Cultural Relativism Is multiculturalism bad for women Is
Cultural Relativism Is multiculturalism bad for women? Is it good for anyone? Rachels. ‘The Challenge of Cultural Relativism’ Okin. ‘Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women? Pollitt. ‘Whose Culture? ’
‘Cultural Relativism’ means different things T 1. People’s beliefs, attitudes, tastes, etc. are significantly affected by their culture--and people in different cultures have very different beliefs, attitudes, tastes, etc. T 2. Methodological cultural relativism: cultures should be studied on their own terms. F 3. Actions are right or wrong to the extent and only to the extent that they conform or don’t conform to cultural norms.
Cultural Difference Norms and practices are different in different places and at different times
‘The Callatians Eat Their Dead Fathers’ ----Herodotus
Ethical intuitions or Yuck Factor?
Beijing Night Market
Polygamy See Susan Okin ’Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women’
Blame, Excusing Conditions, & Intervention These are different questions! Is it wrong? Can you blame them? Should you stop them?
The Challenge of Cultural Relativism Rachels on normative and factual questions of difference
Cultural Relativist Response to Cultural Difference • Different societies have different moral codes. • There is no objective standard that can be used to judge one societal code better than another. • The moral code of our own society has no special status; it is merely one among many. • There are no moral truths that hold for all peoples at all times. • The moral code of a society determines what is right within that society; that is, if the moral code of a society says that a certain action is right, then that action is right, at least within that society. • It is mere arrogance for us to try to judge the conduct of others
Eskimo Traditional Culture • Share wives • Practice infanticide (especially female infants) • Abandon the elderly
Different Cultures Different Moral Codes • Do different approved practices assume differences in fundamental moral principles? • Rachels argues that even where practices differ it may be a consequence of different circumstances. o Eskimos circumstances are very different from ours and so different behavior doesn’t mean they have different fundamental moral commitments • But…could there be other cultures that have different fundamental moral commitments? What do we say about fundamental moral disagreement?
How much disagreement is moral disagreement? • Moral vs. Factual Disagreement: we agree about not eating grandmothers but disagree about grandmothers being reincarnated as cows. • Different Circumstances: Eskimos behave differently because they’re differently situated--costs and benefits of actions different in their circumstances. • ‘So among the Eskimos, infanticide does not signal a fundamentally different attitude toward children. Instead, it is a recognition that drastic measures are sometimes needed to ensure the family's survival. ’
Rachels: all cultures have values in common • Evolutionary argument: there are some moral rules that all societies will have to have in common because those rules are necessary for society to exist, e. g. o Care for young. o Don’t lie. o Don’t murder. • Naturalism in ethics: the source of our moral intuitions. • But what if there is fundamental moral disagreement?
The Cultural Differences Argument 1. Different cultures have different moral codes. 2. Therefore, there is no objective "truth" in morality. Right and wrong are only matters of opinion, and opinions vary from culture to culture. • The conclusion does not really follow from the premise- that is, even if the premise is true, the conclusion still might be false. • Believing something doesn’t make it so--even if lots of people, all members of a culture, believe it. • You can’t deduce ought from is.
What can be learned from cultural relativism? • Cultural Relativism warns us, quite rightly, about the danger of assuming that all our preferences are based on some absolute rational standard. • The second lesson has to do with keeping an open mind. • Cultural Relativism…is based on a genuine insight - that many of the practices and attitudes we think so natural are really only cultural products. Moreover, keeping this insight firmly in view is important if we want to avoid arrogance and have open minds. These are important points, not to be taken lightly. • But we can accept these points without going on to accept the whole theory.
Ethical Universalism and Tolerance • Maximizing Utility: Practices that produce good results in one culture may not produce good results in another, e. g. polygamy. (Note: Utilitarianism is a from of Ethical Universalism!) • Excusing Conditions: Right & Wrong vs. Praiseworthy & Blameworthy: Actions that are wrong may be excusable and people that do them may not be blameworthy. • Intervention or Non-Intervention: Even if an action is wrong, it doesn’t follow that it would be right to stop people from doing it.
Taking Relativism Seriously: Consequences • We could decide whether actions are right or wrong just by consulting the standards of our society. o We could no longer say that the customs of other societies are morally inferior to our own. o The idea of moral progress is called into doubt. • Some consequences…
Can’t say other societies’ customs are inferior?
Can’t say other societies’ customs are inferior?
No such thing as moral progress?
Human Rights: The Hard Question
A Case for Intervention? Charles Napier on Sati "Be it so. This burning of widows is your custom; prepare the funeral pile. But my nation has also a custom. When men burn women alive we hang them, and confiscate all their property. My carpenters shall therefore erect gibbets on which to hang all concerned when the widow is consumed. Let us all act according to national customs. "
Problems with Cultural Relativism: An act, a, is right if and only if it conforms to the norms of the agent’s culture. • Which Culture? Who is my neighbor? (The problem of overlapping cultures) • Some practices are just plain wrong • Intolerant Cultures: When in Rome, do as the Romans do…
ROME
Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women? Susan Okin argues that it is
Okin. ‘Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women? ’ • ‘Liberalism, which prizes "freedom of choice" and "personal autonomy”… has good reason to support the preservation of cultural structures…BUT • ‘Virtually all “traditional cultures” embody rigid sex roles: ‘some—mostly, though by no means exclusively, Western liberal cultures—have departed far further from them than others’. o Traditional Culture: ‘Society characterized by an orientation to the past not the future with a predominant role for custom…marked by a lack of distinction between family and business, with the division of labor influenced primarily by age, gender, and status. ’ [Langlois, S. (2001). ‘Traditions: Social’. International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences]
Assimilation or Cultural Preservation? • Until the past few decades, minority groups—immigrants as well as indigenous peoples—were typically expected to assimilate into majority cultures. • This assimilationist expectation is now often considered oppressive, and many Western countries are seeking to devise new policies that are more responsive to persistent cultural differences. • What should be done when the claims of minority cultures or religions clash with the norm of gender equality that is at least formally endorsed by liberal states?
Assimilationists and Cultural Preservationists • Within cultural groups there is a (possibly irreconcilable) conflict of interests between assimilationists and cultural preservationists. • Can’t assume that assimilation is always imposed from outside: some members of minority and immigrant cultures would prefer to assimilate. • women affected by polygamy regarded it as an inescapable and barely tolerable institution in their African countries of origin, and an unbearable imposition in the French context • Arguably, many men have an interest in cultural preservation while women want out given prevailing customs that are lousy for women…
Some definitions • Feminism: the belief that women should not be disadvantaged by their sex, that they should be recognized as having…the opportunity to live as freely chosen lives as men can. • Multiculturalism: harder to pin down. . . [but includes] the claim, made in the context of basically liberal democracies, that. . . [members of minority cultures] should be protected with special group rights. . . not available to the rest of the population. . . to govern themselves, have guaranteed political representation, or be exempt from generally applicable law. • Okin’s focus: tolerance for polygamy in France (until it got too expensive!)
In France… • Headscarf controversy • Polygamy • Cultural preservation by males who have no options in the larger society.
Group rights, personal law & religion exemptions • Romans granted Jews (but not Christians) exemptions from sacrifice obligation. • The Ottoman Empire maintained a Millet system • In most Indian states there are separate systems of law governing marriage, divorce, and other domestic matters for Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims and Christians. • Law permitting sharia court passed on Ontario in 1991 followed by failed attempt to make it national • ‘Customary Law’ recognized in South Africa and some other African countries. • Controversy in Sweden here… and here concerning child marriage.
Pro & Con…Questions. . . Worries • Some members of minority cultures want to maintain their cultures; others don’t. • Exit is not feasible--especially for women. • ’Assimilation to a Rainbow Underclass (see Alejandro Portes Legacies) • Some ‘assimilation’ programs have been awful: o Australia forcibly removed children from families, sent some to training schools for menial work, placed mixed-race kids with white families o China is now shipping its Uigar Muslim minority to gulags.
Gender and Culture • Most cultures are suffused with practices and ideologies concerning gender. • Advocates of group rights: o Pay little or no attention to differences within groups, in particular different circumstances of men and women o Pay little or not attention to the private sphere, e. g. to matters of ‘personal law’ such as marriage, child custody, control of property, inheritance. • It isn’t feasible for women to get out • But compare to women from the former East Germany leaving…
Bad things for women in these cultures • FGM (‘Female Genital Mutilation or ‘Cutting’) ‘helps insure a girl’s virginity before marriage and fidelity afterwards…[and] makes her more marriagable’. • Polygamy: As a French immigrant from Mali said in a recent interview: "When my wife is sick and I don't have another, who will care for me? . . . [O]ne wife on her own is trouble. When there are several, they are forced to be polite and well behaved. • Encouraging or requiring a rape victim to marry the rapist: ‘As a Peruvian taxi driver explained: "Marriage is the right and proper thing to do after a rape. A raped woman is a used item. No one wants her. At least with this law the woman will get a husband. ”’
‘Covering Her Honor’
Marriage By Capture
'Men can do anything they want to women in Honduras': Inside one of the most dangerous places on Earth to be a woman
Group Rights? • [M]any (though not all) of the cultural minorities that claim group rights are more patriarchal than the surrounding cultures. • Of claims put forward by members of such groups for special legal treatment…the vast majority concern gender inequalities • [t]he same phenomenon occurs in practice in the international arena, where women's human rights are often rejected by the leaders of countries or groups of countries as incompatible with their various cultures o E. g. kidnap and rape by Hmong men who claim their actions are part of their cultural practice of ‘marriage by capture’
Third Worldism: killing with kindness? • In Pakistan and parts of the Arab Middle East, where women who bring rape charges are quite frequently charged with the serious Muslim offense of zina, or sex outside of marriage. Law allows for the whipping or imprisonment of such a woman, and culture condones the killing or pressuring into suicide of a raped woman by relatives concerned to restore the family's honor. • A Russian, an Italian, could not justify beating his wife to death…although Russian women are killed by their male partners at astronomical rates and parts of Italy are very old fashioned indeed about these matters. That is partly because of multiculturalism's connections to Third Worldism, and the appeals Third Worldism makes to white liberal guilt, and partly because Americans understand that Russia and Italy are dynamic societies in which change is constant and interests clash. (Katha Pollitt)
Pollitt: Kymlicka’s Defense of Group Rights • Kymlicka argues that ‘membership in a rich and secure cultural structure’ with its language and history, is essential for the development of self-respect. • He however requires ‘internal liberalism’ that allows for meaningful individual choice. • But ‘far fewer minority cultures than Kymlicka seems to think will be able to claim group rights under his liberal justification. ’ o Note factual disagreement--about what these cultures are like (and implicitely women’s preferences and possibilities of exit)
No Exit
Okin’s Conclusion It is by no means clear, then, from a feminist point of view, that minority group rights are "part of the solution. " They may well exacerbate the problem. In the case of a more patriarchal minority culture in the context of a less patriarchal majority culture, no argument can be made on the basis of self-respect or freedom that the female members of the culture have a clear interest in its preservation. Indeed, they may be much better off if the culture into which they were born were… [to] become extinct (so that its members would become integrated)…Since attention to the rights of minority cultural groups, if it is to be consistent with the fundamentals of liberalism, must be ultimately aimed at furthering the well-being of the members of these groups, there can be no justification for assuming that the groups' selfproclaimed leaders—invariably mainly composed of their older and their male members— represent the interests of all of the groups' members.
The End Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them…We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. Karl Popper, The Open Society and its Enemies
- Slides: 54