Critique Of Cultural Relativism By Ooneigh Reitman

1259 Words6 Pages

Introduction Cultural relativism is the principle that the beliefs and activities of each person must be understood in the culture itself (Bayley, 1992). Feminism is a movement and ideology to fight for equality for women in the political, economic, cultural, private space and public space. Feminism was never an ideology of hatred ( Beasley, 1999). Since cultural relativism and feminism are two different things, many different critiques of cultural relativism and feminism in international human rights occur. Those critiques come from cultural relativists and feminists. As we know, the journal written by Ooneigh Reitman explains about those two different critiques. By this journal review, I would like to review the journal deeper. Objectives, …show more content…

The author explains the basic concepts of cultural relativism and feminism. It is mentioned in the journal that cultural relativism is the concept of Western thought and has become a study of Western philosophy since long. The author also explain political hidden concepts. The method used by the author is comparative method which is the method used in research aimed to find out whether there is a difference between the two variables studied in one respect(Ragin, 1987). In this study there was no manipulation of the researcher. Research done naturally, by collecting data with an instrument. The results are statistically analyzed to look for differences in the variables studied. The author uses comparative method because as we can see, the writer compares the two different perceptions and critics coming from two different actors which are cultural relativist and feminist. The other method used by the author is Ethnographic method which is is a method used to interpret the cultural, social groups and a community system Ethnographic study aimed to describe ways of thinking, customs, languages, beliefs and behavior of life of a society(O’reilly, 2005). The research process is usually carried out in the field in a long time, the natural form of observations and interviews with participants and collect documents or objects (artifacts). The final result is usually very comprehensive study and describe the …show more content…

For instance, rape cases. There are a lot of rase cases happen and the victims are mostly women and this makes me agree to the feminist critiques of international human rights which says feminist sees that men dominate the authority of human rights, here the feminist claims that men are holding human rights, and women are not. The author of the journal, however, does not seem defending cultural relativist or feminist. The author seems neutral.

Conclusion Both between cultural relativist critiques and feminist critiques of International Human Rights are correct. None of them should be blamed because everyone has the right to say their opinions, and I think cultural relativist and feminist have their right on criticizing something and we have the right to choose whether we defend cultural relavist or feminist critiques because both of those critiques are created to defend people and it is all back to