On considerations of cultural relativism in human rights documents

The United Nations Universal Declaration on Human Rights (UDHR) stands as one of the most important human rights documents in recent history. It has achieved wide global acceptance, and its legacy is such that nearly all modern human rights documents have developed upon its framework. There are criticisms, however, of the universalism contained in the Declaration. Ambiguity can be beneficial for broad acceptance, and other ambitious documents have made extensive use of vague language to secure agreement from groups that might not otherwise find the terms and provisions acceptable. For an international human rights document, it is understandable that it was an extremely difficult undertaking to get different states, with their vastly different cultures, all on the same page. Nevertheless, some prominent voices, especially from anthropologists, have expressed disappointment and frustration with the Declaration’s language and underlying assumptions.

In 1947, during the lead-up to the Declaration’s adoption by the United Nations, the American Anthropological Association published a statement on human rights. In it, the AAA admonished the Commission on Human Rights (which was preparing the document) to bear in mind that any Declaration must concern itself not only with the rights of the individual, but also with the cultures of the groups it ostensibly protects. This pairs with the understanding that groups are made up of individuals, and thus humans function within the societies in which they live.

The AAA asserted that authors of the UDHR would face their largest hurdle in answering the question of how to make the document applicable to all humans and not be just a statement of values that are inextricably “western”. In the seventy years since the AAA made that assertion, conversation about the term “western” has developed into debate. In 2016, Kwame Appiah wrote in The Guardian that “There is no such thing as western civilization”. Of course, there is history and culture that comes from what people think of as civilizations from the west, but as a synecdoche for values such as liberty, tolerance, and rational inquiry, “western” is not a good term. I agree with this assessment, although I question how often the false equivocation is intended. Nonetheless, Appiah also wonders where “the west” even is. Appiah argues that one source of confusion is that the term has meant many things since its coinage, and in particular, the current meaning — that is, the north Atlantic: Europe and her North American colonies plus, oddly, somehow Australia and New Zealand and certain South Africans — is really just another word for “white”.

This would likely not have been a major consideration, I imagine, for the AAA in 1947. But their criticisms and the logic in which they are based carries over to the modern deliberation. Critics of the UDHR’s universalism could ask as easily in the twenty-first century as in 1947, “how do we make the UDHR applicable to all humans and not just white people?” This is especially important when the groups most affected by twenty-first century problems in human rights are indigenous peoples, people of color, and people from the contrasting region to “the west”, Asia and the global south.

The starting point for a discussion about rights, the AAA contends, must be the rights of the individual. However, in doing this, we must remember that the individual as a whole: their behavior, hopes and dreams, and values, will be profoundly affected by their culture. So, if the goal of the UDHR is to allow the individual to develop their person and identity to its fullest, then its goal must also be to allow growth in their culture. Culture can be defined in a number of ways, but here the AAA says that every person, “…resolves the problems of subsistence, of social living, of political regulation of group life, of reaching accord with the Universe and satisfying his aesthetic drives…”. What must be considered is that no two people do this in the same way, and, from culture to culture, the methods in which people pursue these ends differ greatly.

A result of a historical lack of understanding of this premise has been the conceptualization of non-Western cultures as “primitive” and culturally inferior, which has, in turn, been used as justification for their subjugation by “superior” culture. The AAA attests that the cultures of subjugated peoples have been ignored, misunderstood, or outright criticized. In order to address this historical tendency, they suggest several premises for inclusion in any “bill of human rights”.

First, “the individual realizes his personality through his culture, hence respect for individual differences entails a respect for cultural differences.” This opening proposition is particularly important because, as the AAA suggests, individual freedom cannot exist wherein the group of which an individual is a part is not free itself. In other words, where a culture is made to be inferior, that culture and its constituents cannot be fully developed.

Second, “respect for differences between cultures is validated by the scientific fact that no technique of qualitatively evaluating cultures has been discovered.” Arguments about postmodernism notwithstanding, the stance of modern science is that culture comes from a summation of multiple constituent parts, most of which are outside of the control of an individual. Additionally, there is no way to put these cultures on a spectrum of “good to bad”. Each is as valid as any other, even if a debate about the morality of cultural behaviors is itself valid.

Third, “standards and values are relative to the culture from which they derive so that any attempt to formulate postulates that grow out of the beliefs or moral codes of one culture must to that extent detract from the applicability of any Declaration of Human Rights to mankind as a whole.” As the previous tenet suggests, the AAA is espousing a sort of cultural relativism here. While I do not subscribe to the belief that, as a result of cultural relativism, we cannot make prescriptions of standards and values in human rights, it must be considered in a discussion of what to put in this kind of Declaration. What one culture prioritizes as human rights may be different than in another, even if it is as simple as cultural distinctions between a focus on individual and collective rights. Similarly, what is a right for one culture may be anti-social for another, or even the same culture in a different time. So the question for authors of human rights documents is how to write something acceptable for all cultures at all times, or at least as many as possible as often as possible.

Even so, the shared element across cultures is a concept of right and wrong. Amongst human cultures, there is no ethical nihilism. When it comes to ethics of good and evil, each culture, if not each individual, will have their own conception of what is acceptable and what is not. But across cultures, there is a universal acceptance of the existence of right and wrong. That sense of right and wrong is difficult, though, and the AAA observes that even the American Bill of Rights was written by slave-owners. The French revolution shouted liberté, égalité, fraternité, while struggling to impose those ideals in their slave-owning colonies. In sum, the AAA’s statement is a warning to the authors of the UDHR to respect cultural relativism in their pursuit, which is a problem still today, with ambitious human rights and peace documents.

Shortly after the AAA released their statement, some acclaimed anthropologists added their individual voices to conversation, including Julian Steward and Homer Barnett. Steward’s statement begins with an acknowledgement of the AAA’s seemingly impossible position, at once trying to avoid value judgments or politicking, and simultaneously being almost required to in order to present scientific assertions on the topic. However, Steward does not withhold criticism. Steward cautions that, if the AAA’s argument is taken to its logical end, it might end up with unintended consequences like the tacit approval of cultural, but problematic phenomena such as the Indian caste system and American racism. Steward questions if the AAA intends to condone Euro-American economic imperialism, while simply asking for greater understanding and better treatment of the peoples they are subjugating.

Of course, “respect for cultural differences” is not equal to tolerance of, for instance, the ideals of Nazi Germany. But Steward seems to struggle with the AAA’s apparent belief that we can have it, in some sense, both ways — that positive cultural values of oppressive cultures might, if respected in spite of negative values, overcome aspects of other cultures that we find objectionable. Steward proposes two options: either accept everything, or oppose oppression, intolerance, and imperialism. If we choose the latter, how do we decide what to oppose? Steward points to the virtually universal opposition to the Holocaust, but the passivity shown towards other kinds of discrimination in the world.

I am unconvinced that it has to be one of those two options, though I am also unconvinced of any more radical form of relativism. When it comes to human rights documents, is it not perfectly valid to accept cultural relativism up until it infringes on the rights of others? The idea that individual freedoms extend until they become impositions on the freedoms of others applies to culture, as well. Steward himself seems to acknowledge this, in a way, by reminding the AAA that anthropologists should understand the interrelatedness of cultures.

The role of anthropologists as advocates is a tenuous one. Steward advocates for a scientific role for anthropologists, but admits that during WWII, anthropologists readily took to advancing causes. Even further, Steward asserts that the AAA should not have made a statement about human rights: “As a scientific organization, the Association has no business dealing with the rights of man.” I do not agree. Human rights are most certainly a valid part of human societies and cultures. Human societies and cultures are, by definition, things that anthropology is concerned with.

Homer Barnett in 1948 also issued a response to the AAA’s statement. Barnett begins by praising the initiative of the AAA, while lamenting the fact that their statement was crafted in the way that it was. He warns that the statement puts the AAA on record in an unscientific position and might actually result in the opposite effect than they intended.

The statement is important because anthropologists are disciplined scientists concerned with human relations and thus it follows that anthropologists might have scientific input on human rights. Barnett does not think they should, however, because he asserts that it is impossible to reconcile a scientific analysis of human relations with a belief in a universal, absolute value system. For the purposes of this essay, I will not discuss where rights come from, and grant to Barnett his assertion that rights are only rights by definition. Barnett contends that they are only considered absolutes by those who adhere to them, and it is the job of the anthropologist only to record their existence and study them how they can. It is not the job of the anthropologist, Barnett says, to support or decry value systems, nor adopt the value systems of the people they study.

Barnett observes a tendency within anthropology to profess total objectivity while not really holding to it in fact. This lack of objectivity becomes more obvious as anthropologists’ data is used in novel ways and they make normative claims about what human societies should or should not do. The anthropologist does not know what is best for the people they are studying, and indeed Barnett asserts that this false belief is an “occupational disability”. I can understand where the tendency comes from. Once an anthropologist has studied extensively a people and begins to understand their ways, customs, and values, they think themselves experts qualified to pass judgment on those things. With further analysis, it becomes clear that there is little, if not no, connection between knowledge about a people’s existence and judgments about what those facts mean. In other words, expertise in one does not create expertise in the other.

An important contention that Barnett makes is that we cannot be simultaneously policy makers and scientists. I do not agree. In fact, I think we should probably have more policy makers who are scientists, who use their extraordinary expertise to craft effective policy. Where it becomes complicated, I agree, is when policy makers of any kind are passing moral judgment on the customs of a society, whether they know something about that society or not. Barnett and I align on the fact that anthropology, as a field, needs to consider their role today, as in 1948. Anthropologists, as individuals, need to decide how to advocate without prescribing universal value judgements. However, as an association of individuals, there are times when anthropologists will be called to voice their opinions on features of humanity. There is no more valid topic, in my mind, than human rights. When they do so, they should do so explicitly and honestly. There is bias everywhere and in all things. What is important is that scientists be aware of their bias and describe what steps they are taking to keep it out of their findings. Through doing this, anthropologists ought to be more effective advocates, when they need to be.