How does cultural relativism affect the comparison of different societies?

In anthropology, cultural relativism is the principle that a culture’s beliefs, values, and practices should be understood and evaluated based on their own internal logic and context, rather than by the standards of another culture. This approach emerged as a reaction against ethnocentrism—the tendency to judge other societies as inferior or "wrong" simply because they differ from one's own.12

By emphasizing that cultural elements function as part of a larger, integrated whole, this perspective challenges the practice of ranking societies on a hierarchical scale of "superior" or "inferior". It argues that because moral codes and social customs are products of specific traditions and environments, there is no culture-neutral standard to objectively declare one society's morality as better than another's.13

However, this has led to significant debate within the field. While some anthropologists use relativism to promote tolerance and avoid subjective bias, critics argue that a radical application of the doctrine can prevent the objective assessment of social progress or the condemnation of harmful practices, such as genocide or human rights abuses. Consequently, some scholars distinguish between subjective values and objective, measurable criteria—such as technological effectiveness or health outcomes—which can be compared scientifically without necessarily rejecting the relativist framework.3415