Between Culture And Human Rights

Culture is an idea that’s basically over killed. It is often used in people’s regular conversations without conscious thought, without delving further how powerful it is in every sense, and the numerous meanings it connote. For some of us, perhaps we could refer it to an appreciation of good literature, splendid music, remarkable art, and sumptuous food. For a biologist, it could be a colony of microbes in a laboratory Petri dish per se. However, for social scientists specifically anthropologists, culture is the full range of learned human behaviour patterns. 

In the study of culture, we have to consider a lot of variables specifically when it comes to scrutinizing a particular culture’s practices. But can we really judge a culture? Who are we to judge the rightness or wrongness of one culture’s practices? In a culturally diverse world, can universal human rights exist?

Cultural relativism theorizes that human rights are culturally relative rather than universal. What may be right to particular culture may be wrong to another. Taken to its extreme, some cultural practices that are against human rights would be valid; widespread disregard, abuse and violation of human rights would be given legitimacy. For instance, a culture practicing female genital mutilation – the woman undergoing this operation is put at a very high risk to the extent of death. However, despite the pain and the mortality rate it causes, the practice is not sanctioned because it is culturally accepted and exercised. 

Reconciling cultural relativism and human rights for me is quite not possible (given the aforementioned) because the idea of human rights basically stems from a particular culture’s practices and beliefs; what is ethical for this culture may be unethical to another, so it just cancels out each other.

I believe that universal human rights supersede what is culturally relative in the sense that it protects and respects the most basic right of every human – the right to live. If a culture practices a “culture” that defends and uplifts lives, and promotes the health and well-being of the people… it is only then that relativism among cultures can reconcile with the universal human rights.