Cultural relativism Psychohistorians also believe that the extreme cultural relativism proposed by many anthropologists is contrary to the letter and spirit of human rights 9 I realize that user Slrubenstein already brought this up at length in the childrearing article but it s still here What do you mean here Cesar The above sentence gives the impression that anthropologists propose that many anthropologists propose cultural relativism as a system of moral values or lack thereof while I can assure you that this is not true I ve done some work in the anthropology of human rights where this issue is fairly important and there as elsewhere in sociocultural anthropology the phrase cultural relativism does not mean the same thing as either you or the person you re quoting thinks it does When anthropologists talk about cultural relativism they or we if you like are talking about a research methodology the aim to understand and interpret cultural values from the POV of the culture from which they originate I m not trying to just weasel out of this this is not a moral stance For example there are people working in applied anthropology who are studying female genital mutilation from the point of view of the mothers etc who want to have it done to their children not to write apologias for it but to understand it so that it can be changed If you understand the genital mutilation is an important part of initiation rites you can take steps to try and institute other initiation practices ones that do not involve genital mutilation The core tenet of sociocultural anthropology is that to interpret meaning you have to see it from the inside Understanding does not imply acceptance R2