Cultural pluralism
Cultural pluralism is a term that is majorly used by a particular group of people within the society, and they observe their uniqueness in their culture and values practices, which are accepted by the whole community. There is a big difference between cultural pluralism and multiculturalism. In multiculturalism, they lack a dominant culture. It is clear when there is a weakness in the dominant culture the society can move from cultural pluralism to multiculturism without any action taken to them by the community. One of good example of pluralism in the United States of America is a group of people who strongly believe in the culture, such as nationalism and sports culture, since they have their religion, ethnicity, and cultural norms. In this culture of pluralist groups, they engage each other even if they come from a different group, and they adopt qualities and traits which are sufficient to them, and it is worth it to have in the dominant culture. There is a lot of expectation of integration among the pluralistic societies on their member’s Cultural pluralism includes the friends we have, the food we take, and even the kind of people we interact with our daily activities.
Moreover, it gives as a vast experience in a different way of living, the way we look at our life, and the most crucial thing it enlightens us on how human beings can live together as one people even if we have our differences. If we take a keen look at our cities, Ney York being one of them, we find that there is a lot of cultural diversity, however in some cases, cultural pluralism comes with ethical challenges. In one of the culture, something may be unethical while in another culture is being accepted and even seen as usual in the way. An example can be extracted from the Jewish custom where the rabbi sucks the blood of a circumcised baby and the Jewish belief that the circumcision may not be complete if the rabbi has not done his rituals. For any person, this kind of practice is so much unethical. Still, we must accept as that is how they were raised and have been practicing from one generation to another .although these practices have some adverse effects on babies since the majority of them develop herpes, which is unhealthy for them. However, we should not judge or brand the whole community because of the specific individual or section of people have decided to pervert the original ideologies of a culture.
Moreover, there are certain traits with elders in the society which believe that women should not go to school and the only role they should play is to stay at home, taking care of children, cooking and cleaning in general. These people were Muslim leaders, and if I had not grown with them, I would have concluded and branded the whole community by just one activity which I had encounter by one leader. There is a point where ethical concerns and cultural pluralism develops into a problem.
It so severe for anyone to question a particular issue in another person’s culture about their practices being unethical, and they should stop practicing. They may pose a question on you on what basis makes you practice to be the right one of the others. But in the real sense, there are some practices which should be stopped, such as female mutilation and stoning of women. However, it is challenging to portrait such actions as unethical, and the only answer to these questions could be identified in two philosophical ideology which are the moral absolution and ethical relativism. Moral absolution could be defined as “it contends that there are universal principles that can only be applied in one correct way in every culture.” I align with the statement of the ideology since we cannot allow people who are innocent to get harmed because of a particular culture, which is an unethical belief that existed a long time ago.
In my own opinion, it would be necessary if culture practices that affect the lives of innocent people to be abolished and mentioned as unethical. Even appropriate legal action to be taken to those individuals who will be found practicing it in any way. On the other hand, we can identify things in the perspective of Ethical relativism which is defined as, “Moral right and wrong, good and bad, justice and injustice, virtue and they are always relative to a choice of a moral framework, and no moral frameworks are objectively privileged as the one true morality.” These statements try to explain to us their no way we can have a standard universal code of ethics since there is a lot of cultural differences and morals in the whole world. Furthermore, there will be a specific group of people who will disagree with the entire universal code even if it will be useful to others.
It is clear when ethical and cultural pluralism are put in one place. It becomes so tough to find solutions to these issues that occur. Moreover, there is a lot of cultures that are being practiced and are being considered to be unethical, and it is difficult to tell and intervene those people to stop practicing it. However, I align with the suggestion of having a universal ethical principle in the entire universe so that human beings can stay and live in a better place in the world.
References
Boyd, D. R. (2016). Dominance concealed through diversity: Implications of inadequate perspectives on cultural pluralism. In Becoming of Two Minds about Liberalism (pp. 121- 145). SensePublishers, Rotterdam.
Chalmers, F. G. (2019). Celebrating pluralism six years later: Visual transcultural/s, education, and critical multiculturalism. In Art, Culture, and Pedagogy (pp. 57-70). Brill Sense.
Schachner, M. K., Noack, P., Van de Vijver, F. J., & Eckstein, K. (2016). Cultural diversity climate and psychological adjustment at school—Equality and inclusion versus cultural pluralism. Child Development, 87(4), 1175-1191.
Schachner, M. K. (2019). From equality and inclusion to cultural pluralism–Evolution, and effects of cultural diversity perspectives in schools. European Journal of Developmental Psychology, 16(1), 1-17.