Cultural relativism is a term that can be ambiguous; a few different meanings have been attached to it. The more moderate sense of the phrase, and the main one used in this essay, is that people's values ​​and practices must be understood in the context of their culture, rather than that of an outside observer. Cultural relativism also refers to the related idea of ​​"the urgency of studying and learning from other cultures", as well as the idea that a culture is not "disturbed or bad" because it is different from the culture of the observer (Rosaldo 2000, 3). In some people's usage, cultural relativism also refers to the stronger idea that nothing is bad as long as it is part of someone's culture. This form of cultural relativism has been criticized on the grounds that it leads to ethical relativism, the idea that there is no universal morality. The argument is that if one cannot judge whether a practice in another culture is good or bad, this implies that there is no objective standard of good or bad. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”?Get the original essay In his article “Headhunters and Soldiers: Separating Cultural and Ethical Relativism,” Renato Rosaldo states that relativism cultural is valuable, but that it must be separated from ethical relativism, in which he does not believe. However, the end of his article seems to express a view that is itself somewhat ethically relativist. Janice Boddy's article "The Womb as Oasis: The Symbolic Context of Pharaonic Circumcision in Rural Northern Sudan" does not mention cultural relativism by name, but it discusses similar ideas. In the article, Boddy discusses the practice of female genital cutting (FGC) in a village in northern Sudan, as well as other aspects of the village culture. The article takes a relativist approach in that it sympathetically explains FGM and its meaning in the context of the Sudanese group's culture; however, she recognizes that some people have legitimate moral concerns about the practice. Comparing these two articles leads to interesting connections. Boddy's article, more than Rosaldo's, effectively illustrates a combination of cultural relativism and non-relativistic ethics. In much of his article, Rosaldo simply describes the history of anthropologists' views on cultural relativism. He then notes that current anthropologists argue that cultural relativism and ethical relativism are different, although some earlier anthropologists have associated them. He says: “I…consider myself a cultural relativist; I would not consider myself an ethical relativist” (2000: 3), and he later clarifies that “understanding is not forgiving” (2000: 5). After that, Rosaldo talks about his experience living with a Filipino tribe called the Ilongots. They practiced headhunting, which, according to Rosaldo, “was” horrified (2000: 5). However, the Ilongots later told him that they had seen American soldiers during World War II and were horrified at the idea "that a commander could order his subordinates to stand in the line of shooting” (2000, 6). Rosaldo realized that the Ilongots' feelings toward this American practice were similar to his feelings toward their headhunting, which "really knocked him off his pedestal of moral horror." (2000: 6). He specifies that he "still doesn't think headhunting is a good idea" (2000: 6), even if his tone resemblesmore of a casual personal opinion than a serious moral statement. He ends the article with a poem he wrote about a companion of Ilongot, who had no problem with headhunting but could not accept soldiers being told to risk their lives. This is, so to speak, a “dead end” for the article; Rosaldo does not further explore the morality of either practice. His final statements are simply about how the two cultures have different moral views. This could be a strong ending if the only basis of morality was what people think about actions. However, there are moral theories that allow actions to be evaluated more objectively. If Rosaldo is truly an ethical non-relativist, he should find some value in this type of theory. For example, a common moral theory is consequentialism, in which actions are judged based on their consequences. Consequentialism is concerned with “whatever action causes” and often includes the idea that “the very purpose of morality is…to spread happiness and relieve suffering” (Haines 2015). This is about preventing “early deaths, which reduce the length of life and therefore the amount of happiness there will be” (Haines 2015). Under consequentialism, hunting heads and ordering soldiers to risk their lives seem immoral, at least to some extent, because they both cause the deaths of people who would have preferred to remain alive. (However, one could also argue that the American soldiers' goal of defeating Imperial Japan was important enough to outweigh the nefarious nature of sending some soldiers to their deaths.) So it is clearly not impossible to analyze morality of these practices on their own terms, but Rosaldo does not show much interest in doing so. He apparently concluded that since both practices seem wrong in the eyes of the other culture but acceptable in their own culture, nothing impartial can be said about the morality of either. Crucially, Rosaldo's interpretation of cultural relativism seems to prevent him from considering ethical questions in a non-relativist way. He may not consider himself an ethical relativist, but by concluding with the implication that certain practices cannot be evaluated by any universal moral standard, he displays an attitude similar to ethical relativism. Boddy's article illustrates cultural relativism; it is simply a matter of understanding how excision fits into the broader context of Sudanese village culture. Specifically, she examines how this practice relates to the villagers' lifestyle and beliefs on topics such as female fertility and the uterus. Boddy's discovery that villagers use "a cluster of interrelated idioms and metaphors" to conceptualize their lives and community (1982: 689), and that female circumcision is linked to these metaphors, fits well in the spirit of cultural relativism. His explanation goes a long way toward “making the strange familiar,” a goal of cultural relativism. Although female circumcision seems understandably strange and perhaps "barbaric" to Westerners who try to imagine it in the context of their own culture, the practice begins to make sense once the reader learns more about the system of belief of the villagers. The fact that Boddy wrote this article shows that she believes that culture must be studied, one of the “central notions” of cultural relativism according to Rosaldo (2000: 3). Boddy never implies that the village's culture is bad, and she certainly doesn't imply that its difference from Western culture makes it bad, even though she.