Cultural RelativismCultural Relativism

A Challenge to the Possibility of Ethics

Sample Situation 

Consider the Eskimos. They are a remote and inaccessible people. Numbering only about 25,000, they live in small, isolated settlements scattered mostly along the northern fringes of North America and Greenland. Until the beginning of this century, the outside world knew little about them. Then explorers began to bring back strange tales. 

Eskimo customs turned out to be very different from our own. The men often had more than one wife, and they would share their wives with guests, lending them for the night as a sign of hospitality. Moreover, within a community, a dominant male might demand--and get--regular sexual access to other men's wives. The women, however, were free to break these arrangements simply by leaving their husbands and taking up with new partners--free, that is, so long as their former husbands chose not to make trouble. All in all, the Eskimo practice was a volatile scheme that bore little resemblance to what we call marriage.

But it was not only their marriage and sexual prac-tices that were different. The Eskimos also seemed to have less regard for human life. Infanticide, for ex-ample, was common. . . . Female babies, he found, were especially liable to be destroyed, and this was permitted simply at the parents' discretion, with no social stigma attached to it. Old people also, when they became too feeble to contribute to the family, were left out in the snow to die. So there seemed to be, in this society, remarkably little respect for life. (James Rachels, The Elements of Moral Philosophy (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1986)

A more contemporary example: For eighteen months Del Monte Corporation tried to buy a 55,000-acre banana plantation in Guate-mala, but the government refused to allow the sale. Del Monte offi-cials made inquiries and asked for meetings, but nothing happened. Then they hired a "business con-sultant" for $500,000. The "consul-tant" was a wealthy businessman who frequently contributed to political parties in Guatemala.

The businessman feared that disclosure of this relationship with a large U.S. company would diminish his influence in Guatemala and perhaps even provoke left-wing threats against his life. So he demanded and received company assurances of anonymity. To further protect him, Del Monte paid him outside Guatemala. It charged his fee to general and administrative expenses on the books of several Panamanian shipping subsidiaries. His fee was entirely dependent on his ability to get the Guatemalan government to allow the sale of the plantation.

Suddenly the Guatemalan government reversed itself and permitted the sale. Now Del Monte owns the profitable banana plantation, for which it paid $20.5 million, and the "business consultant" is considerably richer.

□ Ethical Relativism Defined. Ethical relativism is the theo-ry which claims that, because different societies have differ-ent ethical beliefs, there is no rational way of determining whether an action is morally right or wrong other than by asking whether the people of this or that society believe it is morally right or wrong.

Ethical relativism is the view that there are no ethical stan-dards that are absolutely true and that apply or should be ap-plied to the companies and peo-ple of all societies. Instead, rela-tivism holds, something is right for the people or companies in one particular society if it ac-cords with their moral standards, and wrong for them if it violates their moral standards. -

Manuel G. Velasquez, Business Ethics: Concepts and Cases (New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1998), 22

■ What ethical relativism comes down to.

  Different cultures have different

mor-al codes/beliefs. What is considered right within one group may be utterly abhorrent to the members of another group. THEREFORE: What is moral is relative to a particular culture.

It would be naive and mythical to think that there is universal truth in ethics. There are no standards of mor-ality that cut across cultures. Every standard is culture-bound.

■ Challenge posed by ethical relativism (to business practice in particular) The company or the business-person who operates in several different countries and who encounters societies with many differ-ent moral standards will be advised by the theory of ethical relativism that in one’s moral reasoning one should always follow the moral standards prevalent in whatever society one finds oneself. After all, since moral standards differ and since there are no other criteria of right and wrong, the best one can do is to follow the old adage “When in Rome, do as the Romans do.

■■ How do we respond How do we respond to this challenge?to this challenge?

Diversity ThesisDiversity Thesis

▪ People do in fact disagree in their moral beliefs. But while there is variation in moral beliefs between cultures, much of the apparent diver-sity in moral beliefs can be traced to differ-ences in circumstances and in non-moral be-liefs that are not directly related to questions of morality. Thus, appearances to the contrary, the difference may not be a genuine moral difference.

Relativity ThesisRelativity Thesis▪ Simply stated, the thesis says that the rightness or wrongness of moral beliefs can be determined only in rela-tion to the culture or moral tradition of the individuals who hold them.

But the fact that moral beliefs differ may only show that some beliefs – or perhaps all of them – are false. From the fact that different people have different moral beliefs about some issue, it does not follow logically that there is no objective truth about the issue nor that all beliefs about that issue are equally acceptable. When two peo-ple or two groups have different beliefs, at most all that follows is that at least one of them is wrong.

Toleration ThesisToleration Thesis

▪ Relativists say that we should adopt a tolerant attitude towards other individuals or social groups that hold different moral beliefs. “Toleration” presumably means refraining from using force to impose the moral beliefs of one's own culture on other cultures.But if a principle of toleration is not a part of the moral beliefs of another culture, the members of that culture have no moral obligation to practice tolerance toward us, even if we believe in toleration.

■ Further Arguments against Relativism:

There must be certain moral standards that the members of any society must accept if that society is to survive and if its members are to interact with each other effectively. Thus, all societies have norms against injuring or killing other members of the society, norms about using language truthfully when communicating with mem-bers of one’s society, and norms against taking the personal goods of other members of one’s society.

▪ The most telling criticisms against the theory of ethical relativism are those that point to the incoherent consequences of the theory. If the theory of ethical relativism were true, then it would make no sense - to criticize the practices of other societies so long as they conformed to their own standards; to criticize any of the moral standards or practices accepted by our own society.

The theory of ethical relativism implies that whatever the majority in our society believes about morality is automatically correct.

▪ Performative Contradiction

Just in case the conclusion of cultural relativism is true, i.e., that there is no universal truth in morality, by implica-tion, it also claims that there can be no universal truth at all. This conclusion must be made self-referentially. There-fore, there is no reason why we should take cultural relativism's conclusion ser-iously, since it qualifies as an assertion of a universal truth.

▪ Consider the form of argument of cultural relativism.

It argues from facts about the differences between cultural outlooks to a conclusion about the status of morality – i.e., from what people believe to what really is the case. The fundamental mistake of the argument from cultural differences is that it attempts to derive a substantive conclusion about a subject (morality) from the mere fact that people disagree about it.

What can be learned from What can be learned from cultural relativism?cultural relativism?

Most important: what cultural relativism seems to stress is respect for cultural differences as well as differences in moral traditions.

Cultural relativism reminds us that many of our practices are peculiar to our society and could not be made into some absolute standard.

An awareness of cultural relativism enables us to keep an open mind. By stressing that our moral views can reflect the prejudices of our society, it provides an antidote for a kind of dogmatism.

■ Conclusion

So “when in Rome, do as the Romans do?”

One clearly should observe local etiquette and other such customs in countries other than one’s own. To this extent, when in Rome one should indeed do as the Romans do.

It is equally clear, however, that if a business operates in a country in which slavery or bondage or apartheid is legal or widely practiced, this gives no one the license to do likewise.

We can and should draw the line bet-ween local practices and customs that are morally indifferentsuch as which side of the road you drive on in a countryand others that are immoral or that we clearly perceive to be im-moral, such as engaging in slavery.

In Other Words . . .

No individual and no company can ethically justify engaging in practices the individual or com-pany believes are immoral or un-ethical. A person of integrity and a company of integrity not only have principles but live by them. . . – Richard T. de George, Business Ethics, 4th edition, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1995.

You are the vice-president and head of the strategic planning division of an American-based multinational. You long believed in the slogan “When in Rome, do as the Romans do,” but in recent years, you have been forced to rethink your position. In 1990, when the company considered opening a manufacturing branch in South Africa, it finally decided against the move because of the then-existing apartheid laws, which mandated racial segregation and discrimination against the blacks.

What will you do and why?

You are faced with three somewhat similar situations – or are they similar?

First, your company has the opportunity to contract at an excellent price for fabric woven in China. However, you have reports that the fabric probably comes from factories employing forced labor.

A second opportunity is to buy clothing manufactured in the Philippines. Again, however, you have reports that your sources are using child labor, usually girls under 14 years of age.

Your third opportunity is to open a plant in Saudi Arabia. In this situation, you are warned that for the operation to be successful, women should not be placed in executive positions because they would not be taken seriously by those with whom they had to deal.