm:

I. How do my research problem and associated niche consider interdependencies, connectedness, nonlinearity, uncertainty, and emergence? How do they account for (the quality of) relationships and related inner–outer transformation processes across individual, collective, and system levels? For example, if my research focus and associated aims reinforce (the perception of) a separation between humans and non-humans, I might want to reframe the research.

II. Is the wording of the problem, niche and associated aims aligned with relational perspectives, or does it strengthen current mechanistic paradigms? For example, “if the words in a given language focus on shapes over function, then no wonder the speakers of that language prefer to group things according to their shape rather than their function” (Bollier and Helfrich 2019 , p. 708).

III. How can I explain relational, unfamiliar, or new concepts so that others (co-researchers, readers), who are new to this way of thinking, can understand? How can I create a bridge between the current and a potential new, more sustainable paradigm? For example, I could consider adding a glossary of newly-formed or uncommon terms.

Step 2: reviewing the literature

In general, the literature review entails identifying relevant sources and databases, and screening and selecting articles based on predetermined criteria. After extracting relevant information and data from the selected articles, researchers systematize and synthesize the findings to identify gaps, themes, and patterns.

From the perspective of the dominat mechanistic paradigm, scientific, peer-reviewed information is generally considered the key source for ensuring credibility and reliability. Adopting a relational paradigm challenges this notion. It requires questioning the dominance of the existing sensemaking frames and discussing their possible limitations, biases, and blind spots, including regarding the ontological premises underlying other epistemological and ethical considerations and emergent phenomena (Storm et al. 2019 ; Ives et al. 2023 ; Alvesson and Sandberg 2020 ).

Epistemologically, the focus shifts from privileging empiricism and positivism to embracing multiple ways of knowing. It acknowledges that different knowledge systems offer unique perspectives and understandings of the world. This may include lived experience, traditional and Indigenous wisdom, artistic expression, and other non-conventional sources that can offer valuable insights into the complexities of environmental issues, associated human–environment relationships, and esthetics (Osgood et al. 2020 ). It challenges the idea that only ‘objectifiable’ data is valid and recognizes that experiential, subjective, and transpersonal insights are equally essential in comprehending sustainability and the associated literature (Storm et al. 2019 ).

Ethically, the relational paradigm prompts critical reflection on whose knowledge is recognized and legitimized. It questions power dynamics within knowledge production, highlighting the need to amplify marginalized voices and perspectives that may have been historically excluded or undervalued within academia or the scientific discourse. It thus requires decolonizing strategies for identifying and reviewing the literature (Vu 2018 ).

Continuing with the example of carbon emissions from transport that was given in step 1, a relational paradigm would also require reviewing related, non-scientific literature and other sources and perspectives that shed light on aspects that have so far not been explored by mainstream science. This might involve considering the (limited) methodological bases and foci of the examined literature, and including additional data and voices for a more comprehensive review (e.g., examining all levels of transformation, related views, structures, and practices that might add additional context and perspectives).

Other common assumptions during step 2 are that the literature presents external, fixed knowledge, which the author has developed, and that the reader interprets the literature through a reflective process that is independent of dominant social paradigms. Accordingly, a systematic literature review should always lead to the same results and interpretations when repeated, regardless of the author(s), researcher(s), and reader(s). In contrast, a relational paradigm acknowledges the relational nature of knowledge creation, distribution, and interpretation, which arises from a process of entangled relations and associated paradigms (Barad 2007 ). The literature review is thus as much influenced by the researcher(s) themselves, as it is influenced by the perspective(s) of the respective author(s).

In the light of these observations, reviewing the literature is as much about understanding current knowledge as it is about understanding and considering how knowledge came to be. A relational paradigm thus posits that knowledge arises because it is co-produced by sociomaterial configurations and associated inner–outer change processes; it is neither fixed and permanent, nor individualized. Knowledge is a product of intra-action, “not something that someone or something has” (Barad 2007 , p. 178). As Cilliers ( 2005 , p. 609) argues, “There are facts that exist independently of the observer of those facts, but the facts do not have their meaning written on their faces. Meaning only comes to be in the process of interaction. Knowledge is interpreted data.”

Put simply, any literature review needs to recognize that (the analyzed and produced) knowledge is co-created and influenced by dominant social paradigms and associated inner–outer change processes. By conducting a literature review, we participate in a relational configuration through the entanglements of the involved agents.

The following guiding questions might thus help in moving toward a relational paradigm:

How can I integrate sources beyond scholarly articles to better understand current knowledge? Are there ways to systematically include non-human perspectives? For example, if the identified literature only represents knowledge from certain elements, communities or groups, other sources need to be considered (e.g., illustrated by Vu’s ( 2018 ) ethico-auto-ethnographies or Kuntz and Presnall’s ( 2012 ) intra-views).

What underlying or tacit ontological, epistemological, and ethical assumptions might be present within the reviewed literature? For example, how might dominant social paradigms and perspectives have influenced the presented theories of change, the exclusion of inner dimensions, or an overlooking of marginalized agents and non-human actors?

How does my perspective, subjectivity, and social–ecological position influence the interpretation and analysis of the literature, and how can I take account of this? For example, I could consider adding related considerations when discussing the limitations of the review.

Step 3: creating research hypotheses

From a mechanistic, positivist stance, a literature review is generally used to formulate hypotheses about the relationship between the independent and dependent variables. Within our dominant paradigm, these are generally expressed as testable hypotheses, and each hypothesis should be specific, concise, and presented as a statement that establishes a clear cause-and-effect relationship between the variables. They should also be falsifiable, which means that they offer supportive or neglective evidence through empirical qualitative or quantitative testing. Commonly, such hypotheses are formulated using either inductive or deductive reasoning (Smartt Gullion 2018 ).

An alternative approach, which is aligned with a relational paradigm, is abductive reasoning (Tullio 2016 ), sometimes also referred to as adductive reasoning. Abduction differs from both deduction and induction. It begins with an observed phenomenon that requires an explanation, then speculates on potential answers. Related reasoning involves a leap of the imagination and proposing hypotheses or interpretations that go beyond current evidence or knowledge. It is essentially a creative process of suggesting answers based on relational patterns, analogies, and insights from diverse sources. The researcher synthesizes information and uses speculative reasoning to suggest potential explanations, in addition to ‘obvious’ hypotheses (Nersessian 2010 ; Selg and Ventsel 2020 ; Van der Hoorn 1995 ). As Hertz et al. ( 2020 , p. 9) point out:

“Abduction reverses the order of reasoning. It focuses on a phenomenon that needs explaining and then ponders potential causes. During this speculative activity, novel conceptualizations and dynamics can be introduced to an explanatory scheme. Methods and approaches in social-ecological systems research with this potential include place-based and context-rich qualitative research methods (like narratives and participatory scenario development) and computational methods.”

Bateson ( 1982 ) argues that abductive reasoning is particularly pertinent for studying complex systems, such as ecosystems, social systems, and associated mental processes. Engaging in abductive reasoning allows researchers to extend their understanding beyond existing knowledge, potentially revealing deeper insights (ibid).

This can be illustrated by studying community resilience in the face of natural disasters. From a positivist perspective, the focus might be on testing specific hypotheses that predict the relationship between factors like socioeconomic status and disaster preparedness. Each hypothesis would be clearly defined and testable, aiming to establish a cause-and-effect relationship between independent and dependent variables. For instance, a hypothesis could propose that higher socioeconomic status correlates with better disaster preparedness measures. In contrast, adopting a relational paradigm would also involve abductive reasoning, which allows for additional exploration of the phenomenon and associated inner–outer transformation processes, enabling the researchers to identify and explore further hypotheses.

In summary, formulating hypotheses from a relational perspective requires their anchoring in the above-described steps 1–2. In addition, it should not only involve inductive and deductive, but also abductive reasoning. Deductive reasoning starts with a general rule, and inductive reasoning begins with a specific observation. In contrast, abductive reasoning assumes that observations are incomplete. Abductive reasoning embraces the idea that phenomena are unpredictable, contingent, dynamic, and emerge through open-ended intra-actions and relationships.

To explore this alternative path and move toward a relational paradigm, the following guiding questions might assist:

I. Do my hypotheses reflect the dominant social paradigm and related ontological assumptions? For example, are they based on a ‘fix-it’ and ‘fix-others’ mindset that reinforces current, unsustainable paradigms? Do they only focus on apparent external problems and solutions without due consideration of related inner dimensions of transformation? Or do they presuppose a division between nature and culture? If yes, I might need to reconsider or make explicit related biases and effects.

II. How do my hypotheses adequately consider the role of relationships (to self, others, nature, and the world at large)? For example, if they examine values without considering the relationships from which these values are co-created and emerge across individual, collective, and system levels, I might consider redirecting their focus.

III. How might abductive reasoning enhance my hypotheses? For example, I might speculate on potential explanations through the lens of different disciplines and sources, including Indigenous and local knowledge systems.

Step 4: defining the overall research design

During the design process, the research object is further defined, and an overall methodology is chosen to investigate it. Within the mechanistic paradigm, the boundaries of the object are clearly drawn. Complex phenomena are broken down into simpler components. The prevailing thought is that all complexity can be reduced to manageable parts and then understood through discrete analyses, measurements, or computational simulation (Smartt Gullion 2018 ).

It is clear that reductionist approaches are necessary in all scientific approaches to study some ‘thing’ or some ‘one’. At the same time, reduction has to be handled with particular care to include relational, ever-moving, and changing processes and aspects of systems that are key for understanding and transformation. For example, Bateson ( 2021 ) argues that common research approaches alone cannot answer questions regarding what and how autopoietic cycles of adaption within complexity are learning (Bateson 2021 ). In other words, overly mechanistic reduction might result in overlooking, or not engaging enough with so-called ‘warm data’, which is information about the interrelationships that form complexity, and thus the foundation of living systems and life itself. Warm data capture qualitative dynamics and offer another dimension of understanding to what is learned through “living data” (Bateson 2021 , 2022 ).

The overall research design has to take account of this relational living systems information and associated knowledge creation processes. It requires consideration of constantly emerging inner–outer learning processes of experiences, cultural beliefs, and perspectives. Unreflected simplification might lead to unintended or even harmful outcomes and consequences that support unsustainable paradigms.

At the same time, as the relational paradigm builds on the ontological premise that everything is related to everything else, the challenge is to design research in a way that stays true to its ideas, while not becoming too diffuse or abstract. A view that attempts to encompass all relations risks losing the distinction between the system and its environment. Researchers can then fall into two traps—either a radical openness systems view that leads to relativism, or an approach that relies on measurement and computational simulation (Morin 2008 ). The former is criticized for being a reaction to reductionism and promoting a kind of holism that negates the need for ontology. The latter fails to recognize the intangible nature of emergent properties (Preiser 2012 ). Therefore, both views have limitations: they either neglect the need for a reliable ontology, or oversimplify the intangible nature of ever-moving and emergent properties. A rigorous understanding of complexity denies total holism and total reductionism simultaneously, resulting in what Cilliers ( 2005 , p. 261) describes as “performative tension”.

In practice, this performative tension can be addressed by drawing boundaries, while simultaneously redirecting attention to related interfaces and being aware of, and making explicit, the fact that these boundaries are artificial. This is also referred to as “critical complexity” (Audouin et al. 2013 ), which transcends and incorporates mechanistic strategies while recognizing the need for reduction and transparency. Critical complexity can bring value-based choices to the forefront, if the reduction itself is a conscious value-based choice, where the researcher chooses which aspects to focus on, while staying aware that the research and the researcher(s) themselves are part of the living system of engaging with knowledge creation (and thus are constantly changing and are changed through responsively relating with the emergent character of this process). It is not either the researcher(s) or the research outcome that independently creates knowledge; instead, the overall design process can be regarded as learning and potentially transformation on all levels (Bateson 2021 ; Preiser 2012 ; Wamsler et al. 2022a , b ). This differs from the mechanistic approach, which often overlooks the consequences of reductionist practices, especially when defining the overall research design.

The critical complexity rationale recognizes that reductionism, under specific conditions, can by itself effectively enhance understanding. For instance, Cilliers ( 2005 ) argues that although reduction is unavoidable in our efforts to comprehend socialecological systems, we can shift our focus toward framing the strategies that are employed during the process of reduction. This change promotes a more relational standpoint, fostered through self-reflection.

Overall, finding an appropriate methodology can be a challenge and requires the careful consideration of relationships and engagements regarding both external and internal research stakeholders. Although several relational methodologies exist, such as intra-views (Kuntz and Presnall 2012 ), diffractive ethnography (Smartt Gullion 2018 ), ethico-auto-ethnography (Vu 2018 ), phenomenology, integral and narrative-based methodologies (Snowden and Greenberg 2021 ; Van der Merwe et al. 2019 ; Wilber 2021 ), the relational paradigm does not advocate prescriptive methodologies.

In summary, the challenge is to maintain a relational perspective without becoming overly abstract and risking relativist holism. This requires explicitly: (1) acknowledging the limitations of reductionist strategies; (2) accounting for relationships and associated inner–outer change processes (individual, collective, system levels) that are relevant for understanding the research object; and (3) considering how the overall design can itself support transformation, both regarding its object and stakeholders.

For example, when investigating the impact of a city’s electric vehicle adoption program on reducing carbon emissions, the researcher might consciously adopt a design that avoids falling into the trap of exhausting and exploiting oneself, others, and the planet (e.g., through explicit consideration of wellbeing, equity issues, the research’s inherent CO 2 emissions, time management, and meeting formats). At the same time, methodologies can be applied in ways such that they, themselves, can support individual, cultural, and system transformation toward post-carbon behaviors (e.g., Osberg et al. 2024 ; Wamsler et al. 2022b ).

To navigate alternative pathways for designing an overall research methodology, the following guiding questions might be thus helpful:

I. How can I explicitly integrate a relational perspective when using reductionist methodologies? For instance, would it be beneficial to develop a research process that pursues a reductionist approach, while critically highlighting its limitations?

II. How can I design the overall research approach in a way that accounts for relationships and associated inner–outer change processes (individual, collective, and system levels) that are relevant for understanding the selected object? For instance, how might I employ a hybrid methodology that integrates qualitative, quantitative, and related innovative approaches to ensure a comprehensive understanding (e.g., contemplative and creative approaches)?

III. How can the overall design support transformation, for example, a change toward a more relational paradigm (both regarding the research object and stakeholders)? For instance, what relational approaches exist, and how might I combine them in my overall research design?

Step 5: data collection and analysis

Data collection aims to gather relevant information and answer the research questions and/or hypotheses. Diverse methods and techniques are used to systematically collect, record, organize, examine, and interpret related data and draw meaningful conclusions.

Within the mechanistic approach, new scientific knowledge and theory is usually built on the collection and analysis of credible sources of data. In this context, focus tends to be on certain (but not all) dimensions of reality and associated methods for data collection, and, consequently, certain (but not all) ways of generating knowledge about the world (Ives et al. 2019 ). Footnote 6

The relational paradigm questions this fragmented approach (cf. Steps 1–4). In a context where all parts (e.g., culture, institutions, individual and collective behavior and views) are colored by the dominant social paradigm, the combination of scientific, philosophical, Footnote 7 and other methods of enquiry is particularly important to support both an integrated understanding of existing ways of knowing and innovative pathways for new knowledge generation. It requires introspection, contemplative, esthetic, visual, sensory, and embodied forms of sensemaking, and it also demands that we decolonize current methods, for instance, to avoid undermining local knowledge and the experiences of marginalized populations.

From a relational perspective, data that can be used to construct and test ideas can be empirical, but can also take theoretical, conceptual, or other forms (Bhaskar et al. 2016 ). For instance, viewing first-person enquiry or embodiment as a way of perceiving and understanding the world distinguishes it from the dominant mode of knowledge (Frank et al. 2024 ), known as propositional knowing. Propositional knowing primarily relies on creating conceptual maps, which, although helpful, can sometimes be deceptive as they oversimplify reality (the map is not the territory). According to systems theorist Nassim Nicholas Taleb, phenomenological knowledge is often more resilient and adaptable than propositional knowledge (Taleb 2013 ). This does not mean that propositional knowledge should be disregarded entirely; rather, when enriched by phenomenological knowledge, it creates space for the emergence of more imaginative and practical ideas (Pöllänen et al. 2023 ).

Purely objective data does not exist, as pointed out by post-structuralists (Kirby 2011 ). Accordingly, St. Pierre ( 2013 , p. 226) states that “if being is always already entangled, then something called data cannot be separate from me, out there for me to collect.” Denzin ( 2013 , p. 35) therefore suggests thinking about data in terms of “empirical materials”. Data selection and interpretation thus always have material consequences (Barad 2007 ; Smartt Gullion 2018 ). Based on this understanding, data are phenomena that “cannot be engineered by human subjects but are differential patterns of mattering produced by neither the material nor the cultural but the material–cultural” (Vu 2018 , p. 85) or naturecultural (Haraway 2016 ). Phenomenological and narrative-based methods explicitly account for this perspective (see related studies by Pöllänen et al. 2023 ; Wamsler et al. 2022b ).

Furthermore, a relational paradigm involves acknowledging the potential relevance of data that are generally dismissed (Smartt Gullion 2018 ). For example, in statistical modeling, deviation from the mean is often dismissed as noise. To streamline the analysis, ‘noisy’ data undergo various manipulations including outlier removal, logarithmic transformation, or smoothing, ultimately resulting in a linear form (ibid.). While reductionist approaches are necessary (cf. Step 4), noise might conceal significant insights, for instance from non-human or marginalized groups (West 2006 ).

West ( 2006 , p. 72) asserts that “smoothing or filtering the time series might eliminate the very thing we want to know.” Such processing tends to neglect the unique variability that characterizes individuals and emphasizes commonalities. Additionally, the understanding that large sample sizes are good undermines individual variability. As sample sizes grow, models tend to produce statistically significant results. However, this significance is purely a statistical concept and does not always reflect substantial relationships between variables. Even random correlations can appear statistically significant with large sample sizes (Smartt Gullion 2019). For certain studies, it might thus be beneficial to scrutinize the noise.

Building on the previous arguments, it is crucial to employ methods that can investigate all, also today’s ‘hidden’ dimensions, of reality and their inherent relationships. This requires combining traditional methods with other techniques and data sources, such as introspection, contemplative, esthetic, visual, sensory, and embodied forms of sensemaking.

For example, instead of merely using a statistical analysis of the number of bikes rented daily, and the corresponding decrease in individual car usage and emissions, researchers who are studying the impact of a city’s new bike-sharing program on reducing carbon emissions might also consider data from users about underlying (shifts in) values, beliefs, emotions, and paradigms, inter-group variations, and obstacles and enablers for inner–outer change, which can take different forms (e.g., collected stories, constellations, or drawings).

When collecting and analyzing data from a relational perspective, the following questions should be considered to move toward a relational paradigm:

I. How can I critically examine my role as a researcher during the data collection and analysis process? For example, how might my perspectives, assumptions, and values shape my data selection and interpretation?

II. How can I embrace a broad range of methods, data types, and formats beyond traditional textual or numerical approaches? For example, maybe I can incorporate experiential, visual, or sensory forms of data to capture relevant human and non-human interactions.

III. What is the noise that I might be overlooking? For example, if I have smoothed or filtered data, it might be relevant to revisit those data points (if possible) for a closer examination.

Step 6: the writing process

The end product of research is some form of representation of the findings. Commonly, findings are reported in written form in an international journal, a poster, a book, or a monograph. The underlying assumption is that the results—through the use of language—can reflect and influence reality.

This is based on a certain understanding of objectivity and the role of information. From a mechanistic paradigm, research results represent an objective truth that was discovered. Epistemologically, the common understanding is that a knowing subject (the researcher) can objectively study objects (things in the world) to understand them.

As described above, relational epistemology questions the idea of an objective observer (Ngunjiri et al. 2010 ). This understanding is by no means original in its attempt to expose the limitations of reductionist practices. “Philosophers of science, such as Popper ( 1963 ), Feyerabend ( 1975 ), and Kuhn ( 1996 ), are well known for their arguments against false claims of objectivity and scientific autonomy” (Audouin et al. 2013 , p. 17).

The challenge that arises from this understanding is how to represent this subjectivity when reporting results, sometimes referred to as a crisis of representation (Smartt Gullion 2018 ). The crisis of representation comes from asking whether the final product represents reality. Is it accurate? Trustworthy? Ethical? It results from speaking for others—in sustainability science, this is often marginalized humans or non-humans—and the adequacy of their representation (ibid).

Within the relational paradigm, the crisis of representation could be addressed by explicitly acknowledging related challenges, choosing alternative or additional forms of representation (art, stories, music), and portraying the self as performative (Verlie 2018 ). The latter can for instance involve moving away from a first-person scholarly narrator who is self-referential and unavailable to criticism or revision (Pollock 2007 ).

In contrast to representationalism, performativism focuses on “understanding thinking, observing, and theorizing as practices of engagement with, and as part of, the world in which we have our being” (Barad 2007 , p. 133). This understanding of self represents identity and experience as uncertain, fluid, and open to interpretation and revision (Jones and Adams 2010 ).

Although this last research step makes the performative ‘I’ visible, related considerations are relevant for all steps. In the latter case, it relates to: inquiries about one’s role and entanglements; actively engaging with the subjects of research, for example, through dialog; making deliberate methodological choices; considering potential power dynamics, informed consent, confidentiality, and the well-being of participants and oneself; and being transparent about the role of the performative ‘I’ in shaping outcomes.

Another important aspect to consider during the writing process is the fact that writing itself can (and should) be understood as a relational process that, in turn, can foster or hamper relationality in real life (Barad 2007 ; Puig de la Bellacasa 2017 ). For example, the process can be constrained by project schedules, power structures, or other external pressures. This scenario tends to result in a more mechanical, instrumental, and task-oriented approach to crafting or ‘fitting’ content, scope, and form. Conversely, when writing emanates from an integrated self and an embodied, deeper connection to one’s thoughts, emotions, body, and creativity, words can flow more organically. In these instances, the writing process becomes an expressive act, which allows the person to tap into their full potential, rather than fulfilling external demands. Hawkins ( 2015 ) points out that writing is not merely a cognitive or linguistic activity, but is deeply entwined with social, emotional, and spatial contexts and relationships. Thus, writing itself is affected by relational influences, and the way of writing can support or hamper engagement in transformational change (ibid.).

In summary, the writing process requires addressing relational aspects of representation. It involves explicitly addressing related limitations (such as power dynamics and ethical considerations), portraying the self as performative, and using alternative or additional forms of representation where relevant (art, stories, music).

To integrate relational perspectives into the writing process, the following questions can thus be helpful:

I. How might my perspectives and assumptions shape the interpretation and representation of my results, and how can I make them explicit in my writing? For instance, do I acknowledge related limitations in the description of research outcomes?

II. Who do I speak for? Am I contributing to empowerment and justice, or am I disempowering certain individuals, groups, or other agents? For example, how can I give voice to non-human actors and consider their perspectives and interactions? How can I make my writings widely accessible for diverse audiences?

III. What kind of world or other ways of representation can I use to support integrative understanding and transformation? For example, do my research results contribute to, or challenge, existing paradigms and practices? How can I reach people’s minds and hearts, and foster individual and collective agency, hope, and courage to act?

Step 7: dissemination of the results

Lastly, the research process involves the dissemination of its results. Especially in sustainability science, the transfer of knowledge is a crucial step for fostering transformation, and results are disseminated through publishing in academic journals (cf. step 6).

From a relational perspective, relationships also play a key role in dissemination. As relational approaches require the consideration of the perspectives, needs, and relationships of human and non-human stakeholders, it is important to involve stakeholders in different forms in all research steps. In the context of dissemination, this relates to the sharing and application of research findings. Science communication increasingly uses dissemination formats beyond academic papers, such as podcasts, books, or policy briefs that aim to reach different societal groups. However, to support transformation, more relational communication and implementation strategies might also be needed, for instance, the creation of reflection and generative dialog spaces, community workshops, communities of practice, or other interactive formats (Mar et al. 2023 ). What makes these formats particularly relevant is their co-creative approach, placing researchers within a learning ecosystem, field, or network, as learning subjects themselves. Moreover, dissemination could place greater emphasis on the relationships and contexts in which the results were generated. This could involve storytelling, case study illustrations, or imaginary narratives as part of the dissemination strategy that highlight the interconnectedness of the findings within specific social, cultural, or environmental contexts.

Another key aspect of the relational paradigm that is relevant for dissemination is epistemic justice (Fricker 2007 ; Puig de la Bellacasa 2017 ; Whyte 2020 ). Epistemic justice calls for the recognition and amplification of marginalized or underrepresented voices in knowledge production and learning. In the context of dissemination, this translates into actively seeking out, addressing, and including diverse perspectives and knowledge holders in the communication and sharing of research findings. It involves sharing results beyond the scientific community, both with humans and other agents, where possible. It also includes the use of diverse communication channels and formats that cater to different audiences, languages, and accessibility needs. Such an approach embraces tangible actions and accessibility, to have a more inclusive impact that integrates different ways of learning and understanding.

In summary, dissemination requires actively seeking out and addressing relationships and diverse perspectives, and making research outcomes widely accessible in ways that integrate cognitive, social, emotional, ethical, and embodied learning.

For example, when disseminating outcomes, the researcher might also want to represent and ‘let speak’ other voices—such as birds or trees—through videos, photographs, or exhibitions, as an addition to the dissemination of written material.

To integrate relational perspectives into the dissemination process, the following questions can be helpful:

I. In what forms can I best share these research results to account for, and address diverse stakeholders, needs, and perspectives? For example, are videos, exhibitions, networks, or communities of practice relevant channels for dissemination and implementation?

II. Am I conveying information accurately, respectfully, and in ways that honor diverse contributions and contexts, particularly those of marginalized groups? For example, have I critically examined and reframed narratives that perpetuate injustices or exclude certain perspectives?

III. How do I engage with relevant stakeholders during the dissemination process to support integrative understanding and transformation? For example, how can I move from traditional communication formats to more relational approaches that challenge current paradigms?

Our assessment of the different research steps has shown that some characteristics of a relational paradigm apply to several, or all, steps. For example, it is important to consider that sustainability science, by nature, is intertwined with human values, societal norms, and ethics throughout the process. It is inherently subjective and normative, which makes the idea of “total” objectivity obsolete (Ngunjiri et al. 2010 ). Consequently, inner dimensions, including people’s individual and collective mindsets, beliefs, values, worldviews, and associated inner qualities/capacities are key for defining, pursuing, and achieving sustainability goals across all levels (individual, collective, system). Embracing a relational approach in sustainability science therefore necessitates an explicit consideration of related inner–outer transformation processes, which, in turn, requires conscious inter- and intrarelating through introspection and reflexivity. This shift broadens the scope of sustainability science and poses epistemological, ontological, ethical, and praxis-related questions regarding (1) how we see the world, (2) how we get to know, (3) how we engage, and (4) how we ensure equity considerations across all aspects (Ives et al. 2023 ; Wamsler et al. 2024 ). The relational paradigm thus decenters the human in the production of knowledge. We have explained related aspects in detail in the previous sections, and in those research steps in which their influence is greatest.

New pathways for sustainability science: toward a relational approach in research

Given the challenges of the anthropocene, scholars are increasingly calling for a relational turn to address the root causes of today’s polycrisis. At the same time, little is known about the associated challenges, and there is little advice regarding how to operationalize the approach in sustainability science.

Against this background, this paper explored how we can break out of modern, unsustainable paradigms and approaches, and instead apply more relational thinking, being, and acting in the way we conduct research. To achieve this, we systematically list all major research phases and assess possible pathways for integrating a relational paradigm (see Table  1 for an overview and suppl. material).

We show that moving toward a relational paradigm requires us to methodically question and redefine existing theories of change, concepts, and approaches. However, transitioning from a mechanistic to a relational paradigm in the domain of sustainability science and beyond does not involve a straightforward substitution.

Instead of viewing paradigm shifts as abrupt replacements, our analyses highlight the evolutionary and emergent nature of such changes. Contrary to Kuhn’s ( 1996 ) concept of successive paradigms, our approach recognizes the value of integrating and acknowledging the partial validity of multiple, preceding, and mutually informing paradigms. It is about taking small steps and creating bridges between the current and a potential new paradigm, by exploring how best to be in relationship, with ourselves, our fellow humans, and the other-than-human in a regenerative way.

Yet, as Raymond et al. ( 2021 ) point out, methodological challenges and pragmatic decisions to move toward more relational thinking must be addressed, such as the need for setting certain systems boundaries or interfaces. As suggested by the concept of critical complexity, it is possible to transcend the limitations of our dominant mechanistic approaches, while acknowledging the necessity for reduction in research. It embraces the nuanced understanding that some reductionist practices are indispensable, while advocating for a broader framework that encompasses the complexity of entangled socio-ecological systems. Moreover, as Walsh et al. ( 2020 ) point out, applying a differentiated relational ontology acknowledges both the separate as well as the relational reality. For instance, dealing with challenges such as identifying leverage points in research—which stems from a bifurcation—means that we acknowledge paradoxes. We might apply the leverage points model to identify where to intervene in the system, while at the same time acknowledging that the model is limited and not fully aligned with relational thinking (Raymond et al. 2021 ). The need to embrace paradoxes is, in fact, part of moving toward a relational approach (e.g., Kulundu-Bolus 2023 ): it requires a humble and thus relational attitude and understanding of the research process and the results in themselves.

A key challenge for moving toward a relational paradigm is the current landscape within which sustainability science operates, as it is in itself an expression of the dominant modern paradigm. The field operates within a larger context that is characterized by constant acceleration, a high-speed society, exponential technological development, and continuous social change, all of which affect our own relationships and those involved in any research object (Rosa 2019 ). Tensions thus arise from the clash between the inherent qualities of a relational approach—which emphasizes interdependencies, connectedness, nonlinearity, uncertainty, and emergence—and systemic pressures that prioritize rapid outputs, quantifiable outcomes, and often individualistic gains. We therefore acknowledge that a paradigm shift needs to go hand in hand with an overall reevaluation of how systems, institutions, policies, and practices are structured and incentivized within sustainability science.

To integrate a relational paradigm into the researcher’s work, we suggest developing processes and practices of reflexive praxis, such as interrupting existing conversations, listening deeply to overlooked, marginalized, or suppressed perspectives, and daring to ask difficult and new questions that support mutual learning toward the emergence of a more relational being, understanding, and acting upon the world (Spreitzer 2021 ). Moving toward a more relational paradigm is thus not just about adopting a different framework, but is about cultivating individual and collective capabilities and capacities that allow us to challenge conventional norms, structures, and institutions, and encourage exploration and creation from diverse viewpoints toward potential alternatives (Wamsler et al. 2024 ).

Challenging mainstream thought and daring to ask different questions in each research step are crucial to shifting current scientific norms and systems. Hence, we offer a catalog of questions that allows us to systematically integrate relational being, thinking, and acting into the research process (see Table  1 , as well as suppl. material for an overview of the questions and examples). Each question encapsulates underlying assumptions and implications for the research process and can thus serve as a catalyst for embracing a more relational perspective.

Many of the characteristics of a relational paradigm have an impact across multiple research steps. These aspects include the need to decenter the human perspective, account for the role of relationships, support integrative inner–outer transformation processes across individual, collective, and system levels, and encourage deep reflection on one’s positionality. While these characteristics influence the entire research process, their significance becomes more pronounced in certain steps, which we therefore explored in more detail in the previous sections.

Although we offer some concrete ideas regarding how to move toward a relational paradigm, further research is required to test our theoretical and conceptual considerations and generate further measures and pathways. As the relational paradigm focuses on the (quality of) relationships within systems, and associated inner–outer transformation processes, one key aspect to consider is whether, and how, changes in relationships can be best addressed. Research on the human–nature connection, such as the Connectedness to Nature Scale (Mayer and McPherson Frantz 2004 ), already exists. However, this only addresses a small part of the story, and related work is generally not linked to sustainability outcomes across individual, collective, and system levels. Other ways to study changes in relationships and their link to sustainability outcomes have been tested, for instance, in the context of leadership training for the European Commission, the UNDP Conscious Food Systems Alliance, and the Inner Development Goals (IDG) initiative (Janss et al. 2023 ; Jordan 2021 ; Ramstetter et al. 2023 ; Rupprecht and Wamsler 2023 ; Wamsler et al. 2024 ). Based on the inner–outer transformation model, the change in the relationship to self, others, nature, and the world at large is here applied as a proxy for inner–outer transformation and associated sustainability outcomes (Wamsler et al. 2021 ). Research is needed to further assess related aspects, for instance to account for intergenerational trauma and power dynamics, and identify whether the latter might be transactional or a means-in-itself, as transactional relationships often lead to overexploitation and injustice (Rosa 2019 ).

To conclude, we must dare to question our questions, and dare to ask new questions—relational, existential questions about our identity, our role, and our responsibility in the world in more reflexive and thus transformative ways. It is about developing sustainability and regeneration as a capacity, and as a foundation for pursuing research not as only a form of ‘about-ing’ and ‘enact-ing’, but also as a ‘within-ing’ and thus ‘be-ing’. The suggested guiding questions may appear to be small, individual acts. However, these small choices can have profound impacts, as they can help to initiate deeper changes, to let go of mental habits, decolonize our minds, and, ultimately, challenge the cultural, institutional, and political landscape that maintains the story of separation of humans and nature, and the story of human dominance and superiority over the “living” that underlies both our current research approaches and today’s sustainability crises.

Paradigms shape our ways of knowing, being, and acting in the world (Walsh et al. 2020 ) and can thus be both a critical barrier and driver for sustainability. They not only influence us personally (i.e., our motivation, values, attitudes, and psychological makeup), but also shape our systems (social, economic, political, technical, ecological) and cultural associations (i.e., narrative frames and cultural norms) (Escobar 2017 ; Lakoff 2014 ; Orr 2002 ; Wahl 2017 ). Paradigms represent the dominant thought patterns in societies, and thus underlie the theories and methods we use in science (O’Brien 2016 ; Walsh et al. 2020 ). This is also true for sustainability, climate science, and any other related field (Kuhn 1996 ). As a result, they hold significant potential as catalysts for transforming systems (Meadows 1999 ).

In the context of research, related norms are characterized by rationalism, reductionism, empiricism, dualism, and determinism (Redclift and Sage 1994 ; Rees 1999 ; Capra and Luisi 2014 ; Böhme et al. 2022 ).

Despite a rich discourse on relationality, there is no single, comprehensive definition of a relational paradigm. It can rather be seen as an umbrella term that encompasses various strands of thoughts (Walsh et al. 2020 ), as presented in our article.

Transformation literacy is the skill to steward transformative change collectively across the boundaries of institutions, nations, sectors, and cultures (Künkel and Ragnarsdottir 2022 ).

Our work draws heavily on a literature review that explores relational ontologies, epistemologies, and ethics by Walsh et al. ( 2020 ). We also included recent research papers that specifically address sustainability science and relational perspectives. Examples include Hertz et al. ( 2020 ) and Mancilla Garcia et al. ( 2020 ), who look at socio-ecological systems research from a process-relational perspective, and West et al. ( 2020 ), who look at the relational turn in sustainability science in general. These key sources led us to further papers dealing with the relational research approaches relevant for our review.

According to integral theory (Wilber 2021 ), there are two dimensions of reality: an internally versus externally experienced dimension; and an individually versus collectively experienced dimension. Combining these two dimensions yields four domains of human experience, or ways of generating knowledge about the world. These four dimensions involve: (1) ‘it’—knowledge of exterior and individual phenomena; (2) ‘they’—knowledge of exterior and collective phenomena and their interactions; 3) ‘we’—knowledge of internal and collective phenomena and their interactions’ and 4) ‘I’—knowledge of internal and individual phenomena and experiences (Esbjörn-Hargens 2010 ). In sustainability science, the fourth dimension—‘I’— and the in-depth assessment of the relationship between the different dimensions has been largely neglected (Ives et al. 2019 , 2023 ).

For a philosophical theory to be valid, it must be internally consistent within its self-referential axioms and core assumptions. Philosophy makes reasoned arguments based on systems of logic, while science is focused on the systematic collection of evidence (Esbjörn-Hargens 2010 ).

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Acknowledgements

This article is a co-creation, encompassing the more-than-human-world, along with our cultural heritage and predecessors who have formed our knowledge and understanding, and the cultural and technological tools such as networks and laptops and people involved in their development.

The research was supported by the Existential Resilience project funded by Lund University and two projects funded by the Swedish Research Council Formas: (1) Mind4Change (grant number 2019-00390; full title: Agents of Change: Mind, Cognitive Bias and Decision-Making in a Context of Social and Climate Change), and (2) TransVision (grant number 2019-01969; full title: Transition Visions: Coupling Society, Well-being and Energy Systems for Transitioning to a Fossil-free Society).

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The Big AI Risk Not Enough People Are Seeing

Beware technology that makes us less human.

“Our focus with AI is to help create more healthy and equitable relationships.” Whitney Wolfe Herd, the founder and executive chair of the dating app Bumble, leans in toward her Bloomberg Live interviewer. “How can we actually teach you how to date?”

When her interviewer, apparently bemused, asks for an example of what this means, Herd launches into a mind-bending disquisition on the future of AI-abetted dating: “Okay, so for example, you could in the near future be talking to your AI dating concierge, and you could share your insecurities. ‘I just came out of a breakup. I have commitment issues.’ And it could help you train yourself into a better way of thinking about yourself. And then it could give you productive tips for communicating with other people. If you want to get really out there, there is a world where your dating concierge could go and date for you with other dating concierges.” When her audience lets out a peal of uneasy laughter, the CEO continues undeterred, heart-shape earrings bouncing with each sweep of her hands. “No, no, truly. And then you don’t have to talk to 600 people. It will then scan all of San Francisco for you and say, These are the three people you really ought to meet. ”

What Herd provides here is much more than a darkly whimsical peek into a dystopian future of online dating. It’s a window into a future in which people require layer upon layer of algorithmic mediation between them in order to carry out the most basic of human interactions: those involving romance, sex, friendship, comfort, food. Implicit in Herd’s proclamation—that her app will “ teach you how to date”—is the assumption that AI will soon understand proper human behavior in ways that human beings do not. Despite Herd’s insistence that such a service would empower us, what she’s actually describing is the replacement of human courtship rituals: Your digital proxy will go on innumerable dates for you, so you don’t have to practice anything so pesky as flirting and socializing.

Read: America is sick of swiping

Hypothetical AI dating concierges sound silly, and they are not exactly humanity’s greatest threat. But we might do well to think of the Bumble founder’s bubbly sales pitch as a canary in the coal mine, a harbinger of a world of algorithms that leave people struggling to be people without assistance. The new AI products coming to market are gate-crashing spheres of activity that were previously the sole province of human beings. Responding to these often disturbing developments requires a principled way of disentangling uses of AI that are legitimately beneficial and prosocial from those that threaten to atrophy our life skills and independence. And that requires us to have a clear idea of what makes human beings human in the first place.

In 1977, Ivan Illich, an Austrian-born philosopher, vagabond priest , and ruthless critic of metastatic bureaucracies, declared that we had entered “the age of Disabling Professions.” Modernity was characterized, in Illich’s view, by the standardization and professionalization of everyday life. Activities that were once understood to be within the competencies of laypeople—say, raising children or bandaging the wounded—were suddenly brought under the purview of technical experts who claimed to possess “secret knowledge,” bestowed by training and elite education, that was beyond the ken of the untutored masses. The licensed physician displaced the local healer. Child psychologists and their “cutting edge” research superseded parents and their instincts. Data-grubbing nutritionists replaced the culinary wisdom of grandmothers.

Illich’s singular insight was that the march of professional reason—the transformation of Western civilization into a technocratic enterprise ruled by what we now call “best practices”—promised to empower us but actually made us incompetent, dependent on certified experts to make decisions that were once the jurisdiction of the common man. “In any area where a human need can be imagined,” Illich wrote , “these new professions, dominant, authoritative, monopolistic, legalized—and, at the same time, debilitating and effectively disabling the individual—have become exclusive experts of the public good.” Modern professions inculcate the belief not only that their credentialed representatives can solve your problems for you, but also that you are incapable of solving said problems for yourself. In the case of some industries, like medicine, this is plainly a positive development. Other examples, like the ballooning wellness industry, are far more dubious.

If the entrenchment of specialists in science, schooling, child-rearing, and so on is among the pivotal developments of the 20th century, the rise of online dating is among the most significant of the 21st. But one key difference between this more recent advancement and those of yesteryear is that websites such as Tinder and Hinge are defined not by disabling professionals with fancy degrees, but by disabling algorithms . The white-coated expert has been replaced by digital services that cut out the human middleman and replace him with an (allegedly) even smarter machine, one that promises to know you better than you know yourself.

Faith Hill: ‘Nostalgia for a dating experience they’ve never had’

And it’s not just dating apps. Supposed innovations including machine-learning-enhanced meal-kit companies such as HelloFresh, Spotify recommendations, and ChatGPT suggest that we have entered the Age of Disabling Algorithms as tech companies simultaneously sell us on our existing anxieties and help nurture new ones. At the heart of it all is the kind of AI bait-and-switch peddled by the Bumble CEO. Algorithms are now tooled to help you develop basic life skills that decades ago might have been taken as a given: How to date. How to cook a meal. How to appreciate new music. How to write and reflect. Like an episode out of Black Mirror , the machines have arrived to teach us how to be human even as they strip us of our humanity. We have reason to be worried.

As conversations over the dangers of artificial intelligence have heated up over the past 18 months—largely thanks to the meteoric rise of large language models like ChatGPT—the focus of both the media and Silicon Valley has been on Skynet scenarios. The primary fear is that chat models may experience an “intelligence explosion” as they are scaled up, meaning that LLMs might proceed rapidly from artificial intelligence to artificial general intelligence to artificial superintelligence (ASI) that is both smarter and more powerful than even the smartest human beings. This is often called the “fast takeoff” scenario, and the concern is that if ASI slips out of humanity’s control—and how could it not—it might choose to wipe out our species, or even enslave us.

These AI “existential risk” debates—at least the ones being waged in public —have taken on a zero-sum quality: They are almost exclusively between those who believe that the aforementioned Terminator-style dangers are real, and others who believe that these are Hollywood-esque fantasies that distract the public from more sublunar AI-related problems, like algorithmic discrimination , autonomous weapons systems , or ChatGPT-facilitated cheating . But this is a false binary, one that excludes another possibility: Artificial intelligence could significantly diminish humanity, even if machines never ascend to superintelligence, by sapping the ability of human beings to do human things.

The epochal impact of online dating is there for all to see in a simple line graph from a 2019 study . It shows the explosive growth of online dating since 1995, the year that Match.com, the world’s first online-dating site, was launched . That year, only 2 percent of heterosexual couples reported meeting online. By 2017, that figure had jumped to 39 percent as other ways of meeting—through friends or family, at work or in church—declined precipitously.

Besides online dating, the only way of meeting that increased during this period was meeting at a bar or restaurant. However, the authors of the study noted that this ostensible increase was a mirage: The “apparent post-2010 rise in meeting through bars and restaurants for heterosexual couples is due entirely to couples who met online and subsequently had a first in-person meeting at a bar or restaurant or other establishment where people gather and socialize. If we exclude the couples who first met online from the bar/restaurant category, the bar/restaurant category was significantly declining after 1995 as a venue for heterosexual couples to meet.” In other words, online dating has become hegemonic. The wingman is out. Digital matchmaking is in.

But even those selling online-dating services seem to know there’s something unsettling about the idea that algorithms, rather than human beings, are now spearheading human romance. A bizarre Tinder ad from last fall featured the rapper Coi Leray playing the role of Cupid, perched on an ominously pink stage, tasked with finding a date for a young woman. A coterie of associates, dressed in Hunger Games chic, grilled a series of potential suitors as Cupid swiped left until the perfect match was found. These characters put human faces on an inhuman process.

Leif Weatherby, an expert on the history of AI development and the author of a forthcoming book on large language models, told me that ads like this are a neat distillation of Silicon Valley’s marketing playbook. “We’re seeing a general trend of selling AI as ‘empowering,’ a way to extend your ability to do something, whether that’s writing, making investments, or dating,” Weatherby explained. “But what really happens is that we become so reliant on algorithmic decisions that we lose oversight over our own thought processes and even social relationships. The rhetoric of AI empowerment is sheep’s clothing for Silicon Valley wolves who are deliberately nurturing the public’s dependence on their platforms.” Curtailing human independence, then, is not a bug, but a feature of the AI gold rush.

Of course, there is an extent to which this nurtured dependence isn’t unique to AI, but is an inevitable by-product of innovation. The broad uptake of any new technology generally atrophies the human skills for the processes that said technology makes more efficient or replaces outright. The advent of the vacuum was no doubt accompanied by a corresponding decline in the average American’s deftness with a broom. The difference between technologies of convenience, like the vacuum or the washing machine, and platforms like Tinder or ChatGPT is that the latter are concerned with atrophying competencies, like romantic socializing or thinking and reflection, that are fundamental to what it is to be a human being.

Read: AI has lost its magic

The response to our algorithmically remade world can’t simply be that algorithms are bad, sensu stricto. Such a stance isn’t just untenable at a practical level—algorithms aren’t going anywhere—but it also undermines unimpeachably positive use cases, such as the employment of AI in cancer diagnosis . Instead, we need to adopt a more sophisticated approach to artificial intelligence, one that allows us to distinguish between uses of AI that legitimately empower human beings and those—like hypothetical AI dating concierges—that wrest core human activities from human control. But making these distinctions requires us to re-embrace an old idea that tends to leave those of us on the left rather squeamish: human nature.

Both Western intellectuals and the progressive public tend to be hostile to the idea that there is a universal “human nature,” a phrase that now has right-wing echoes . Instead, those on the left prefer to emphasize the diversity, and equality, of varying human cultural traditions. But this discomfort with adopting a strong definition of human nature compromises our ability to draw red lines in a world where AI encroaches on human territory. If human nature doesn’t exist, and if there is no core set of fundamental human activities, desires, or traits, on what basis can we argue against the outsourcing of those once-human endeavors to machines? We can’t take a stand against the infiltration of algorithms into the human estate if we don’t have a well-developed sense of which activities make humans human , and which activities—like sweeping the floor or detecting pancreatic cancer —can be outsourced to nonhuman surrogates without diminishing our agency.

One potential way out of this impasse is offered by the so-called capability approach to human flourishing developed by the philosopher Martha Nussbaum and others. In rejection of the kind of knee-jerk cultural relativism that often prevails in progressive political thought, Nussbaum’s work insists that advocating for the poor or marginalized, at home or abroad, requires us to agree on universal “basic human capabilities” that citizens should be able to develop. Nussbaum includes among these basic capabilities “being able to imagine, to think, and to reason” and “to engage in various forms of familial and social interaction.” A good society, according to the capability approach, is one in which human beings are not just theoretically free to engage in these basic human endeavors, but are actually capable of doing so.

As AI is built into an ever-expanding roster of products and services, covering dating, essay writing, and music and recipe recommendations, we need to be able to make granular, rational decisions about which uses of artificial intelligence expand our basic human capabilities, and which cultivate incompetence and incapacity under the guise of empowerment. Disabling algorithms are disabling precisely because they leave us less capable of, and more anxious about, carrying out essential human behaviors.

Of course, some will object to the idea that there is any such thing as fundamental human activities. They may even argue that describing behaviors like dating and making friends, critical thinking, or cooking as central to the human condition is ableist or otherwise bigoted. After all, some people are asexual or introverted. Others with mental disabilities might not be adept at reflection, or written or oral communication. Some folks simply do not want to cook, an activity which is historically gendered besides. But this objection relies on a sleight of hand. Identifying certain activities as fundamental to the human enterprise does not require you to believe that those who don’t or can’t engage in them are inhuman, just as embracing the idea that the human species is bipedal does not require you to believe that people born without legs lack full personhood. It only asks that you acknowledge that there are some endeavors that are vital aspects of the human condition, taken in the aggregate, and that a society where people broadly lack these capacities is not a good one.

Without some minimal agreement as to what those basic human capabilities are—what activities belong to the jurisdiction of our species, not to be usurped by machines—it becomes difficult to pin down why some uses of artificial intelligence delight and excite, while others leave many of us feeling queasy.

What makes many applications of artificial intelligence so disturbing is that they don’t expand our mind’s capacity to think, but outsource it. AI dating concierges would not enhance our ability to make romantic connections with other humans, but obviate it. In this case, technology diminishes us, and that diminishment may well become permanent if left unchecked. Over the long term, human beings in a world suffused with AI-enablers will likely prove less capable of engaging in fundamental human activities: analyzing ideas and communicating them, forging spontaneous connections with others, and the like. While this may not be the terrifying, robot-warring future imagined by the Terminator movies, it would represent another kind of existential catastrophe for humanity.

Whether or not the Bumble founder’s dream of artificial-intelligence-induced dalliances ever comes to fruition is an open question, but it is also somewhat beside the point. What should give us real pause is the understanding of AI, now ubiquitous in Big Tech, that underlies her dystopian prognostications. Silicon Valley leaders have helped make a world in which people feel that everyday social interactions, whether dating or making simple phone calls, require expert advice and algorithmic assistance. AI threatens to turbocharge this process. Even if your personalized dating concierge is not here yet, the sales pitch for them has already arrived, and that sales pitch is almost as dangerous as the technology itself: AI will teach you how to be a human.

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No reason to be cynical about celebrity conversions, Bishop Barron and others say

May 27, 2024 Catholic News Agency News Briefs 1 Print

Ann Arbor, Michigan, May 27, 2024 / 06:00 am (CNA).

The phenomenon of celebrity conversions to the faith has taken center stage, especially on social media, and they have been widely welcomed by prominent Catholic clergy and commentators.

Going viral on X (formerly Twitter), Instagram, Facebook, and other platforms has been news about popular actors and political activists, among others, who have joined the Catholic faith or otherwise announced their conversions to Christianity.

Their ranks include actor Shia LaBeouf, who was raised by a Jewish mother but entered the Catholic Church in 2023 and was confirmed by Bishop Robert Barron. LaBeouf, 37, played the title character in “ Padre Pio ,” the 2022 movie about the famed Italian friar who received the stigmata. Political commentator and media personality Candace Owens, 35, who has recently faced accusations of antisemitism, also announced last month on X that she had “ come home ” to the Catholic Church.

The phenomenon has not been limited to well-known Americans such as LaBeouf and Owens. They also include Dutch lawyer and activist Eva Vlaardingerbroek , 27, who has termed the Catholic faith as the “most powerful weapon” to allay moral relativism, and 48-year-old British actor Russell Brand.

As Vlaardingerbroek became involved in politics in her native Netherlands, she said in an April 2023 interview with National Catholic Register, CNA’s sister news partner: “I wholeheartedly realized that we aren’t just fighting a political fight (right vs. left), but that we are dealing with a spiritual fight (good vs. evil).” She cited Professor Peter Kreeft among those who inspired her in her conversion.

In the case of Brand, he announced on social media that he was baptized in England’s River Thames on April 28, sharing a photograph of his baptism , where he was accompanied by media personality and evangelical Christian Bear Grylls . He did not reveal who baptized him. Catholics and Orthodox Christians are typically not baptized in bodies of water such as rivers. According to canon law, “apart from a case of necessity, the proper place of baptism is a church or oratory.”

The news of Brand’s conversion was also met with controversy because it came just months after he was accused of rape and sexual assault by several women in reports filed by British media. Brand denied the accusations during an interview with U.S. media personality Tucker Carlson.

In a recent video, Brand was seen praying the rosary , saying that it had been given to him by his friend “Joe,” who also taught him the prayers. Brand’s wife of six years, author Laura Gallacher , is a Catholic. Along with fellow actors Mark Wahlberg and Jonathan Roumie , Brand has promoted the Catholic prayer app Hallow. He has also said that he has watched videos by Catholic priest Father Mike Schmitz.

Brand said he was “changed, transitioned” by the baptism but realizes that some observers may be cynical about his profession of faith because “people see me as a celebrity.”

CNA reached out to several Catholic observers of the phenomenon, themselves prominent in social and other media, for their take. Bishop Robert Barron, founder of Word on Fire and one of the most-followed Catholics on social media, told CNA that when he heard of Brand’s conversion and baptism, he was reminded of the parable of the lost sheep in the Gospel of Luke, in which Christ concluded “there is more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than 90 righteous persons who need no repentance.”

Noting that Brand is a public figure, Barron said that it is “not really shocking that his conversion is a public matter, and given, again in Brand’s own words ‘for someone like me associated with a decadent, hedonistic lifestyle, a move like this is surprising.’”

Barron went on to say: “I would add for some, it is also unsettling because it reminds us that Christ himself revealed that his primary mission is the reconciliation of sinners, and as such this is the mission of Christ’s followers as well. The Church is not a closed society for the perfectly virtuous, but it is instead a refuge for sinners.”

Barron said he found Brand’s explanation for religious awakening to be “striking,” quoting the Englishman’s statement that “‘the figure, the personage, the presence of Christ became overwhelming, unavoidable, welcome, and necessary.’ This apparent quickening of faith in the Lord Jesus compelled him to seek baptism.”

“Many Christians will recognize in Brand’s testimony a similar experience,” Barron said. “But they will also see in Brand’s acknowledgement of his own continued imperfections the truth that we are all sinners who are the recipients of an amazing, undeserved grace.”

In an interview with CNA, Monsignor Charles Pope — a priest of the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C., and regular contributor to the National Catholic Register — said: “We shouldn’t be cynical. Sometimes when negative things happen in their lives, that’s when they turn to God. So I would first assume good faith on their part.”

As to the reason for the uptick in the number of prominent figures joining the Catholic Church, Pope said: “I think it comes down to the current situation in the world today that is spiritually empty. People are searching for meaning because man is a religious animal. Some are returning to the sources that we hold most sacred. I think that’s where it comes from.”

Pope added: “After a while, after all the faddishness, movements, and things coming and going, people begin to say, ‘Well, things seem to change every six months. Why don’t I stick to  something more stable’ as they look for deeper meaning. That’s how I understand these kinds of conversions. For all our troubles in the Church, we have a solid base of meaning.”

Meanwhile, Rob Corzine, vice president of academic programs at the St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology and host of EWTN’s “ Genesis to Jesus ” with Dr. Scott Hahn, offered a nuanced analysis. “There are two dangers to beware of. First, some are inclined to be cynical about celebrities’ sincerity. We should avoid that and rejoice over the conversions of the famous just as we would anyone else,” Corzine said.

“However, the second trap is to rush a brand-new convert onto a stage and try to make them a spokesperson for the faith, to exploit their platform or access to media. That too we must avoid,” Corzine cautioned. “There is always a great deal of learning and growing to do for new Catholics. In the public eye is not really the best place for that.”

Brand himself seemed to echo Corzine when he said: “This is new for me. I’m learning. And I will make mistakes. But this is my path now. And I already feel incredibly blessed.”

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Vatican confirms Pope Francis will visit Slovakia in September

Vatican City, Jul 4, 2021 / 06:05 am (CNA).

The Vatican confirmed Sunday that Pope Francis will travel to Hungary and Slovakia in September.

The pope will visit Budapest on Sept. 12 for the concluding Mass of the 52nd International Eucharistic Congress. He will then travel to the Slovakian cities of Bratislava, Prešov, Košice and Šaštin from Sept. 12 to 15.

The trip was confirmed July 4 by the director of the Holy See Press Office, Matteo Bruni, who said details about the pope’s program in Slovakia will be published at a later date.

Pope Francis himself announced his trip to Slovakia after his noon Angelus address: “I am pleased to announce that from 12 to 15 September next, God willing, I will go to Slovakia to make a pastoral visit,” he said from a window overlooking St. Peter’s Square.

Pilgrims from Slovakia present in the square responded to the announcement with cheers, and the pope noted their presence. “The Slovaks are happy there!” he said.

“I sincerely thank all those who are preparing this journey and I pray for them,” Francis said. “Let’s all pray for this trip and for the people who are working to organize it.”

In his Angelus address July 4, Pope Francis reflected on “the comfort of habit and the dictatorship of prejudice,” which prevents us from really knowing Jesus and the people around us.

His exegesis centered on the day’s Gospel reading from St. Mark. In the passage, Jesus preaches in the synagogue in Nazareth, but his fellow villagers react by asking themselves: “What kind of wisdom has been given him? What mighty deeds are wrought by his hands! Is he not the carpenter, the son of Mary, and the brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon?”

“We could say that they know Jesus, but they do not recognize him,” the pope said. They “have known him for 30 years and think they know everything.”

“In reality, they never realized who Jesus really is,” he said.

Francis noted that the same thing can happen in our own lives with the people around us: we see someone in our neighborhood, meet them occasionally, but “it is an ordinary, superficial knowledge that does not recognize the uniqueness of that person.”

“It is a risk that we all run: we think we know a lot about a person, and the worst is that we label them and shut them up in our prejudices,” he said.

“And here we get to the very heart of the problem,” Pope Francis continued, “when we make the comfort of habit and the dictatorship of prejudice prevail, it is difficult to open up to novelty and be surprised.”

He encouraged Catholics to foster amazement in their faith life.

“Without amazement, faith becomes a tired litany that slowly dies out and becomes a habit,” he said. “What is it, amazement? Amazement is precisely when the encounter with God happens.”

God became incarnate and he draws near to us in the normal activities of our lives, Francis said.

“And then, it happens to us as to the fellow villagers of Jesus, we risk that, when he passes by, we do not recognize him.”

“Now, in prayer, let us ask the Madonna, who welcomed the mystery of God in her daily life in Nazareth, for eyes and hearts free of prejudices and to have eyes open to be amazed: ‘Lord, that we might meet you.’”

“We meet him in the normal: eyes open to God’s surprises, at his humble and hidden presence in daily life,” he concluded.

Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. flip-flops on abortion

null / Shutterstock

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Aug 14, 2023 / 12:25 pm (CNA). Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. flip-flopped on abortion this weekend, first stating that he would support a 3-month federal abortion ban, but… […]

Georgia bill would make ‘transgender treatment’ for minors a felony

Atlanta, Ga., Nov 1, 2019 / 04:00 pm (CNA).- A state representative in Georgia has proposed a law that would make it a felony for medical professionals to assist in changing a minor’s gender either through surgery or medication. 

Rep. … […]

Cynicism can be attributed to Freudian conversion envy, persons who are not at peace with themselves, who lack the integrity to accept faith in Christ’s revelation to the world. The world’s glitter and sensual offerings have a strong hold on the masses, even those who can’t afford or have the wherewithal to indulge it, but crave it via the media and the virtual. The Prince of this world is a master impresario.

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UGC NET 2024: UGC NET 2024 Paper 1 and Paper 2 Syllabus; Download UGC NET 2024 Syllabus in PDF

The University Grants Commission (UGC) has released the UGC NET 2024 syllabus for Paper 1 and Paper 2.

Paper 1 and Paper 2 Syllabus of UGC NET 2024

Khushi Vishwakarma | May 25, 2024 |

UGC NET 2024: The University Grants Commission (UGC) has released the UGC NET 2024 syllabus for Paper 1 and Paper 2 . Candidates who are interested in applying for the June 2024 session through the UGC NET Application Form need to be familiar with the comprehensive syllabus. For the December 2023 session, around 9.45 lakh candidates registered for the exam but only 6.55 Lakh candidates appeared in the examination. There are 02 papers on the exam: Paper 1 and Paper 2. Paper 2 is subject to the candidates’ choice of subject, whereas Paper 1 is required of all candidates.

The students are required to select from 83 different UGC NET disciplines. In Indian universities and colleges, the UGC NET exam is administered twice a year to determine a candidate’s eligibility for Assistant Professor positions or for both Assistant Professor and Junior Research Fellowship (JRF) roles. Before starting their preparation, candidates should familiarize themselves with the updated syllabus and exam format.

UGC NET Syllabus 2024:

Ugc net 2024 syllabus of paper 1:, ugc net 2024 paper 1 syllabus 2024 subject-wise:, ugc net 2024 paper 2 syllabus pdf:, ugc net political science syllabus:, ugc net law syllabus:, ugc net exam pattern:.

The UGC NET exam is administered twice a year to determine a candidate’s eligibility for Assistant Professor posts or for both Assistant Professor and Junior Research Fellowship (JRF) responsibilities in Indian universities and colleges . Many thousands of applicants take the examination, but very few are successful in passing it. Just 6.55 lakh of the 9.45 lakh applicants who enrolled for the exam for the December 2023 session actually appeared in the exam.

Having accurate knowledge of the most recent syllabus and exam format is essential for exam success . The comprehensive UGC NET Syllabus for Papers 1 and 2 for the exam is scheduled for 16.06.2024.

The General Paper on Teaching and Research Aptitude is included in UGC NET Paper 1. All applicants must answer all 50 multiple-choice questions correctly . There are two marks assigned to each question, for a total weightage of 100 marks. 10 subjects are included in Paper 1. The list of subjects is mentioned below-

All candidates must pass Paper 1, which is valued at 100 marks . The exam gives the board the opportunity to evaluate candidates’ research and teaching abilities, cognitive ability, and overall comprehension of teaching and learning strategies used in higher education systems. The UGC NET Paper 1 Syllabus consists of 10 units in total, with additional subtopics. The UGC NET Paper 1 Syllabus for each unit is listed here.

Unit-I: Teaching Aptitude Syllabus

• Teaching: Concept, Objectives, Levels of teaching (Memory, Understanding and Reflection), Characteristics and basic requirements.
• Learner’s characteristics: Characteristics of adolescent and adult learners (Academic, Social, Emotional and Cognitive), Individual differences.
• Factors affecting teaching related to Teacher, Learner, Support material, Instructional facilities, Learning environment and Institution.
• Methods of teaching in Institutions of higher learning: Teacher-centred vs. Learner-centred methods; offline vs. Online methods (Swayam, Swayamprabha, MOOCs etc.).
• Teaching Support System: Traditional, Modern and ICT-based.
• Evaluation Systems: Elements and Types of evaluation, Evaluation in Choice Based Credit System in Higher education, Computer-based testing, Innovations in evaluation systems.

Unit-II: Research Aptitude Syllabus

• Research: Meaning, Types, and Characteristics, Positivism and Postpositivistic approach to research.
• Methods of Research: ExperimeUGCl, Descriptive, Historical, Qualitative and Quantitative Methods, Steps of Research.
• Thesis and Article writing: Format and styles of referencing.
• Application of ICT in research.
• Research ethics.

Unit-III Comprehension Syllabus

• A passage of text is given. Questions are asked from the passage to be answered.

Unit-IV: Communication

• Communication: Meaning, types and characteristics of communication.
• Effective communication: Verbal and Non-verbal, Inter-Cultural and group communications, Classroom communication.
• Barriers to effective communication.
• Mass-Media and Society.
• Unit-V: Mathematical Reasoning and Aptitude Syllabus
• Types of reasoning.
• Number series, Letter series, Codes and Relationships.
• Mathematical Aptitude (Fraction, Time & Distance, Ratio, Proportion and PerceUGCge, Profit and Loss, Interest and Discounting, Averages etc.).

Unit-VI: Logical Reasoning Syllabus

• Understanding the structure of arguments: argument forms, the structure of categorical propositions, Mood and Figure, Formal and Informal fallacies, Uses of language, Connotations and denotations of terms and Classical square of opposition.
• Evaluating and distinguishing deductive and inductive reasoning.
• Venn diagram: Simple and multiple uses for establishing the validity of arguments.
• Indian Logic: Means of knowledge.
• Pramanas: Pratyaksha (Perception), Anumana (Inference), Upamana (Comparison), Shabda (Verbal testimony), Arthapatti (Implication) and Anupalabddhi (Non-apprehension).
• Structure and kinds of Anumana (inference), Vyapti (invariable relation), Hetvabhasas (fallacies of inference).

Unit-VII: Data Interpretation Syllabus

• Sources, acquisition and classification of Data.
• Quantitative and Qualitative Data.
• Graphical representation (Bar-chart, Histograms, Pie-chart, Table-chart and Line-chart) and mapping of Data.
• Data Interpretation.
• Data and Governance.

Unit-VIII: Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Syllabus

• ICT: General abbreviations and terminology.
• Basics of the Internet, Intranet, E-mail, Audio and Video-conferencing.
• Digital initiatives in higher education.
• ICT and Governance.

Unit-IX: People, Development and Environment Syllabus

• Development and environment: Millennium development and Sustainable development goals.
• Human and environment interaction: Anthropogenic activities and their impacts on the environment.
• Environmental issues: Local, Regional and Global; Air pollution, Water pollution, Soil pollution, Noise pollution, Waste (solid, liquid, biomedical, hazardous, electronic), Climate change and its Socio-Economic and Political dimensions.
• Impacts of pollutants on human health.
• Natural and energy resources: Solar, Wind, Soil, Hydro, Geothermal, Biomass, Nuclear and Forests.
• Natural hazards and disasters: Mitigation strategies.
• Environment Protection Act (1986), National Action Plan on Climate Change, International agreements/efforts -Montreal Protocol, Rio Summit, Convention on Biodiversity, Kyoto Protocol, Paris Agreement, International Solar Alliance.

Unit-X: Higher Education System Syllabus

• Institutions of higher learning and education in ancient India.
• Evolution of higher learning and research in post-independence India.
• OrieUGCl, Conventional and Non-conventional learning programmes in India.
• Professional, Technical and Skill-Based education.
• Value education and environmental education.
• Policies, Governance, and Administration.

There are 83 subjects in UGC NET Paper 2. The discipline subject matter that the candidate completed their master’s degree in should be chosen. They must choose a related subject if their preferred topic isn’t on the list. The candidates can download the syllabus PDF of UGC NET Paper 2 in Hindi and English language from the official website at ugcnetonline.in/syllabus-new.php.

Applicants who selected Political Science as their subject for UGC NET Paper 2 and completed their master’s degree in this field must have a thorough comprehension of the syllabus.

Unit 1: Political Theory

• Political Traditions
• Conservatism
• Multiculturalism
• Postmodernism

Unit 2: Political Thought

• Confucius, Plato, Aristotle, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Hegel, Mary Wollstonecraft, John Stuart Mill, Karl Marx, Gramsci, Hannah Arendt, Frantz
• Fanon, Mao Zedong, John Rawls

There are up to 10 units included in the UGC NET Political Science Syllabus. Candidates can download the political science syllabus PDF to find the detailed curriculum.

Candidates gearing up for the UGC NET Law examination should thoroughly review the syllabus to devise an effective study plan . The subject code for UGC NET Law is 58, encompassing a syllabus consisting of 10 units.

UNIT – I: Jurisprudence

• Nature and sources of law
• Schools of jurisprudence
• Law and morality
• Concept of rights and duties
• Legal personality
• Concepts of property, ownership, and possession
• Concept of liability
• Law, poverty, and development
• Global justice
• Modernism and post-modernism

UNIT – II: Constitutional And Administrative Law

• Preamble, fundamental rights and duties, directive principles of state
• Union and State executive and their Interrelationship
• Union and State legislature and distribution of legislative powers
• Emergency provisions
• Temporary, transitional and special provisions in respect of certain states
• Election Commission of India
• Nature, scope and importance of administrative law
• Principle of natural justice
• Judicial review of administrative actions

UNIT – III: Public International Law And IHL

• International law – Definition, nature and basis
• Sources of International Law
• Recognition of states and governments
• Nationality, immigrants, refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs)
• Extradition and asylum
• United Nations and its organs
• Settlement of international disputes
• World Trade Organization (WTO)
• International humanitarian law (IHL) – Conventions and protocols
• ImplemeUGCtion of IHL – Challenges

UNIT – IV: Law of Crimes

• General principles of criminal liability – Actus reus and mens rea, individual and group liability and constructive liability
• Stages of crime and inchoate crimes – Abetment, criminal conspiracy and attempt
• General exceptions
• Offences against the human body
• Offences against state and terrorism
• Offences against property
• Offences against women and children
• Drug trafficking and counterfeiting
• Offences against public tranquillity
• Theories and kinds of punishments, compensation to the victims of crime

UNIT – V: Law of Torts And Consumer Protection

• Nature and definition of tort
• General principles of tortious liability
• General defences
• Specific torts – Negligence, nuisance, trespass and defamation
• Remoteness of damages
• Strict and absolute liability
• Tortious liability of the State
• The Consumer Protection Act 1986 – Definitions, consumer rights and redressal mechanism
• The Motor Vehicles Act, 1988 – No fault liability, third party insurance and claims tribunal
• The Competition Act, 2002 – Prohibition of certain agreements, abuse of dominant position and regulation of combinations

UNIT – VI: Commercial Law

• Essential elements of contract and e-contract
• Breach of contract, frustration of contract, void and voidable agreements
• Standard form of contract and quasi-contract
• Specific contracts – Bailment, pledge, indemnity, guarantee and agency
• Sale of Goods Act, 1930
• Partnership and limited liability partnership
• Negotiable Instruments Act, 1881
• Company law – Incorporation of a company, prospectus, shares and debentures
• Company law – Directors and meetings
• Corporate social responsibility

UNIT-VII: Family Law

• Sources and schools
• Marriage and dissolution of marriage
• Matrimonial remedies – Divorce and theories of divorce
• Changing dimensions of the institution of marriage – Live-in relationship
• Recognition of foreign decrees in India on marriage and divorce
• Maintenance, dower and stridhan
• Adoption, guardianship and acknowledgement
• Succession and inheritance
• Will, gift and wakf
• Uniform Civil Code

UNIT –VIII: Environment And Human Rights Law

• Meaning and concept of ‘environment’ and ‘environmental pollution’
• International environmental law and UN Conferences
• Constitutional and legal framework for the protection of the environment in India
• EnvironmeUGCl Impact Assessment and control of hazardous waste in India
• National Green Tribunal
• Concept and development of human rights
• Universalism and cultural relativism
• International Bill of Rights
• Group rights – Women, children, persons with disabilities, elderly persons, minorities and weaker sections
• Protection and enforcement of human rights in India – National Human Rights Commission, National Commission for Minorities, National Commission for Women, National Commission for Scheduled Castes, National Commission for Schedule Tribes and National Commission for Backward Classes

UNIT – IX: Intellectual Property Rights And Information Technology Law

• Concept and meaning of intellectual property
• Theories of intellectual property
• International conventions pertaining to intellectual properties
• Copyright and neighbouring rights – Subject matters, limitations and exceptions, infringement and remedies
• Law of patent – PateUGCbility, procedure for grant of patent, limitations and exceptions, infringement and remedies
• Law of trademark – Registration of trademarks, kinds of trademarks, infringement and passing off, remedies
• Protection of Geographical Indications
• Biodiversity and Traditional Knowledge
• Information technology law- digital signature and electronic signature, electronic governance, electronic records and duties of subscribers
• Cyber crimes, penalties and adjudication

UNIT – X: Comparative Public Law And Systems of Governance

• Comparative Law – Relevance, methodology, problems and concerns in Comparison
• Forms of governments – Presidential and parliamentary, unitary and federal
• Models of federalism – USA, Canada and India
• Rule of Law – ‘Formal’ and ‘substantive’ versions
• Separation of powers – India, UK, USA and France
• Independence of judiciary, judicial activism and accountability – India, UK and USA
• Systems of constitutional review – India, USA, Switzerland and France
• Amendment of the Constitution – India, USA and South Africa
• Ombudsman –Sweden, UK and India
• Open Government and Right to Information – USA, UK and India

The UGC NET is managed by the University Grants Commission (UGC) in two phases: Paper 1 and Paper 2. Paper 2 is subject-specific, whereas Paper 1 is required of all candidates. The two papers are done entirely online.

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Khushi is an Experienced Content Editor experience in a variety of domains Like, Education, Results, Government Job Etc.. She is Pursing their Masters in English. At studycafe.in she writes and Review content for the Education News, Recruitment News, College section. She Can Be reached at [email protected]

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