The Culture Hour
Culture and Ethics
Anthropologist Renato Rosaldo relates a story about living with “headhunters” in the
Philippines during the 1960’s. He was initially horrified by their practice, but he eventually
realized that they were “as horrified of modern warfare as most of us would be of cannibalism
or headhunting. It was a kind of moral horror.” Their horror came from the idea that “…a
commanding officer could order his subordinates to move into the line of fire. That was
absolutely inconceivable to them. They said, "How can one person tell others to give up their
lives, to put themselves so at risk that it's highly likely they'll lose their lives?" That was their
moral threshold.”1
1. Should all cultures be considered equally valid patterns of life?2
2. Are there ‘universal truths’ that all people ought to follow?
3. Are there aspects of other cultures that you consider to be unethical?
4. Are there aspects of your own culture that you consider unethical?
5. When confronted with an ethical dilemma, what should you do?
a. Follow your personal ethical standards?
b. Follow the standards of the culture that created the situation?
c. Something else?
1
Of Headhunters and Soldiers: Separating Cultural and Ethical Relativsm. Renato Rosaldo,
http://www.scu.edu/ethics/publications/iie/v11n1/relativism.html
2
Ibid
Examples of differences in Ethics:
Affirmative Action – legal in the US, not in France
Abortion
a. Few Restrictions: UK, Canada, Sweden, Russia, China
b. Some restrictions: USA, Greece, Germany, Spain, South Africa, Tunisia, Turkey
c. Illegal, except under extreme circumstances: Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ireland, Egypt
Bribery (illegal nearly everywhere)
a. More common in: Russia, China, Brazil
b. Not common in: Netherlands, Japan, Singapore, USA
Definitions
Morality: standards that an individual or group has about what is right and wrong, or good and
evil
Values: principles or standards that people use to make judgments about what is important or
valuable in their lives
Ethics: the discipline that examines one’s moral standards or the moral standards of a society