Cultural Relativism In War

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It is 6:00 at night the news comes on story after story delivers crime, anger, death, devastation, and little hope. In less then 2 minutes the broadcaster is able to delivering these stories that are missing layers of information and deep history. The clips are unsettling, incomplete and often bias but it is all that is given and opinions start to form. The news suffers from ethnocentrism, the likeliness to use their culture’s standards to judge other people and actions within another culture, and has a large influence on how their audience perceives and processes information. Through cultural relativism we can shed light on some of these issues, start to understand the big picture, and stop judging.
Cultural relativism is the belief …show more content…

Cossacks: Was the Texas biker shootout over territory? (CNN), stood out. Why in many cultures is it expectable to gain allies, send thousands of troops to war, fight for territory, loose lives, and make heroes out of the participants, but most people frown upon outlaws gaining allies, fighting, and causing death over territory? Applying cultural relativism in both cases is important. Going into a study about war with a preconceived belief that the war is a waist of resources, money, and life will lead to a very bias study. Likewise if cultural relativism is not practiced the cultural influences about outlaws can blur a sociologist study, even thought like war the outlaws are protecting territory, reputation, and culture. “Sociology does not agree or disagree with, or approve or disapprove of, behaviors; sociology seeks to understand and explain behavior. And understanding an explaining is difficult to do unless one is willing to look at things in their own context.” (McIntyre)
We live in a world that nothing is, as it seems. Every one is raised within societies that have different cultures and subcultures. We conform to the norm and judge the not norm as influences come from media, peers, authority, and so on because we grow into ethnocentrism people. It takes great self-awareness to separate ethnocentrism when looking at any subject matter because our social norm runs deep. But it is imperative to gain cultural relativism if you want to understand any culture outside your

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