PYQ Vault · Paper 1 · Political Ideologies
Comment on the Cultural Relativism in 150 words.
How the answer moves
The flow snapshot — the routes in, the body, the counter-view and the routes out.
Flow snapshot — how the answer moves
Intro routes
GQ Define cultural relativism — practices understood within their own cultural context, not judged by another's standards. &2 Open with its epistemological claim (Herskovits) that no moral vantage point is truly neutral.
Body flow
TT Term Core claim — understand cultures on their own terms → Melville Herskovits — judgments mediated by enculturation; no neutral standpoint → Franz Boas, The Mind of Primitive Man — rejects racial & civilizational hierarchy → corrective force — dismantles Eurocentric assumptions of progress → overlaps with multiculturalism, communitarian thought, the Asian-values debate
Counter-view
It slides into moral relativism — if every culture is its own moral universe, there is no ground to criticise female genital cutting, caste discrimination, or repression defended as "cultural."
Conclusion routes
€ Cultural relativism must be balanced with universal norms of dignity, justice and rights. €2 Understand cultures on their terms without surrendering cross- cultural moral judgment.
Model answer
Handwritten, in the form it would be written in the examination hall.
