Cultural Relativism

“It is naïve to believe that there are no cultural universals in abnormality but, at the same time, what is normal in one society is not always regarded as normal in another society.”

A person’s behaviour is often defined by the culture in which they live. Cultural relativism looks at how relevant a person’s culture is in terms of defining abnormality. Different cultures, like different religions follow different traditions. These may be perfectly normal within their culture, yet an onlooker would see their behaviour as strange (or abnormal).

‘What is normal in one society is not always normal in another’ because different cultures have different ideas of normal and abnormal behaviour and therefore to decide between normality and abnormality depends largely on a value judgement. Values are based on consensus, which takes into account only the views of the majority. Even within the same culture, people have different values because of their socialisation. We can be very ethnocentric and judge people according to what we believe, because we often see our views as being superior to those of others.

In order to define abnormality in any culture we need to find an objective approach that does not involve judging people by our own standards. To make it more objective, we need to establish universal truths.

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Within one culture, not everyone will be the same in terms of his or her behaviour. Some people are more intelligent than other people in their society are. We look at a so-called average of what is normal and people that differ greatly from this norm are said to be statistically infrequent. However, it is very relevant to the culture in which you are brought up. For example, with intelligence, the average IQ in this country is 100 but we have access to an education system from a young age. Does this mean that people in Ethiopia who have an IQ dramatically lower than 100 are statistically infrequent? The answer has to be no, because they have less access to education than we do and therefore it can be expected that the IQ will be lower. This comes back to the concept of ethnocentrism, as we cannot judge them by our standards, because they have not had the same opportunities as we have. Someone who is statistically infrequent in one country may be totally normal in another, so people need to be judged in relation to the rest of their culture. However, there are still problems as it is still a value judgement because a line still must be drawn to say what is normal or abnormal.

The idea of ‘a failure to function adequately’ uses judgements that are influenced by societies norms and values.

Different cultures have different social norms, which can cause problems in defining abnormality across cultures. However, as norms are usually created from values, people within one culture can also have different norms. For example, the different political parties have different moral standards, the Green Party’s major concern is for the environment whereas the Labour Party is for the working man. Social attitudes can be distorted by politics and whilst political parties are voted in by consensus, there are still going to be people who disagree with what they are saying. Behaving differently from the majority of people in society does not necessarily mean that they are abnormal. Looking at politics in view of other cultures, some cultures are very oppressive and so some people will rebel from this oppression. We would see this as normal as we live in a pretty free environment and can understand why they are doing it and it seems like a normal thing to do when oppressed. However, people in their culture may see them as abnormal because the majority of their society are conformists and therefore a dissident would be seen as deviating from social norms.

A behaviour can be viewed as normal or abnormal depending on the context in which it occurs. For example, being naked in the bath would be perfectly normal behaviour, whereas if you were to walk down the street naked, you would be seen as abnormal.

In a wider view, we walk around in skirts and tops, which is perfectly normal in our society, however women in India must show only their eyes and to wear clothes like ours would be seen as deviating from social norms yet to us would be normal.

There is another problem when defining abnormality by culture trends; culture changes over time. For example, women have become more assertive and are no longer forced in the role of housewife and mother, they are able to vote, work and have the right to university education. A hundred years ago, a working woman, educated to degree level was pretty much unheard of. Views on homosexuality have also changed a lot quite recently. People have started to accept it more and it is no longer a criminal offence. This shows us that if views can change over time then the definition of abnormality can also change over time. Culture change over time is not a universal process however. In some countries, women are still expected to be the carers and men the breadwinners. Some cultures still do not accept homosexuality. We need to measure how much time affects peoples beliefs through different cultures.

There are methods of classifying mental illness as to try and make it a more objective process. The first is DSM, which stands for Diagnostic and Statistical model. There are five axis to be taken into consideration when diagnosing a person. The most relevant one to culture is the DSM-IV which looks at Psychosocial and Environmental Problems which might contribute to the present condition.

The other method of classification is ICD, International Classification of Disorders, the most recent being ICD-10. It uses statistics from many different countries so that an agreement across cultures can be reached.

There are some views that are culturally universal, which means that they are viewed in the same way by all cultures. For example, chronic depression and anti-social behaviour are viewed in all cultures as undesirable, abnormal behaviour. There are not many cultural universals when dealing with abnormal behaviour which is why models such as DSM and ICD have been introduced so that we can take into account the cultural differences.