Understanding Cultural Relativism: Case Study of Force Feeding in Mauritania

Cultural relativism is the statement that one's cultural viewpoint and practices should not be measured or judged against an observers individual background. By thinking about culture relativistically, anthropologists have the uncanny ability to view, interpret and subsequently present what is ethnocentrically considered the "weird" or "unjust" into the normal and the right. Say for example you saw a man drop a sandwich on the ground, pick it up and resume eating. Immediately you will think that he is "gross" and unhygienic. This is called ethnocentrism and it is a normal functionality of a human being. If this situation were to be analysed through cultural relativism, you could consider many justifications for it; maybe the person is deeply connected to the earth and does not consider dirt and grass to be unhygienic but natural. Cultural relativism allows individuals to withhold judgment and try to understand practices from an insiders perspective. To further analyse the correlation between ethnocentrism and cultural relativism, the cultural practice that I am going to analyse is the practice of gavage or force-feeding in the West Saharan nation of Mauritania. If one was to view gavage ethnocentrically from a Western perspective, the practice of force-feeding women in order to satisfy the Mauritanian image of "fat being sexy" (Vice, 2013) would seem barbaric.  

Being initially ethnocentric presents a starting point for ethnographical researchers to work from. In Mauritania, roughly 21% of the population live under $1.25 a day (UNDP, 2008) - in a country where food is scarce, female obesity is seen as a sign of wealth and prosperity. In tandem with this cultural perception, gavage is imposed onto daughters by parents. "Parents send their daughters to rural fattening camps, where they are force-fed over 15,000 calories a day in camel milk, figs, oiled breadcrumbs and couscous" (Vice on HBO, 2013). This method of fattening is often seen as being torturous and ignorant of developing health problems for the women.  

After establishing the ethnocentric viewpoints, anthropologists must restrain judgment and consider the context of the practice. To be morally relativistic means to withhold all judgment. Anthropologists however, prefer to approach cultural relativism through a methodological approach which states moral judgments are kept from empirical claims, moral judgments are only made after further understanding of practice and context. Let us compare Mauritanian culture to Western culture through the tool of normative relativism (Spiro 1986, p260) - which states that as there are no universal standards for judging culture, we must treat each culture equally. The reason behind the practice of gavage is linked to the West African idea that a skinny women is a sign of her family's poor status. This perception becomes internalized and the idea of fat indicating beauty and a high-level of sexual attractiveness is subconsciously agreed upon in the Mauritanian context. In the West, skinny is considered beautiful and women undergo practices such as cosmetic surgery (liposuction) to fit the image of beauty, paralleling our Mauritanian context. Both practices have been criticized (internationally and internally) for its health concerns; gavage has always been connected to heart failure, malformations and infertility. Forcefully becoming skinny in the West has been heavily linked to anorexia and bulimia nervosa.

Paralleling our investigation of gavage in Mauritania, we see that in the West anorexia nervosa is becoming a serious health issue amongst young women. Both stem from a desire to fit the social criteria of beauty and sexual attractiveness.

The pursuit of a socially perfect body has caused women to confine to cultural practices that could potentially be life-threatening. Here cultural relativism is an effective tool, as it has the ability to compare paralleling practices from two unique contexts with a withholding of judgment. Cultural relativism can have a negative effect, as it can be used as an excuse to promotes hate, violence, injustice and atrocities on a universal scale. In this example of gavage, we see that the practice has started to be criticized within its own culture, indicating that gavage is not merely a marginalized practice on a global scale, but also in modern day Mauritania. Yet gavage and Western cultures desire to be skinny both have paralleling health problems. Raising the question where does health and desire for perfection meet?

Bibliography

Spiro, M. (1986) Cultural Relativism and the Future of Anthropology, Cultural Anthropology 1(3): 259-286

United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), 2008, Human Development Indices, viewed 14 August 2013

< http://hdr.undp.org/en/media/HDI_2008_EN_Tables.pdf >

Vice (2013), Vice Episode 5: Winners & Losers, Broadcast Documentary Series, HBO, Brooklyn

Vice on HBO (2013) The Fat Farms of Mauritania, viewed 14 August 2013

< http://hbo.vice.com/episode-five/ep-5-seg-2 >