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Essay / Relativity in Anthropology - 1101
I began to analyze the patterns I saw using some of the anthropological concepts. First, I considered relativism. It would be easy for me to approach some young adults (using moral relativity) and inform them of the image they present to the world, but cultural relativity means studying another culture from its perspective without imposing our own cultural views. (Park, 2008). Nothing happened that could have endangered the lives of anyone around these young adults, so I did not feel compelled to intervene. Plus, I completely understand their point of view. Then I contemplated holism. Holism involves examining all aspects of a culture and their interrelationships (Park, 2008). This one was very difficult for me. People are only parts of a larger system (their culture), and without knowing their entire history, I cannot definitively determine the properties of their given systems. 25 minutes of observing a single part of a system is not enough to analyze its behavior. One could also analyze my observations using diffusionism, an outdated concept of cultural evolution according to which major cultural advances were made by one or a few societies and spread from there to all other societies (Park, 2008). As the subjects of my observations were both American and British citizens, it is possible that the cultural advances were made by either the British or the Americans, and that the other society took them up by living nearby.