Richard A. Shweder, in this quote from his book of essays on culture, summarizes the problem of multiple, coexisting, closely-interacting cultural systems. His solution to the problem is to accept relativism and to be accepting of the contradictions different cultures have relative to one another.

Consider the following four propositions. Each will seem plausible to some readers, yet taken together they are incompatible. One or more of them must be rejected, but which?

1. We, the members of our ethnic group, are rationally justified in our conception of things; for example, that when you are dead you are dead, that virtuous people can die young, that souls do not transmigrate, and that authors have a natural inalienable right to publish works critical of revealed truth.
2. They, the members of some other ethnic group, have a different conception of things; for example, that the spirits of your dead ancestors can enter your body and wreak havoc on your life, that widows are unlucky and should be shunned, that a neighbor's envy can make you sick, that souls transmigrate, that nature is a scene of retributive causation and you get the death you deserve, that a parody of scriptural revelation is blasphemous and blasphemers should be punished.
3. They, the members of that other ethnic group, are rationally justified in their conception of things.
4. If others are rationally justified in their conception of things and that conception is different than ours, then we cannot be rationally justified in our conception of things. Conversely, if we are rationally justified in our conception of things and that conception is different then theirs, then they cannot be rationally justified in their conception of things.

[After discussing the ramifications of rejecting any one of the first three propositions, Shweder concludes that only "one logical possibility remains: rejection of the fourth proposition." The rejection of this fourth proposition is the essential element of a "relativistic" approach to studying culture.]

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• Or, jump:
  • back to Walker (precedes Shweder in this section)
  • back to Hirsch (precedes Walker in this section)
  Other definitions and discussions of culture:
  • Discussion: Women, Culture, and Power
  • Bodley, An Anthropological Perspective
  • Geertz, Emphasizing Interpretation
  • Williams, Moving from High Culture to Ordinary Culture
  • Arnold, Culture is "High Culture"

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