Sociology Monday

Team Soc,

I am sorry to say this, but I am not able to be in class today. If you are willing, please pray I get feeling better. I hope to return as soon as possible.

Despite not being able to talk on Friday, I really enjoyed our discussion. I hope you came to a better understanding of multiculturalism, cultural relativism, ethnocentrism, and a possible tertium quid.

Here are some quick thoughts:
 - Multiculturalism, as a policy, has been rejected in many of the places it had been previously embraced because it cannot address large groups of people who themselves do not accept the basic assumptions of multiculturalism. Multiculturalism presupposes everyone will think like the people who embrace it.

- Cultural relativism looks all rosy on the surface like multiculturalism. However, it too has a glaring weakness (even two). First, it is unable to call evil evil. Instead, it must only wink at evil and declare that we do not understand the culture from the outside. Human sacrifice or genocidal mania must be overlooked. If this was not enough, cultural relativism's second fatal error is as large as the first but more subtle. It looks tolerant on the surface but is really ethnocentrism in fancy clothes. It does not allow a culture (or anything else for that matter) to speak to the abuses of other cultures, thereby disavowing any absolute truth. In saying a culture can only be judged from the inside, it undermines any culture's ability to say what they believe has validity beyond their own borders. Yet cultural relativity claims to have no borders for itself and be universally true. Ah, the hypocrisy! Christians sometimes embrace cultural relativism because they do not want to be caught in ethnocentrism which they know to be incorrect but they do not know of an alternative.

- Few stand boldly stand up for ethnocentrism but almost everyone falls prey to it. Ethnocentrism's faults are glaring; by judging other cultures through the lens of your own you end up using a myopic and faulty standard by which to judge. Christians all too often act ethnocentrically in the name of Christianity thereby giving Christianity a bad name.

- So is there a tertium quid? I would argue there is. And it must necessarily be an absolute, unchanging standard, otherwise it is "no truth" (cultural relativism) or "my truth" (ethnocentrism). This third path is Christocentrism. Only by using Jesus can we properly evaluate a culture. This way we can call evil evil but not do so only because of what we are comfortable or uncomfortable with; we can do so because it is grounded in who God is as our Father, creator, and Lord.

[Hopefully questions have come to mind as you have read this. Please discuss them, email them to me, and/or write them down and let's address them upon my return.]

I would like you to do some quick application. In Drive you will find an article called "Danish Woman is Reunited with Her Baby". Please read this and individually answer the questions on the "Ethnocentrism, Cultural Relativism, and Christocentrism" doc.

Once you have answered the question individually, gather in groups of four or so and talk through your answers. Carefully address the final three to be sure you all can articulate the interpretation for each viewpoint.

Then, in pairs, find an article or story online and interpret it according to the three perspectives.

Be sure all of this material is placed in the shared folder in Drive.

If you have any time at the end of class, you may talk through your Observing Cultures Project.