Is every culture rational in its own right?

The relativist accepts that there are converging ways to justify the rationality of different historical, political, religious and cultural factors. The absolutist would opine that there is only way to rationalise such factors – the ‘right’ way. The problem with latter approach is that the concept of an absolute sense of rationality to a person, depends on the standards of that persons culture and that persons beliefs, excluding all other possibilities. A practice central to all cultures is that of trying to get the world right, without taking into account how other cultures in the world (which are inherently different by nature) could co-exist harmoniously. 

Peter Winch wrote an essay called ‘Understanding a Primitive Society’. It gave rise to enough controversy to form the subject of this summary. This summary will analyse the difficult questions posed by Winch, such as questioning the very nature of social science itself, and the even more complex answers offered in response to those questions.  Currently, in today’s society – there is no genius answer to the question of how to reconcile the rationality of an institution with our own institution when they are at odds with one another.  This summary attempts to illustrate this issue through the example of how the Hawaiians perceived Captain James Cook before his death in 1778–9, rather than offer a conclusive answer to resolve the issue.

Winch opined that standards of rationality in different societies do not always coincide.  The demands for consistency within each and every culture renders it almost impossible for people to accept rationalities in certain cultures that are different to their own culture. The problem is that something normal in one culture – may not only be abnormal in another’s culture, but also abnormal in that others religion. For example, in some cultures polygamy and child marriage is normal and legal. However, these customs would not only violate another’s culture, but also the law of his/her country, his/her faith and his/her moral way of life. This exemplifies the problem of trying to swiftly unify two or more abstract, contrasting cultures together: nature has it, that this is difficult.

The standards of rationality in some cultures begin with an explanation of why those standards are, in and of themselves, as a matter of fact, rational. When this approach excludes all other perspectives of what could work in an alternative way, the approach confines itself to absolutism. When speaking of absolutist and relativist schools of thought, it is important to note that what is real/rational and unreal/irrational is revealed in the way the language is used. For example, the understanding that God exists is within the vocabulary of those who choose to use religious language. Not everyone shares this understanding because not everyone says it. In a similar vein, Europeans would assume that, in matters of witchcraft, Europeans are right and Zande’s are wrong because the practice of Zande witchcraft is unsophisticated compared to what our own sophisticated culture has to offer. Winch proposed that, in these situations, in order to grasp the rationality of another, apparently alien culture, the wider context of the life in which the activities are conducted must be investigated.

Lets go back to the question: how can we make intelligible institutions belonging to an alien/primitive culture, whose standards of rationality and intelligibility are at odds with our own? Winch argued: in order for people to extend their tolerance in this area, they need to extend their concept of intelligibility as to make it possible for them to experience what is rational in the life of the society under investigation. The onus is thus on the investigators to extend their understanding of what is encompassed in rationality – to open up their categories and to forfeit the common-human tendency to make pre-determinative distinctions between right from wrong.

The rational group is also known as the real or objective. But if every culture is rational, is there such thing as fiction and irrationality? Surely the line has to be drawn somewhere. If we were able to know things as they truly are, would we accept all types of rationalities? Or would we reject some, in knowing what is right from wrong? In answering these questions, Shalins opined that the fact that the Western common-sense view is meant to be objective is problematic in two respects. First, it constitutes experience in a culturally relative way, which is not the only possible way; and second, it deems itself a universal description of things-in-themselves. At issue is that it is common in the West to view the world as solely material and without spiritual presence.

A real-life event that has been made the subject of a theoretical-anthropological interpretative strategy is when Captain James Cook, in late 1778 arrived and died in Hawaii. Cook encountered many rituals during his time there, including a battle from which the benefit of mankind was reaffirmed. After Cook and his men took the (then) King of Hawaii hostage, a crowd of several thousand gathered around Cook and brought about his death. As regards interpreting the various accounts of events, it has been argued that the Hawaiians thought that James Cook was the god Lono. The opposing view is that Cook’s arrival and activities on the island violated the Hawaiians’ common-sense expectations of the arrival of the god. Regardless of the interpretation adopted, the explicit cultural differences and contrasting social realties must be understood. Once this is done, Winch’s question becomes clearly more difficult. Reconciling the way of life of different cultures is almost impossible.

As put by Herder, seeing is also a function of hearing in the sense that it is a judgment. The senses are culturally variable. Differences and resemblances are determined based off a persons life-experience in which his/her senses have been trained. Accordingly, applying western common-sense in the interpretation of other cultures is a kind of symbolic violence done to other times and other customs. For Obeyesekere, it was important to balance physical perceptions with cultural realities – to come up with practical rationality. Obeyesekere was of the view that alien cultures should be made intelligible in terms of mechanisms that are normal to the observer. By contrast, Sahlin argued that, in attempting to rationalise another’s culture, one’s own judgment should be temporarily suspended in order to situate the other practices in the relevant historical and cultural context that has made them possible. In conclusion, a common theme throughout each approach is that in order to interpret different cultures fairly, humans must engage in a generic way of thinking, for example by understanding different values in the field of their own cultural context and relationships rather than within the confines of our own moral judgments. This answer has many difficulties of its own – and the debate is still thriving.