Anthropological Approaches to Human Nature, Cultural Relativism and Ethnocentrism
Part 4: The Human in Culture
Keywords:
human nature, cultural relativism, Americanist tradition, history of anthropology, ethnocentrismAbstract
This article reflects on how anthropology has traditionally dealt with the alternation of cultural specificities and human universals. It revisits the foundational anthropological concept of cultural relativism in light of the inevitability of standpoint and ethnocentrism. Today, within the discipline of anthropology, it is possible, indeed necessary, to update the conceptual apparatus in order to maintain the potential to speak truth to power and to undertake a cross-culturally sophisticated critique of globalization as we once did of evolution. The methods and messages of anthropology remain crucial to contemporary practice of the discipline in Canada and elsewhere
Downloads
Publication Facts
Reviewer profiles N/A
Author statements
- Editor & editorial board
- profiles
- Academic society
- Canadian Anthropology Society
- Publisher
- University of Victoria
To learn about these publication facts, click 
PF is maintained by the Public Knowledge Project
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
Authors contributing to Anthropologica agree to release their articles under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 Unported license. This licence allows anyone to share their work (copy, distribute, transmit) and to adapt it for non-commercial purposes provided that appropriate attribution is given, and that in the event of reuse or distribution, the terms of this license are made clear.
Authors retain copyright of their work and grant the journal right of first publication.
Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
