Understanding Cultural Relativism: Perspectives from 'Nest in the Wind'

It is not uncommon for an individual to describe a culture that is not their own as exotic, unique, or dated. However, they would be overlooking the idea and importance of cultural relativism on a global scale. It is understandable that a cultural aspect, different from what an individual is used to interacting in, seems hard to understand or too complex to recognize, but it is important to look at one’s own culture and others from multiple angles. The lack of familiarity of another culture that often produces words like “exotic” can be put away with a proper amount of time researching, understanding, and appreciating the normal behavior of another culture. In the paper, I will discuss the concepts that go along with cultural relativism and relate these to the stories found in “Nest in the Wind” and examples from our current society.

The observations and analyses shared in “Nest in the Wind” provide several examples of instances where the Pohnpeian lifestyle is unrecognizable and entirely new to the visiting anthropologists. In America and other western societies, children are

I would like to focus on his first point because it covers the idea of ethnocentrism and a sense of cultural superiority. Brown explains that the common occurrence of a group deeming their culture as more satisfying or superior to another can be termed “ethnocentrism” (Brown). The paper describes examples of this concept but there is a positive message to be taken away. Brown suggests that with how globally connected we are in the 21st century, it is likely that groups of people can have success in finding overlapping aspects in their ways of life (Brown). This is incredibly important because it suggests that the current playing field of abusive business and politics could only be temporary, where currently the issues with globalism seem to only be growing