Week 4 - The Benefits and Drawbacks of Cultural Relativism
Due: 1pm, Thursday, September 20; must be uploaded to dropbox
In this short writing assignment, I'm asking you to use the tools of "cultural relativism" to consider one of the examples we read, watched, or talked about in the last two weeks. Taking a religious practice, kinship belief, or a gendered norm from one of these texts, write about what cultural relativism means in this context. If someone considered the practice or belief without cultural relativism, how might they interpret it? If they thought through cultural relativism, how might they interpret it? How do you think you would have interpreted it before you knew about cultural relativism? What might be lost or gained by applying cultural relativism to the analysis of the specific example you have chosen? Please make your answer at least one page long.
