Editing Cultural relativism (section)

===Political critique===
On the one hand, many anthropologists began to criticize the way moral relativism, in the guise of cultural relativism, is used to mask the effects of Western colonialism and imperialism. Thus, [[Stanley Diamond]] argued that when the term "cultural relativism" entered popular culture, popular culture co-opted [[anthropology]] in a way that voided the principle of any critical function:

{{quote|Relativism is the bad faith of the conqueror, who has become secure enough to become a tourist.

Cultural relativism is a purely intellectual attitude; it does not inhibit the anthropologist from participating as a professional in his own milieu; on the contrary, it rationalizes that milieu. Relativism is self-critical only in the abstract. Nor does it lead to engagement. It only converts the anthropologist into a shadowy figure, prone to newsworthy and shallow pronouncements about the cosmic condition of the human race. It has the effect of mystifying the profession, so that the very term ''anthropologist'' ("student of man") commands the attention of an increasingly "popular" audience in search of novelty. But the search for self-knowledge, which [[Michel de Montaigne|Montaigne]] was the first to link to the annihilation of prejudice, is reduced to the experience of culture shock, a phrase used by both anthropologists and the State Department to account for the disorientation that usually follows an encounter with an alien way of life. But culture shock is a condition one recovers from; it is not experienced as an authentic redefinition of the personality but as a testing of its tolerance ... The tendency of relativism, which it never quite achieves, is to detach the anthropologist from all particular cultures. Nor does it provide him with a moral center, only a job.<ref>Stanley Diamond 2004 [1974] ''In Search of the Primitive''  New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers page 110</ref>}}

[[George W. Stocking, Jr.|George Stocking]] summarized this view with the observation that "Cultural relativism, which had buttressed the attack against racialism, [can] be perceived as a sort of neo-racialism justifying the backward techno-economic status of once colonized peoples."<ref>Stocking, George W. Jr., 1982. "Afterward: A View from the Center" in ''Ethnos'' 47: 172–286</ref>