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For the past half-century, cultural relativism has reigned as anthropology's virtually undisputed ideology and inviolate mythology. Originally an intellectual antidote to the pseudo-biologism of European nationalism, the putative cure merits discussion as at least a semantic and epistemological disorder. The heuristic strategy of examining a way of life on its own terms has been superseded by
a doctrinaire insistence that this is the only methodologically legitimate—and moral—way to conduct an analysis of culture.
Not only do cultures differ, but there are no universal standards by which cultures are to be compared. Each group must be approached ideographically, as though the science of man were an aesthetic exercise. Cultural relativists repudiate and rebuke the evolutionism of anthropology's founders as a rationalization for colonialism, imperialism, and racism. The secular, urbanized, industrialized West is viewed as far from the pinnacle of human experience; it is seen rather as its nadir. While all cultures are relativistically equal, some are clearly more equal than others. Invidiously, the image of the West becomes the (paranoid?) vision of decadence and imperiousness, while the primitive, the simple, the traditional, and the unacculturated become the measure of humanity. Culture change was only slowly and reluctantly admitted into anthropology. Simplistically, the modernized West is seen as predator, and all authentic culture is seen as victim.
The face of relativism is the mask of inverted evolutionism—itself an ideological mask for perpetual (adolescent?) rebelliousness against anything associated with the (parental?) West. Every group, perhaps, has its origin myth, and likewise some Arcadia for which its members nostalgically long: among anthropologists, I suppose, hunter-gatherers represent this (imagined) lost goodness and innocence (a displaced family romance?) Those were the days! Presumably, some form of benign devolution would return u