Cultural Pluralism Term Paper Sample

- Ultimately for Berlin, a culture’s values were what defined the lives of the people in the culture. These circumstantial truths served as guideposts for how one should live their respective lives in order to be an upstanding and valuable citizen. However, these values were not always compatible to those of another culture, according to Berlin. What is true in one society may not be true in another. Yet, this difference served a key function in the understanding of that particular culture. Through the examination of values, anthropologists could work to decipher the fabric of the culture and its relative course. Thanks to the study of values and anthropology, this can also be done as objectively as possible without necessarily compromising one’s own values by becoming part of that particular culture.
- In his essay “The Idea of Culture”, author Roy Wagner highlights the paradoxical idea that anthropologists must objectively study other cultures while still being defined by their own. On the surface, this may not seem like an issue but consider the reach of culture. Not only does culture define opinions on religion, morality and science but it also influences its inhabitants’ ideas of social order and values, particularly in terms of knowledge. For example, an anthropologist from a societal that values math and science might choose to look into those areas and completely ignore the value of domestic life. That bias also adds a level of judgment that prohibits true understanding. Instead, an anthropologist has to attempt to understand other cultures, knowing that his interpretations come from his own cultural bias.
- When Wagner talks of “the relationships between two varieties of the human phenomenon”, he implies that every culture, or variety of the human phenomenon, is innately related. This relationship could come not only from a shared condition known as the human existence but also through the study of the anthropologist. The human condition necessitates that people have certain material needs, without which they would not survive. Therefore, in the pursuit of material needs, humans might develop similar values, such as an honorable way to gain food by working or standards of decency regarding clothing in order to stay protected from the elements. In contrast, the anthropologist connects the two cultures intellectually through his study of them. By comparing one to the other, the ideas and values become linked, even if for only a brief moment. The work of that researcher could then pass to others and eventually the culture as a whole if it garners enough interest. From there, the potential ultimately exists for the second culture to become closer to the first, if the society so chooses.