Of prominent concepts that owe their credibility and popularity to social science, “cultural relativism” is unusual for having received so little clarification from social scientists. The concept is properly associated with a group of anthropologists who flourished in the United States during the second quarter of the twentieth century and who argued, first, that culture rather than biology explains the range of human behavior, and, second, that the sheer diversity of this behavior as seen throughout the world should inspire respect and tolerance rather than invidious judgments. But these anthropologists tried only episodically to fix the meaning of “cultural relativism,” and their successors have proved impatient with the terms on which it has been implicated in later debates over moral philosophy, human rights, multiculturalism, and postmodernism. A phrase that had become familiar as an affirmation of liberal values and cosmopolitan tolerance came to be associated instead with the defense of parochial cultures that sanction the abuse of women, and with the dismissal of the ideal of a common humanity. References to “cultural relativism” were more abundant during the 1980s and 1990s than ever before, but the meaning of the term and its relation to the anthropological movement said to be responsible for it were more elusive than ever. Hence “cultural relativism” is a topic without an agreed-upon referent. Indeed, the debate over just what cultural relativism is constitutes a vital part of its history.

The central idea in cultural relativism, said Melville J. Herskovits, is that “Judgments are based on experience, and experience is interpreted by each individual in terms of his own enculturation”. This emphatic statement of 1955 may imply that questions of right and wrong, and of truth and falsity, demand different answers depending on one’s particular culture. But neither Herskovits nor the other anthropologists of his cohort were eager to put it so starkly. Indeed, crisp definitions of cultural relativism – that it means “truth and goodness are relative to your culture”, or “one culture is as good as another” – have been the staple of its critics, who have found themselves ridiculed, in turn, for failing to understand it.