Cultural Relativism and Historical Particularism

There was so much information in both of the articles it was pretty overwhelming. I realized that I would not be able to conceive in detail all the information presented in just one sitting. There are so many theorist and theories that have shaped our definition of culture and anthropology as a whole. These articles are rich with insight but one of the most important thing I learned through reading these articles is the theory of cultural relativism and what it means to be Intercultural competent. What I admire about the theory of cultural relativism is that it leads people in judging a culture based on the standards the culture has established within them selves and not our standards which are quite bias. When one understands this theory it is realized that there is no culture more superior to any other. Another theory that is important and goes hand in hand with cultural relativism is Historical particularism. This theory basically states that the best way to study any culture is to study that culture in detail. One would have to study those cultures’ idioms, nonverbal cues, verbal and nonverbal symbols and etc. Not only does this theory apply to cultural relativism but it goes also applies to intercultural competency. Intercultural competence simply means to be able to operate in any culture as if you were a native to that specific culture. How can one accomplish this difficult task without detailed study of that culture? One thing I do find very interesting about intercultural competence is that studying alone can not make one competent. It requires a great amount of experiential learning. This process of becoming interculturally competent is not a short process and may be birthed through adversity and failure in certain instances. The articles taught me that there a great deal of things in culture that are occurring beyond what we can observe from an exterior level. There are things that are happening internally that produces certain behaviors, beliefs and ideas. These predictable behaviors demonstrate the idea of culture as a template. I found this idea is very true and it put things in a perspective that I had not been aware of previously. Culture has to be a template because the very way we define culture illustrates that we identify certain groups (cultural groups) by a set of beliefs, behaviors, ideas and the way they view their world.