text:
Talk:Lloyd deMause

Satanic Ritual Abuse Hysteria Participant
It should be noted somewhere in this article that deMause was a contributor to the whole Satanic Ritual Abuse hysteria of the early 1990s, in part via his article "Why Cults Terrorize and Kill Children" (often cited by the SRA folks, as for instance here - ritualabuse.us/ritualabuse/articles/why-cults-terrorize-and-kill-children-lloyd-demause-the-journal-of-psychohistory/). Now that the truth is finally coming out about the falsity of the vast majority of the ritual abuse claims, the innocence of most of the defendants, and the excesses of the prosecutions that took place, his part in trying to give it some legitimacy should be noted. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.178.28.18 (talk) 22:16, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

China footbinding
"Highly influential" is hard to measure. A list of people he has influenced would be useful.

As far as I can tell, deMause's theory rests on Freudian psychoanalysis; if Freud was wrong about, for example, transference, deMause's results dissolve, since they're based on that.

He also seems (from very brief research) to be generalizing too wildly. For example, I found a paper of his that comments about China in ways that assume that foot-binding was a universal practice. A little research shows that it varied over time and space--being more common in northern than southern China, more common among aristocrats than among the poor who do most of the work, and discouraged by and under the Mongols. (See ). Vicki Rosenzweig, Tuesday, June 4, 2002

 * He may also be completely wrong about the impact of footbinding on China's cultural evolution. But that's unimportant because China is peripheral to his theories. China isn't something he studied much, probably because it's a basketcase as far as cultural evolution goes.

 * And in any case, nothing I've read of his requires that footbinding in China be universal, it only requires it to be very prevalent. Just like there's no need for infanticide to have been universal at some point in the past to have made a critical impact on those people's psyche.

 * Regarding Freud. It is not fair to say that deMause's work relies on Freud since he spends some time shredding the guy, in addition to disproving things like the Oedipal complex. It is fair to say that deMause's work depends on psychoanalysis, at least methodologically. It's also fair to say that the theory rests on transferance but that is nothing surprising or earth-shattering in any way.

 * Saying that "if transference is wrong the deMause's results dissolve" is much like saying "if the force of gravity is wrong then superstrings theory dissolves". You're not exactly giving what a psychologist would consider a realistic example. It's not like there's any doubt, let alone controversy, on whether transferance exists. – ark

 * —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ark (talk • contribs)

 * deMause is indeed a leading figure, but his claims to have "invented" Psychohistory are a bit of an overstatement. The field evolved out of some of Freud's own writings, such as "History and its Discontents," as well as the works of many others such as Louis Namier and Fawn Brodie.  In canvassing various listservs and newsgroups devoted to the field, I have found that deMause and his supporters dominate these discussions and some of deMause's writings (books, articles and opinions on the aforementioned message groups) seem to indicate an unwillingness to be open to other psychohistorical interpretations or methods.  This intractability strikes me as less than scholarly.

 * —Preceding unsigned comment added by Frenchfriar  (talk • contribs)

DEMAUSE REPLIES TO INACCURACIES
Much of what appears in these pages on psychohistory and on myself is inaccurate. I have nowhere said I "created the academic field of psychohistory," and would not say so, since Freud and Fromm and many other early psychoanalysts wrote psychohistorical studies ("psychohistory" being the study of historical motivations). I nowhere argue that "mainstream anthropologists are advocates of pedophilia," only that they often claim the widespread sexual use of children by the groups they study is merely a "cultural practice" that cannot be called pedophilia because the society itself does not label it pedophilia. I nowhere claim footbinding in China is universal. To call my writing "less than scholarly" because I have "an unwillingness to be open to other psychohistorical interpretations" is certainly inaccurate because I have spent four decades publishing hundreds of scholars who disagree with me in both my Journal of Psychohistory and Journal of Psychoanalytic Anthropology. Nor am I accurately described as "a psychologist," since I majored at Columbia University for seven years in political science and was further trained at a psychoanalytic institute. Interested readers who are interested in learning accurately about myself and psychohistory are directed to the dozen articles and three full books (with thousands of scholarly references) on www.psychohistory.com. --Lloyd deMause

—Preceding unsigned comment added by 165.247.47.53 (talk)

 * Why don't you correct the articles on yourself and psychohistory then? You could do that, you know.

 * —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ding (talk • contribs)

 * Yeah i have to agree with Lloyd deMause here. This man above is ranting. Freud still hasnt been discredited.

 * —Preceding unsigned comment added by Operationinfinitebananas (talk • contribs)

 * Why was deMause's comment copied into the article? It refers to assertions made on this talk page, not to the article (or perhaps to some old version of the article?), and is in no way a famous quote or a quote that especially characterizes his work, so it doesn't belong there. And where's that pedophilia misquote he refers to? --84.188.134.80 20:21, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

Lloyd deMause writes: "I nowhere claim footbinding in China is universal.". Lamentably this is not true. In his article 'The History of Child Abuse' published in The Journal of Psychohistory 25 (3) in Winter 1998 Mr de Mause states that “Even the universal practice of foot binding was for sexual purposes, with a girl undergoing extremely painful crushing of the bones of her feet for years in order that men could make love to her big toe as a fetish, a penis-substitute.” With best regards Dr. Boris Scharlowski 194.162.140.66 13:14, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

For the record, subjects of articles generally shouldn't edit them. See Conflict of interest. -- Beland (talk) 05:39, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

POV
This guys ideas seem to be basically taking modern ideas and projecting them into the past. I wouldn't be surprised to see him speak of Ancient Greeks using mopeds and cell phones. We need to get some criticism in here, and I intend to look for some references in this regard.

I removed statement about him being influential in the field, as I am not convinced the field consists of anything other than his invention and there are no references outside his material given at all. --DanielCD 15:29, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

Here's one that seems to be somewhat on the mark:

—Preceding unsigned comment added by DanielCD (talk • contribs)

NPOV tag
It’s incredible that in only three paragraphs there is no NPOV account of Lloyd De Mause and psychohistory. —Cesar Tort 23:02, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

DeMause a serious thinker
RE the criticisms above about deMause and his "supporters": I am a writer who has studied intellectual gurus and cranks for decades. Over the past 15 years I have attended many IPA conferences and study groups, and have spent much time in discussions with leading IPA members. I did so not in search of another guru type to study but because of my own interest in psychohistorical issues. However, my antenna are always alert to weirdness. I wish to state that I observed nothing in and around the IPA that would lead me to believe that LD is a guru surrounded by uncritical disciples; that the IPA or LD himself are intolerant of opposing views within psychohistory; or that the IPA comprises an isolated group that mimics academic respectability by mostly citing its own members. Conference papers and Journal of Psychohistory articles are full of citations (and the influence) of rival viewpoints within psychohistory, such as that of Robert Jay Lifton. People within the IPA frequently and robustly disagree with LD and with each other (often heatedly), and I observed no system of sanctions or atmosphere of disapproval to militate against such free debate.

Given the high quality of analysis in many journal articles; the credentials of the scholars and professionals who participate in the journal and the IPA; and the openness of debate, I am convinced that the IPA and the scholars around it such as deMause, Beisel, Atlas, Elovitz and Lawton are serious intellectuals. They may be wrong in some of their hypotheses--and certainly they need to stimulate field research if they wish to overcome the skepticism surrounding psychohistory in general--but they do not deserve certain of the exaggerated criticisms found earlier in this discussion.

I made some additions to the article (April 8) in an effort to provide a clearer description of deMause's theories. I did this not as a "supporter" of deMause (like many IPA members I agree with him on some things but not on others) but to provide a framework for future development of this article along NPOV lines.

dking (Dennis King) 8 April 2006

—Preceding unsigned comment added by 152.163.101.6 (talk)

Devolution
The term 'devolution' appears to be used incorrectly in the sentence: "He has written many books about changes in the human psyche in historical times that he believes were produced by progressive development (and/or devolution) in childrearing practices.

As far as i understand it, it is being used in the context of Devolution (fallacy) rather than devolution. I've changed it to the correct evolution. However, this may not be contextually appropriate either. Perhaps someone with a greater insight to deMause's work could reword.  Rockpock e  t  17:13, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

 * I changed "devolution" to "regressive changes", which was the meaning I intended by using the former term. -- dking (Dennis King) 8 June 2006

 * —Preceding unsigned comment added by 152.163.101.6 (talk)

Psychohistory
I'm adding a deffinition of Psychohistory to the second paragraph.149.165.90.22 15:49, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

critics
the statement "these people do not counter deMause's massive evidence by any of their own research. Nor do they mention deMause's four decades of publications:" at best requires a citation. who are these people? what original research exists in the positive that can be countered or reproduced? and four decades of publications doesn't mean much to me. what was the peer review process?

Carlo C.Butterlover 16:32, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

 * Agreed. I've added citation. —Cesar Tort 17:14, 30 July 2007 (UTC)
 * What is the purpose of noting Cunningham's objections to de Mause? Cunningham's own work has been critiqued.
 * It is to be expected that someone would voice an objection to an influential work like The History of Childhood. In this article, a single instance of critique is used to support the statement that historians are hostile to deMause's work, which suggests some kind of consensus amongst historians (and against deMause) that does not exist.
 * The refernece should be removed or rewritten. --Biaothanatoi (talk) 23:18, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Content fork
The following looks like a content fork - the page is about deMause, and while his work is going to be part of the page, the core should be the man and his life, not an explanation of his theory. This content might be more fruitfully integrated into the Psychohistory main page, right now the page is almost exclusively about the theory of psychohistory, and virtually nothing about the man beyond what is in the lead and info box.

Also note that in my trimmings, I had removed bibliographical items that were duplicated in the footnotes, in removing this information I may have removed some of the footnotes and now the bibliography section is missing content.

"Psychohistory, the study of the psychological motivations of historical events, remains a controversial field of study, and deMause and other IPA scholars have detractors in the academic community. Some historians and anthropologists claim that deMause's own formulations are insufficiently supported by credible research. DeMause believes that his detractors are not largely moved by any evidence, but rather are unconsciously motivated to attack those who would challenge the idea of 'good parenting' throughout the many of cultures."

"The conflict of new and old psychoclasses is also pivotal in Demausean thought. This is reflected, for instance, in the clash between Blue State (presumably the new psychoclass) and Red State voters in the contemporary United States. Another key concept is that of group fantasy, which deMause regards as a mediating force between a psychoclass's collective childhood experiences (and the psychic conflicts emerging therefrom) and the psychoclass's behavior in politics, religion and other aspects of social life."

"The History of Childhood is often linked to Edward Shorter's The Making of the Modern Family and Lawrence Stone's The Family, Sex and Marriage in England 1500-1800, because of the common ground they share in agreeing with a grim perspective of childhood history. On the other hand, deMause's work has attracted hostility from historian Hugh Cunningham. It has been argued that he has written a history of child abuse and not of childhood. Also, some critics claim that the sources he used lack the systematic analysis that would give the reader confidence in them as reliable evidence."

WLU (talk) 19:32, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

 * OK: I'will try to move that to the Psychohistory article. —Cesar Tort 19:35, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

 * Cool. The deMause page still desperately needs expanding with more info about the man.  Any chance he's been in any torrid love affairs or international espionage incidents?  That could be fun to write about...  WLU (talk) 22:30, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Another view of deMause
I looked up deMause the other day in Wikipedia, and I was very surprised by the tiny size of the entry. On reading this Discussion page I learned of the controversy over his notability. As an applied mathematician (specializing in the social sciences), psychohistory is way outside my domain of professional expertise, but perhaps I can contribute something useful and quantitative to this discussion anyway.

My exposure to deMause and psychohistory came about in an unusual way: my wife was the copy editor for the Journal of Psychohistory for many years. She would periodically bring articles to my attention, and over the years I have read quite a few. I want to try to bring some perspective to this discussion with two contributions: some facts about psychohistory as a scholarly endeavor, and an independent analysis of the significance of deMause in the history of ideas.

First, some facts about psychohistory as a legitimate domain of inquiry:

 * The International Psychohistorical Association, founded in 1977 by Lloyd de Mause, has annual meetings every year for 30 years. I have never attended, but friends tell me that they are well-attended by psychoanalysts, therapists, and authors from around the world.

 * The Journal of Psychohistory (founded and edited by deMause) is listed in the 2005 catalog of journals held by 500 or more libraries around the world. Source: http://www.ilstu.edu/~brstoff/ebss/psycjournals305.htm

 * The Journal of Psychohistory had an impact factor of 0.47 in 2001. In the list of all social science journals, ranked by impact factor, J.Psychohistory appears on page 17 out of 27 pages. In other words, it ranked higher than 37% of all journals in psychology in impact factor. It was very close to the Journal of Forensic Psychiatry, the Journal of Psychosocial Oncology, and the Journal of Mathematical Sociology. (Impact factor is calculated by dividing the number of current citations to articles published in the two previous years by the total number of articles published in the two previous years, among all journals indexed by the Social Science Citation Index.) Source: http://www.psych.uw.edu.pl/doktoranckie/n2/pliki/impact_factor.pdf

 * At Journal-Ranking.com, which uses a more broadly-based index of journal quality, the Journal of Psychohistory ranks #4662 out of all 8000 journals ranked. Within the category of "Psychology - Multidisciplinary", the Journal of Psychohistory ranked #52 out of 106. Source: http://www.journal-ranking.com/ranking/listCommonRanking.html?journalListId=423&citingStartYear=1901&selfCitationWeight=1&pagingPage=1&externalCitationWeight=1&

For all these reasons it would seem that psychohistory — a discipline founded by deMause — has a legitimate claim to space within Wikipedia. Now let me turn to my view on the notability of deMause himself.

It seems to me that deMause has contributed ideas to the social sciences in two distinct areas: (a) the frequency and severity of child abuse in European history, and (b) the fantasy-life of nations. The second of these two areas is distinctly speculative and non-scientific, and I have little use or respect for it. The first, on the other hand, contains original and important scientific hypotheses that someday will be verifiable with empirical data.

Let me draw an analogy between the ideas of deMause and those of Lawrence Keeley, professor of Archeology at the University of Illinois:

 * Keeley holds that the frequency of deaths from warfare was greater in the past than it is today, and that it has been decreasing for the past two or three millennia. This directly contradicts the commonly-held opinion, both within anthropology and the public mind, that "primitive" societies were much more peaceful than modern societies (this is the "Myth of the Peaceful Savage"). Keeley's 1996 book, "War Before Civilization" adduced an enormous amount of historical and archeological data in support of his controversial thesis.

 * DeMause holds that the frequency and severity of child abuse was greater in the past than it is today, and that it has been decreasing for the past two millenia or so. This directly contradicted the then commonly-held opinion, both within anthropology and the public mind, that neither "primitive" nor modern societies treat their children badly at all. DeMause's breakthrough 1978 monograph, "The Evolution of Childhood", was hugely controversial, despite the enormous amount of scholarly historical references that deMause brought to bear on this question.

In my non-expert opinion as a mere mathematician and statistician, deMause's career has been hampered by two things: his theory emerged 20 years too early for it to have been taken seriously, and he had no education in epidemiology or quantitative social science. He attempted to justify his theory using methods that were standard in psychoanalysis at the time, but which bear little resemblance or connection to real science. Despite his very weak scientific methodology, however, I do believe that his theory deserves respect and testing by others more knowledgeable of how to do the testing, exactly as Keeley's theory has.

Almost all of the "knowledge" that we thought we had back in the 1960s and 70s on contemporary rates of child sexual abuse are now known to be radically understated, for girls and even more for boys. The "Battered Child Syndrome" was only recognized in medicine in 1962, by Dr. C. Henry Kempe. If we were in such ignorance and denial then, only forty years ago, how much more might it have been during the Victorian Era, say, or the Middle Ages?

I think it is important to realize that when deMause first advanced his hypothesis about child abuse in history, he was being hard-nosed in comparison to his contemporaries. The mythology of the day held that child abuse was virtually non-existent, and that the past experiences of children were idyllic. DeMause attacked those ideas with hundreds upon hundreds of written historical documents that indicated otherwise. That effort inspired the early pioneers of the movement to uncover contemporary child abuse, and for that contribution alone deMause is notable. I believe that his historical theory will one day be testable, just as Keeley's parallel theory is now. No matter whether deMause is ultimately found to be right or wrong, his notable contribution was to be the first to raise the question, and thus to inspire others to look into the topic of the effects of child abuse generally.

Here is what Alice Miller, a popular author who has a substantial biography in Wikipedia, recently wrote about deMause (the bold emphasis is mine):

"'But working toward a better, more aware future cannot be done in isolation from the ongoing attempt to understand our history in all its facets, for us as individuals and as society. The work started by Lloyd deMause and continued by him and other psychohistorians is to my knowledge the first systematic research in this direction. The history of child-rearing might be more illuminating than many others in illustrating the dangers for society at large attendant on willful ignorance about child development. The ongoing research on babies from birth to three might be helpful for eventually overcoming this ignorance. It may enable some historians to raise more frequently the question raised for the first time by Lloyd deMause: what does it feel like to be an abused infant, without any enlightened witnesses? Unfortunately, the early childhood of people who recently mercilessly killed in Rwanda has not yet become an issue for psychological or sociological investigation. But should empathic psychohistorians once become interested in finding out and describing the atmosphere of the first years of the killer's life, they could probably be able to explain some of the events that still seem inexplicable.' — Quoted in: http://www.naturalchild.org/alice_miller/political.html"

For all of these reasons, I urge that the deMause biography receive better treatment in Wikipedia, including a discussion of the notability of his creations, the discipline of psychohistory, its journal, its institute, and its 30 years of international conferences — all undertaken in a climate of extreme denial of the realities of child abuse. —Aetheling (talk) 20:15, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

 * "I looked up deMause the other day in Wikipedia, and I was very surprised by the tiny size of the entry."

 * Dear Aetheling, as you can appreciate in the above discussion, some content has been moved from this article to Psychohistory in order to comply with the Wikipedia policy to avoid Content Forks.

 * I agree with you that the page size is tiny. Perhaps you that seem to know deMause much better than me can contribute to expand the page by adding biographical information. DeMause's scholarly work is fully described in the articles Psychohistory and Psychohistorical views on infanticide.

 * I look forward to find biographical info of deMause for this article.

 * —Cesar Tort 21:51, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Expanding the article
It seems rather odd that even the basic list of his works was removed during the controversy on NPOV. I've restored that--I assume it must have been accidental.

As for "content fork", it is invariably the case that some indication of the work of a scholar be given at the biographical article of the scholar. The general subject article should not be devoted to any one scholar's view, but should show the diversity of opinion. As I've never though much about him before this week, I'll try to restore a suitably objective discussion. I have formed some impression from the above discussion of what has been going on: first, any discussion of child abuse is going to be very controversial. In a broader sense, there is obviously no agreement between historians generally about the possible benefit of a viewpoint based on psychoanalysis or each of the various schools of psychoanalysis, just as there is no agreement about a viewpoint based on Marxism.
 * and I can tell you one thing very clearly as a librarian: the data given above on the Journal of his journal shows it to be a real but not very important journal. an impact factor like that is nothing to boast about. Nor is a rank on other factors merely midway among psychology journals. However, I will take a look at the article in WP on it at some point. DGG (talk) 01:04, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

 * I did not intend to imply that the Journal of Psychohistory is "important", only that it has a following and cannot be dismissed so cavalierly. While you are looking up things, perhaps you could look up the entry for Lloyd deMause in the Social Science Citation Index. How many citations has he been getting recently? I don't have institutional access, so I can't do the research myself. —Aetheling (talk) 04:53, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

 * I searched the Web of Science (combining the SSCI and SCI; my access covers 1975 till present). 39 publications are listed that have been cited a total of 82 times (the maximum being 15). Excluding self-citations leaves 58 articles that cite him. His h-index is 7. As this is all unbelievably low, I tried searching for different name variants: "Author=(mause dl*) OR Author=(demause L*) OR Author=(de mause l*)", but that didn't change anything. Something must be wrong here, I know postdocs that have more citations than that... Most citations seem to come from the Journal of Psychohistory, which has a 2006 Impact factor of 0.389 (the vast majority of citations being from the journal itself). This ranks it 73 out of 99 journals in its ISI category, "PSYCHOLOGY, MULTIDISCIPLINARY". 709 citations to deMause come up if I search for "cited reference", which still is not really that much but does show that most citations are to his works published in sources that are not covered by the SSCI and SCI. Perhaps someone here has an explanation for the low citation figures that I find for deMause, they seem decidedly unrealistic for someone who more or less founded a field (even one considered as fringe by some). --Crusio (talk) 11:19, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

 * You searched in the web of science. I am a total newbie about these matters but of course psychohistory, like the humanities, is not a hard science. I guess the journal we are talking about belongs in the category of "Psychology - Multidisciplinary"? Is there a specific search engine to measure these journals' ratings?—Cesar Tort 16:30, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Psychology and humanities in general are certainly considered "science" by me (and I'm a life scientist myself). In any case, WoS includes the SSCI. Sorry that I did not expand that abbreviation: it stands for Social Sciences Citation Index (as well as the Arts & Humanities Citation Index, by the way). For journals' ratings, the most authorative source is the JCR (Journal Citation Reports), from which I took that category heading "Psychology - Multidisciplinary". --Crusio (talk) 16:42, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Doing justice to Lloyd deMause
I've just come across this Wikipedia entry, and I'm surprised and disappointed by it. It seems to have been edited in way that is hostile to a great man; presumably, by a behaviourist on a mission. There is no doubt that Lloyd DeMause has made one of the greatest contributions to the development of psychoanalytic thought over the past forty years. His books are fascinating. His chapter 'The Evolution of Childhood' in the book 'The History of Childhood.' (1974: The Psychoanalytic press) is a scholarly but highly readable work. It has had a great influence on Psychoanalysis, and on our understanding of families. I'm amazed that the Wikipedia has such great content on minor computer geeks whose influence is comparatively minor and transient, whereas a man like Lloyd DeMause, whose eminence is widely acknowledged by his peers, and by academia in general, is given such short shrift. Even if you disagree with psychohistory, it is well-worth study. It is as rigorous as any other aspect of the study of history, thanks to Lloyd. I would add, on a more personal note, that his famous analysis of the Nixon Tapes, completely changed my view of World Politics. His conclusions were frightening at the time, but have been borne out by subsequent events.

—Preceding unsigned comment added by AndrewRMClarke (talk • contribs)

 * This article should be expanded with info about Lloyd's life. With regard to psychohistory, the article Psychohistory also needs work. I agree with you that we need more balanced articles on this subject. Which specific sentences would you dispute in either of these articles? —Cesar Tort 15:37, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

Is deMause Jewish?
Recently I have witnessed online discussions that deMause might be of Jewish heritage. But blogs and forums are not reliable sources. Any reliable source that confirms that? 189.249.225.211 (talk) 00:33, 18 February 2014 (UTC)

 * Where did you see this discussion? Has he ever commented about being Jewish or not? I've read some of his articles on Jewish history. Can you put a link? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Madgambler (talk • contribs)

_____________________________________________________

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified one external link on Lloyd deMause. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20140929222118/http://www.psychohistory.com/htm/bio.html to http://www.psychohistory.com/htm/bio.html

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot  (Report bug) 17:43, 5 December 2017 (UTC)

title: Talk:Lloyd deMause


text:
Goldwasser

Goldwasser or Danziger Goldwasser (lit. 'Gold water from Gdańsk'), Wódka Gdańska, with Goldwasser as the registered tradename, is a strong (40% ABV) root and herbal liqueur which was produced from 1598 to 2009 in Gdańsk (Danzig). Production now takes place in Germany.

The most prominent characteristic of the drink is small flakes of 23 karat gold suspended in it. The beverage also includes herbs and spices such as cardamom, cloves, cinnamon, lavender, thyme, coriander and juniper, and has a syrupy texture.

Alcoholic solutions were used by artists for gilding, which is believed to be the inspiration for the drink. Alchemy, which was at its high point in the late 16th century when Goldwasser appeared, held gold to have many desirable medical properties; while modern medicine disputes this, native gold is known to be non-toxic to humans and to pass through the digestive tract unchanged, unlike most other heavy metals. Since the flakes are extremely small and thin, the price is not prohibitive. When used as a food additive, gold is labelled as E175; see List of food additives, Codex Alimentarius.

The drink was invented by a Dutchman from De Lier, Ambrosius Vermeulen who moved to Poland and became a citizen of Gdańsk on 6 July 1598. In 1704 Ambrosius' grandson Salomon Vermöllen and his brother-in-law Isaac Wed-Ling moved production to new premises located in the Breitgasse. At that time it was common for houses to use animal symbols instead of numbers, and the new factory featured a salmon (Lachs) on the façade; hence the naming of the brand "Der Lachs zu Danzig".

During his trip to Western Europe — the so-called Grand Embassy — Russian Tsar Peter I the Great visited the city of Gdańsk. He founded the official Russian consulate in Gdańsk and became a great lover of Goldwasser. He ordered permanent delivery of Goldwasser to Russia for himself.

As the Free City of Gdańsk was separated from Germany after World War I by the Polish corridor, the Der Lachs company opened in 1922 an additional factory in Berlin to supply the main part of Germany and international markets with their products Goldwasser and Krambambuli from there. After 1945, when the city again became part of Poland, only the Berlin factory continued to produce genuine Danziger Goldwasser. In 1971 Der Lachs was taken over by the Hardenberg-Wilthen distillery and production was moved to the town of Nörten-Hardenberg in West Germany.

It is possible to buy the original brand of Goldwasser in the old town of Gdansk. The original Goldwasser distillery building, though not operational, has been rebuilt as it was before the war, and is now home to the exclusive restaurant "Pod Łososiem" (The Salmon).

Various Polish brands from Gdańsk sell similar drinks called Gdańska Złotówka (Gdańsk gold) or Złota Woda (Gold water).

Wódka Gdańska is mentioned by the Polish-Lithuanian poet, Adam Mickiewicz, as a drink popular with the Polish nobility.

Legend has it that when King of Poland Sigismund II Augustus visited Gdańsk in 1549 after his coronation, part of the city's homage to the monarch was a gift of Goldwasser, and he is said to have sung the praises of the golden drink often along the rest of his tour.

Another brand of Goldwasser, Schwabacher Goldwasser, and other sorts of food embellished with gold, are produced in the city of Schwabach near Nuremberg. Goldschläger is a Swiss cinnamon schnapps which also contains small flakes of 22 karat gold.

Goldwasser is used to flavour Soufflé Rothschild.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Goldwasser


text:
Cultural relativism

Cultural relativism is the position that there is no universal standard to measure cultures by, and that all cultural values and beliefs must be understood relative to their cultural context, and not judged based on outside norms and values. Proponents of cultural relativism also tend to argue that the norms and values of one culture should not be evaluated using the norms and values of another.

The concept was established by anthropologist Franz Boas, who first articulated the idea in 1887: "civilization is not something absolute, but...is relative, and... our ideas and conceptions are true only so far as our civilization goes". However, Boas did not use the phrase "cultural relativism". The concept was spread by Boas' students, such as Robert Lowie.

The first use of the term recorded in the Oxford English Dictionary was by philosopher and social theorist Alain Locke in 1924 to describe Lowie's "extreme cultural relativism", found in the latter's 1917 book Culture and Ethnology.

The term became common among anthropologists after Boas' death in 1942, to express their synthesis of a number of ideas he had developed. Boas believed that the sweep of cultures, to be found in connection with any subspecies, is so vast and pervasive that there cannot be a relationship between culture and race. Cultural relativism involves specific epistemological and methodological claims. Whether or not these claims necessitate a specific ethical stance is a matter of debate. Cultural relativism became popularized after World War II in reaction to historical events such as "Nazism, and to colonialism, ethnocentrism and racism more generally."

In antiquity
Herodotus (Histories 3.38) observes on the relativity of mores (νόμοι): "If anyone, no matter who, were given the opportunity of choosing from amongst all the nations in the world the set of beliefs which he thought best, he would inevitably—after careful considerations of their relative merits—choose that of his own country. Everyone without exception believes his own native customs, and the religion he was brought up in, to be the best; and that being so, it is unlikely that anyone but a madman would mock at such things. There is abundant evidence that this is the universal feeling about the ancient customs of one's country."

- translated by Aubrey de Selincourt

He mentions an anecdote of Darius the Great who illustrated the principle by inquiring about the funeral customs of the Greeks and the Callatiae, peoples from the extreme western and eastern fringes of his empire, respectively. They practiced cremation and funerary cannibalism, respectively, and were each dismayed and abhorred at the proposition of the other tribes' practices.

The works of the Pyrrhonist philosopher Sextus Empiricus detail ancient Greek arguments for cultural relativism as part of the tenth of the Ten Modes of Aenesidemus.

As a methodological and heuristic device
According to George E. Marcus and Michael M. J. Fischer:

"20th century social and cultural anthropology has promised its still largely Western readership enlightenment on two fronts. The one has been the salvaging of distinct cultural forms of life from a process of apparent global Westernization. With both its romantic appeal and its scientific intentions, anthropology has stood for the refusal to accept this conventional perception of homogenization toward a dominant Western model."

Cultural relativism was, in part, a response to Western ethnocentrism. Ethnocentrism may take obvious forms, in which one consciously believes that one's people's arts are the most beautiful, values the most virtuous, and beliefs the most truthful. Franz Boas, originally trained in physics and geography, and heavily influenced by the thought of Kant, Herder, and von Humboldt, argued that one's culture may mediate and thus limit one's perceptions in less obvious ways. Boas understood "culture" to include not only certain tastes in food, art, and music, or beliefs about religion; he assumed a much broader notion of culture, defined as:

"[T]he totality of the mental and physical reactions and activities that characterize the behavior of the individuals composing a social group collectively and individually in relation to their natural environment, to other groups, to members of the group itself, and of each individual to himself."

This view of culture confronts anthropologists with two problems: first, how to escape the unconscious bonds of one's own culture, which inevitably bias our perceptions of and reactions to the world, and second, how to make sense of an unfamiliar culture. The principle of cultural relativism thus forced anthropologists to develop innovative methods and heuristic strategies.

As a methodological tool
Between World War I and II, cultural relativism was the central tool for American anthropologists in this rejection of Western claims to universality and salvage of non-Western cultures. It functioned to transform Boas' epistemology into methodological lessons.

This is most obvious in the case of language. Although language is commonly thought of as a means of communication, Boas called attention especially to the idea that it is also a means of categorizing experiences, hypothesizing that the existence of different languages suggests that people categorize, and thus experience, language differently (this view was more fully developed in the hypothesis of Linguistic relativity).

Thus, although all people perceive visible radiation the same way, in terms of a continuum of color, people who speak different languages slice up this continuum into discrete colors in different ways. Some languages have no word that corresponds to the English word green. When people who speak such languages are shown a green chip, some identify it using their word for blue, others identify it using their word for yellow. Thus, Boas's student Melville Herskovits summed up the principle of cultural relativism thus: "Judgements are based on experience, and experience is interpreted by each individual in terms of his own enculturation."

Boas pointed out that scientists grow up and work in a particular culture, and are thus necessarily ethnocentric. He provided an example of this in his 1889 article "On Alternating Sounds". A number of linguists at Boas's time had observed that speakers of some Native-American languages pronounced the same word with different sounds indiscriminately. They thought that this meant that the languages were unorganized and lacked strict rules for pronunciation, and they took it as evidence that the languages were more primitive than their own. Boas, however, noted that the variant pronunciations were not an effect of lack of organization of sound patterns, but an effect of the fact that these languages organized sounds differently from English. The languages grouped sounds that were considered distinct in English into a single sound, but also having contrasts that did not exist in English. He then argued the case that Native Americans had been pronouncing the word in question the same way, consistently, and the variation was only perceived by someone whose own language distinguishes those two sounds. Boas's student, the linguist Edward Sapir, later noted also that English speakers pronounce sounds differently even when they think they are pronouncing the same sound. For example, few English speakers realize that the sounds written with the letter $\langlet\rangle$ in the words tick and stick are phonetically different, the first being generally aspirated and the other unaspirated; a speaker of a language where this contrast is meaningful would instantly perceive them as different sounds and tend not to see them as different realizations of a single phoneme.

Boas's students did not draw only on his engagement with German philosophy. They also engaged the work of contemporary philosophers and scientists, such as Karl Pearson, Ernst Mach, Henri Poincaré, William James, and John Dewey in an attempt to move, in the words of Boas's student Robert Lowie, from "a naively metaphysical to an epistemological stage" as a basis for revising the methods and theories of anthropology.

Boas and his students realized that, if they were to conduct scientific research in other cultures, they would need to employ methods that would help them escape the limits of their own ethnocentrism. One such method is that of ethnography: basically, they advocated living with people of another culture for an extended period of time, so that they could learn the local language and be enculturated, at least partially, into that culture.

In this context, cultural relativism is an attitude that is of fundamental methodological importance, because it calls attention to the importance of the local context in understanding the meaning of particular human beliefs and activities. Thus, in 1948 Virginia Heyer wrote: "Cultural relativity, to phrase it in starkest abstraction, states the relativity of the part to the whole. The part gains its cultural significance by its place in the whole, and cannot retain its integrity in a different situation."

As a heuristic tool
Another method was ethnology: to compare and contrast as wide a range of cultures as possible, in a systematic and even-handed manner. In the late nineteenth century, this study occurred primarily through the display of material artifacts in museums. Curators typically assumed that similar causes produce similar effects; therefore, in order to understand the causes of human action, they grouped similar artifacts together—regardless of provenance. Their aim was to classify artifacts, like biological organisms, according to families, genera, and species. Thus organized museum displays would illustrate the evolution of civilization from its crudest to its most refined forms.

In an article in the journal Science, Boas argued that this approach to cultural evolution ignored one of Charles Darwin's main contributions to evolutionary theory:

"It is only since the development of the evolutional theory that it became clear that the object of study is the individual, not abstractions from the individual under observation. We have to study each ethnological specimen individually in its history and in its medium.... By regarding a single implement outside of its surroundings, outside of other inventions of the people to whom it belongs, and outside of other phenomena affecting that people and its productions, we cannot understand its meanings.... Our objection...is, that classification is not explanation."

Boas argued that although similar causes produce similar effects, different causes may also produce similar effects. Consequently, similar artifacts found in distinct and distant places may be the products of distinct causes. Against the popular method of drawing analogies in order to reach generalizations, Boas argued in favor of an inductive method. Based on his critique of contemporary museum displays, Boas concluded:

"It is my opinion that the main object of ethnological collections should be the dissemination of the fact that civilization is not something absolute, but that it is relative, and that our ideas and conceptions are true only so far as our civilization goes."

Boas's student Alfred Kroeber described the rise of the relativist perspective thus:

"Now while some of the interest in (so called solial culture science) anthropology in its earlier stages was in the exotic and the out-of-the-way, yet even this antiquarian motivation ultimately contributed to a broader result. Anthropologists became aware of the diversity of culture. They began to see the tremendous range of its variations.  From that, they commenced to envisage it as a totality, as no historian of one period or of a single people was likely to do, nor any analyst of his own type of civilization alone.  They became aware of culture as a "universe", or vast field in which we of today and our own civilization occupy only one place of many.  The result was a widening of a fundamental point of view, a departure from unconscious ethnocentricity toward relativity.  This shift from naive self-centeredness in one's own time and spot to a broader view based on objective comparison is somewhat like the change from the original geocentric assumption of astronomy to the Copernican interpretation of the solar system and the subsequent still greater widening to a universe of galaxies."

This conception of culture, and principle of cultural relativism, were for Kroeber and his colleagues the fundamental contribution of anthropology, and what distinguished anthropology from similar disciplines such as sociology and psychology.

Ruth Benedict, another of Boas's students, also argued that an appreciation of the importance of culture and the problem of ethnocentrism demands that the scientist adopt cultural relativism as a method. Her book, Patterns of Culture, did much to popularize the term in the United States. In it, she explained that:

"The study of custom can be profitable only after certain preliminary propositions have been violently opposed. In the first place any scientific study requires that there be no preferential weighting of one or another items in the series it selects for its consideration. In all the less controversial fields like the study of cacti or termites or the nature of nebulae, the necessary method of study is to group the relevant material and to take note of all possible variant forms and conditions. In this way we have learned all that we know of the laws of astronomy, or of the habits of the social insects, let us say. It is only in the study of man himself that the major social sciences have substituted the study of one local variation, that of Western civilization."

Benedict was adamant that she was not romanticizing so-called primitive societies; she was emphasizing that any understanding of the totality of humanity must be based on as wide and varied a sample of individual cultures as possible. Moreover, it is only by appreciating a culture that is profoundly different from our own, that we can realize the extent to which our own beliefs and activities are culture-bound, rather than natural or universal. In this context, cultural relativism is a heuristic device of fundamental importance because it calls attention to the importance of variation in any sample that is used to derive generalizations about humanity.

As a critical device
Marcus and Fischer's attention to anthropology's refusal to accept Western culture's claims to universality implies that cultural relativism is a tool not only in cultural understanding, but in cultural critique. This points to the second front on which they believe anthropology offers people enlightenment:

"The other promise of anthropology, one less fully distinguished and attended to than the first, has been to serve as a form of cultural critique for ourselves. In using portraits of other cultural patterns to reflect self-critically on our own ways, anthropology disrupts common sense and makes us reexamine our taken-for-granted assumptions."

The critical function of cultural relativism is widely understood; philosopher John Cook observed that "It is aimed at getting people to admit that although it may seem to them that their moral principles are self-evidently true, and hence seem to be grounds for passing judgement on other peoples, in fact, the self-evidence of these principles is a kind of illusion." Cook recognizes the middle ground in between moral relativism and moral absolutism that cultural relativism straddles, remarking that the ensuing battlegrounds that arise tend to be in the domain of claims of self-evidence made on behalf of a people.

The critical function was indeed one of the ends to which Benedict hoped her own work would meet. The most famous use of cultural relativism as a means of cultural critique is Margaret Mead's research of adolescent female sexuality in Samoa. By contrasting the ease and freedom enjoyed by Samoan teenagers, Mead called into question claims that the stress and rebelliousness that characterize American adolescence is natural and inevitable.

As Marcus and Fischer point out, however, this use of relativism can be sustained only if there is ethnographic research in the United States comparable to the research conducted in Samoa. Although every decade has witnessed anthropologists conducting research in the United States, the very principles of relativism have led most anthropologists to conduct research in foreign countries.

Comparison to moral relativism
According to Marcus and Fischer, when the principle of cultural relativism was popularized after World War II, it came to be understood "more as a doctrine, or position, The principle of cultural relativity does not mean that because the members of some savage tribe are allowed to behave in a certain way that this fact gives intellectual warrant for such behavior in all groups. Cultural relativity means, on the contrary, that the appropriateness of any positive or negative custom must be evaluated with regard to how this habit fits with other group habits. While breeding a healthy scepticism as to the eternity of any value prized by a particular people, anthropology does not as a matter of theory deny the existence of moral absolutes. Rather, the use of the comparative method provides a scientific means of discovering such absolutes. If all surviving societies have found it necessary to impose some of the same restrictions upon the behavior of their members, this makes a strong argument that these aspects of the moral code are indispensable.

Although Kluckhohn was using language that was popular at the time (e.g. "savage tribe") but which is now considered antiquated and coarse by most anthropologists, his point was that although moral standards are rooted in one's culture, anthropological research reveals that the fact that people have moral standards is a universal. He was especially interested in deriving specific moral standards that are universal, although few if any anthropologists think that he was successful.

There is an ambiguity in Kluckhohn's formulation that would haunt anthropologists in the years to come. It makes it clear that one's moral standards make sense in terms of one's culture. He waffles, however, on whether the moral standards of one society could be applied to another. Four years later American anthropologists had to confront this issue head-on.

Vertical and horizontal relativism
It was James Lawrence Wray-Miller who provided an additional clarification tool, or caveat, of the theoretical underpinnings of cultural relativism by dividing it into two binary, analytical continuums: vertical and horizontal cultural relativism. Ultimately, these two analytical continuums share the same basic conclusion: that human morality and ethics are not static but fluid and vary across cultures depending on the time period and current condition of any particular culture.

Vertical relativism describes that cultures, throughout history (vertical—i.e., passage through past and future), are products of the prevailing societal norms and conditions of their respective historical periods. Therefore, any moral or ethical judgments, made during the present, regarding past cultures' belief systems or societal practices must be firmly grounded and informed by these norms and conditions to be intellectually useful. Vertical relativism also accounts for the possibility that cultural values and norms will necessarily change as influencing norms and conditions change in the future.

Horizontal relativism describes that cultures in the present (horizontal in time—i.e., the present period of the culture) are products of the prevailing norms and conditions developed as a result of their unique geographies, histories, and environmental influences. Therefore, moral or ethical judgments, made during the present, regarding a current culture's belief system or societal practices must account for these unique differences to be intellectually useful.

Statement on human rights
The transformation of cultural relativism as a heuristic tool into the doctrine of moral relativism occurred in the context of the work of the Commission of Human Rights of the United Nations in preparing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948).

Melville J. Herskovits prepared a draft "Statement on Human Rights" which Executive Board of the American Anthropological Association revised, submitted to the Commission on Human Rights, and then published. The statement begins with a fairly straightforward explanation of the relevance of cultural relativism:

"The problem is thus to formulate a statement of human rights that will do more than phrase respect for the individual as individual. It must also take into full account the individual as a member of a social group of which he is part, whose sanctioned modes of life shape his behavior, and with whose fate his own is thus inextricably bound. The bulk of this statement emphasizes concern that the Declaration of Human Rights was being prepared primarily by people from Western societies, and would express values that, far from being universal, are really Western: Today the problem is complicated by the fact that the Declaration must be of world-wide applicability. It must embrace and recognize the validity of many different ways of life. It will not be convincing to the Indonesian, the African, the Chinese, if it lies on the same plane as like documents of an earlier period. The rights of Man in the Twentieth Century cannot be circumscribed by the standards of any single culture, or be dictated by the aspirations of any single people. Such a document will lead to frustration, not realization of the personalities of vast numbers of human beings."

Although this statement could be read as making a procedural point (that the Commission must involve people of diverse cultures, especially cultures that had been or are still under European colonial or imperial domination), the document ended by making two substantive claims:
 * 1) Even where political systems exist that deny citizens the right of participation in their government, or seek to conquer weaker peoples, underlying cultural values may be called on to bring the peoples of such states to a realization of the consequences of the acts of their governments, and thus enforce a brake upon discrimination and conquest.
 * 2) Worldwide standards of freedom and justice, based on the principle that man is free only when he lives as his society defines freedom, that his rights are those he recognizes as a member of his society, must be basic.

These claims provoked an immediate response by a number of anthropologists. Julian Steward (who, as a student of Alfred Kroeber and Robert Lowie, and as a professor at Columbia University, was situated firmly in the Boasian lineage) suggested that the first claim "may have been a loophole to exclude Germany from the advocated tolerance", but that it revealed the fundamental flaw in moral relativism: "'Either we tolerate everything, and keep hands off, or we fight intolerance and conquest—political and economic as well as military—in all their forms.' Similarly, he questioned whether the second principle means that anthropologists 'approve the social caste system of India, the racial caste system of the United States, or many other varieties of social discrimination in the world.'"Steward and others argued that any attempt to apply the principle of cultural relativism to moral problems would only end in contradiction: either a principle that seems to stand for tolerance ends up being used to excuse intolerance, or the principle of tolerance is revealed to be utterly intolerant of any society that seems to lack the (arguably, Western) value of tolerance. They concluded that anthropologists must stick to science, and engage in debates over values only as individuals.

Current debates
The debates over the "Statement on Human Rights", then, was not merely over the validity of cultural relativism, or the question of what makes a right universal. It forced anthropologists to confront the question of whether anthropological research is relevant to non-anthropologists. Although Steward and Barnett seemed to be suggesting that anthropology as such should restrict itself to purely academic affairs, people within and without the academy have continued to debate the ways non-anthropologists have used this principle in public policy concerning ethnic minorities or in international relations.

Political scientist Alison Dundes Renteln has argued that most debates over moral relativism misunderstand the importance of cultural relativism. Most philosophers understand the Benedictine–Herskovitz formulation of cultural relativism to mean:

"[W]hat is right or good for one individual or society is not right or good for another, even if the situations are similar, meaning not merely that what is thought right or good by one is not thought right or good by another...but that what is really right or good in one case is not so in another."

Although this formulation clearly echoes the kinds of example anthropologists used in elaborating cultural relativism, Renteln believes that it misses the spirit of the principle. Accordingly, she supports a different formulation: "there are or can be no value judgements that are true, that is, objectively justifiable, independent of specific cultures."

Renteln faults philosophers for disregarding the heuristic and critical functions of cultural relativism. Her main argument is that in order to understand the principle of cultural relativism, one must recognize the extent to which it is based on enculturation: "the idea that people unconsciously acquire the categories and standards of their culture." This observation, which echoes the arguments about culture that originally led Boas to develop the principle, suggests that the use of cultural relativism in debates of rights and morals is not substantive but procedural. That is, it does not require a relativist to sacrifice his or her values. But it does require anyone engaged in a consideration of rights and morals to reflect on how their own enculturation has shaped their views:

"There is no reason why the relativist should be paralyzed, as critics have often asserted. But a relativist will acknowledge that the criticism is based on his own ethnocentric standards and realizes also that the condemnation may be a form of cultural imperialism."

Renteln thus bridges the gap between the anthropologist as scientist (whom Steward and Barnett felt had nothing to offer debates on rights and morality) and as private individual (who has every right to make value judgements). The individual keeps this right, but the scientist requires that the individual acknowledge that these judgements are neither self-evident universals, nor entirely personal (and idiosyncratic), but rather took form in relation to the individual's own culture.

Post-colonial politics
Boas and his students understood anthropology to be a historical, or human science, in that it involves subjects (anthropologists) studying other subjects (humans and their activities), rather than subjects studying objects (such as rocks or stars). Under such conditions, it is fairly obvious that scientific research may have political consequences, and the Boasians saw no conflict between their scientific attempts to understand other cultures, and the political implications of critiquing their own culture. For anthropologists working in this tradition, the doctrine of cultural relativism as a basis for moral relativism was anathema. For politicians, moralists, and many social scientists (but few anthropologists) who saw science and human interests as necessarily independent or even opposed, however, the earlier Boasian principle of cultural relativism was anathema. Thus, cultural relativism came under attack, but from opposing sides and for opposing reasons.

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:

"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 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."

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."

Defence by Clifford Geertz
By the 1980s many anthropologists had absorbed the Boasian critique of moral relativism, and were ready to reevaluate the origins and uses of cultural relativism. In a distinguished lecture before the American Anthropological Association in 1984, Clifford Geertz claimed that the critics of cultural relativism did not really understand, and were not really responding to, the ideas of Benedict, Herskovits, Kroeber and Kluckhohn. Consequently, the various critics and proponents of cultural relativism were talking past one another. What these different positions have in common, Geertz argued, is that they are all responding to the same thing: knowledge about other ways of life.

"The supposed conflict between Benedict's and Herskovits's call for tolerance and the untolerant passion with which they called for it turns out not to be the simple contradiction so many amateur logicians have held it to be, but the expression of a perception, caused by thinking a lot about Zunis and Dahomys, that the world being so full of a number of things, rushing to judgement is more than a mistake, it is a crime. Similarly, Kroeber's and Kluckholn's verities – Kroeber's were mostly about messy creatural matters like delirium and menstruation, Kluckholn's were mostly about messy social ones like lying and killing within the in-group, turn out not to be just the arbitrary personal obsessions they so much look like, but the expression of a much vaster concern, caused by thinking a lot about anthrōpos in general, that if something isn't anchored everywhere nothing can be anchored anywhere. Theory here – if that is what these earnest advices about how we must look at things if we are to be accounted as decent should be called – is more an exchange of warnings than an analytical debate. We are being offered a choice of worries.

What the relativists – so-called – want us to worry about is provincialism – the danger that our perceptions will be dulled, our intellects constricted, and our sympathies narrowed by the overlearned and overvalued acceptances of our own society. What the anti-relativists – self-declared – want us to worry about, and worry about and worry about, as though our very souls depended on it, is a kind of spiritual entropy, a heat death of the mind, in which everything is as significant, and thus as insignificant, as everything else: anything goes, to each his own, you pays your money and you takes your choice, I know what I like, not in the couth, tout comprendre, c'est tout pardonner."

Geertz concludes this discussion by commenting, "As I have already suggested, I myself find provincialism altogether the more real concern so far as what actually goes on in the world." Geertz' defense of cultural relativism as a concern which should motivate various inquiries, rather than as an explanation or solution, echoed a comment Alfred Kroeber made in reply to earlier critics of cultural relativism, in 1949:

"Obviously, relativism poses certain problems when from trying merely to understand the world we pass on to taking action in the world: and right decisions are not always easy to find. However, it is also obvious that authoritarians who know the complete answers beforehand will necessarily be intolerant of relativism: they should be, if there is only one truth and that is theirs.

I admit that hatred of the intolerant for relativism does not suffice to make relativism true. But most of us are human enough for our belief in relativism to be somewhat reinforced just by that fact. At any rate, it would seem that the world has come far enough so that it is only by starting from relativism and its tolerations that we may hope to work out a new set of absolute values and standards, if such are attainable at all or prove to be desirable."

Governmental usage
Several countries have used cultural relativism as a justification for limiting the rights in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, despite the World Conference on Human Rights rejecting it as a refutation of human rights violations.

A 2011 study by international legal expert Roger Lloret Blackburn, examining the Universal Periodic Reviews, distinguishes several different groups of nations:

 * One group consists of nations where the current regime has been installed by revolution, and that deny the need for political plurality: China, Vietnam, Myanmar, Cuba, and Iran.
 * Another group are certain Islamic nations that adhere to sharia and certain traditional practices: Yemen, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan.
 * A third possible group is nations that give special rights to specific groups: Malaysia, Mexico, Indonesia, and Colombia.

title: Cultural relativism


text:
Religious intolerance

 Religious intolerance is intolerance of another's religious beliefs, practices, faith or lack thereof.

Statements which are contrary to one's religious beliefs do not constitute intolerance. Religious intolerance, rather, occurs when a person or group (e.g., a society, a religious group, a non-religious group) specifically refuses to tolerate the religious convictions and practices of a religious group or individual.

Historical perspectives
The intolerance, and even the active persecution of religious minorities (sometimes religious majorities as in modern Bahrain or the Pre-Dutch Indonesian kingdoms), has a long history. Almost all religions have historically faced and perpetrated persecution of other viewpoints.

The modern concept of religious tolerance developed out of the European wars of religion, more specifically out of the Peace of Westphalia which ended the 30 Years' War (1618–1648), during the Protestant Reformation and the ensuing conflicts between Protestants and Catholics in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries. The doctrine of 'religious toleration' was established as a result of the 30 Years' War between the Catholic Hapsburgs and newly Protestant nations like Sweden under Gustavus Adolphus. At this time, rulers sought to eradicate religious sentiments and dogmas from their political demesnes. The 1648 Treaty gave nations the right of sovereignty and it also allowed minority Christian denominations to exist within the Holy Roman Empire.

Contemporary attitude and practice

The constitutions of some countries contain provisions which expressly forbid the state from engaging in certain acts of religious intolerance and these same provisions also forbid the state from showing a preference for a particular religion within its own borders, examples of such provisions include the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, the Article 4 of the Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany, Article 44.2.1 of the Constitution of Ireland, Article 40 of the Estonian Constitution, Article 24 of the Constitution of Turkey, Article 36 of the Constitution of the People's Republic of China, and Article 3 Section 5 of the Constitution of the Philippines.

Other states, whilst not containing constitutional provisions which are directly related to religion, nonetheless contain provisions which forbid discrimination on religious grounds (see, for example, Article 1 of the Constitution of France, article 15 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and article 40 of the Constitution of Egypt). These constitutional provisions do not necessarily guarantee that all elements of the state remain free from religious intolerance at all times, and practice can vary widely from country to country. Other countries, meanwhile, may allow for religious preference, for instance through the establishment of one or more state religions, but not for religious intolerance. Finland, for example, has the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland and Finnish Orthodox Church as its official state religions, yet upholds the right of free expression of religion in article 11 of its constitution.

In Nazi Germany, smaller religious minorities such as the Jehovah's Witnesses and the Baháʼí Faith were banned in Germany, while the eradication of Judaism was attempted along with the genocide of its adherents.

Hundreds of religious riots have been recorded, in every decade of independent India. In these riots, the victims have included many Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, Jains, Christians and Buddhists. The US Commission on International Religious Freedom classified India as Tier-2 in persecuting religious minorities, the same as that of Iraq and Egypt. In a 2018 report, USCIRF charged Hindu nationalist groups for their campaign to "Saffronize" India through violence, intimidation, and harassment against non-Hindus. Approximately one-third of state governments enforced anti-conversion and/or anti-cow slaughter laws against non-Hindus, and mobs engaged in violence against Muslims whose families have been engaged in the dairy, leather, or beef trades for generations, and against Christians for proselytizing. "Cow protection" lynch mobs killed at least 10 victims in 2017.

Some countries retain laws which forbid the defamation of religious beliefs. Some constitutions retain laws which forbid all forms of blasphemy (e.g., Germany where, in 2006, Manfred van H. was convicted of blasphemy against Islam). The connection between intolerance and blasphemy laws is closest when the laws apply to only one religion. In Pakistan blasphemy directed against either the tenets of the Qur'an or the Prophet Mohammed is punishable by either life imprisonment or death. Apostasy, the rejection of one's old religion, is also criminalized in a number of countries, notably Afghanistan with Abdul Rahman being the first to face the death penalty for converting to Christianity. Though, he was later released.

The United Nations upholds the right to freely express one's religious beliefs, as listed in the UN's charter, and additionally in articles 2 and 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Article 2 forbids discrimination based on religious grounds. Article 18 protects the freedom to change one's religion. As a treaty, not a declaration, is legally binding, the signing of the human rights declaration is a public pledge of commitment. Out of a desire to avoid subservience to an international court, the United States chose in 1998 to pass the International Religious Freedom Act, creating the Commission on International Religious Freedom, and mandating that the United States government take action against any country found to violate the religious freedoms outlined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Human Rights Council in 2011 adopted Resolution 16/18 on "Combating intolerance, negative stereotyping and stigmatization of, and discrimination, incitement to violence and violence against, persons based on religion or belief" which was hailed by stakeholders from all regions and faiths as a turning point in international efforts to confront religious intolerance. The European Convention on Human Rights, which is legally binding on all European Union states (following the passage of the Human Rights Act 1998 in the United Kingdom), makes restricting the rights of an individual to practice or change their religion illegal in article 9, and discrimination on the basis of religion illegal in article 14.

In North Korea, The regime reportedly continues to repress the religious activities of unauthorized religious groups. North Korea is considered an atheist state, where refugees, defectors and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) continued to allege that they witnessed the arrests and execution of members of underground Christian churches by the regime in prior years. Due to the country's inaccessibility and the inability to gain timely information, this activity remains difficult to verify.

In its 2000 annual report on international religious freedom, the U.S. State Department cited China, Myanmar, Iran, Iraq and Sudan for persecuting people for their religious faith and practices. The report, which covers July 1999 through June 2000, details U.S. policy toward countries where religious freedom is violated in the view of the State Department.

The advocacy group Freedom House produced a report entitled "Religious Freedom in the World" in 2000 which ranked countries according to their religious freedom. The countries receiving a score of 7, indicating those where religious freedom was least respected, were Turkmenistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Myanmar and North Korea. China was given a score of 6 overall, however Tibet was listed separately in the 7 category. Those countries receiving a score of 1, indicating the highest level of religious freedom, were Estonia, Finland, Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway and the United States.

Within those countries that openly advocate religious tolerance there remain debates as to the limits of tolerance. Some individuals and religious groups, for example, retain beliefs or practices which involve acts contrary to established law, such as the use of cannabis by members of the Rastafari movement, the religious use of eagle feathers by non-Native Americans (contrary to the eagle feather law, 50 CFR 22), or the practice of polygamy amongst the LDS Church in the 19th century.

In Australia
Religious freedom has developed partly due to the agreeable relationship between religious groups in its society. Several non-governmental organizations promoted tolerance and better understanding among religions in the country, both indigenous and non-indigenous. These groups included the Columbian Centre for Christian-Muslim Relations, the National Council of Churches in Australia and its affiliated Aboriginal and Islander Commission, and the Australian Council of Christians and Jews. In Victoria, Australia the Racial and Religious Tolerance Act 2001 makes illegal "conduct that incites hatred against, serious contempt for, or revulsion or severe ridicule of, that other person or class of persons" on the grounds of religious belief.

In 2003, in response to an increase in anti-Islamic sentiment, the HREOC undertook a project involving national consultations on eliminating prejudice against Arab and Muslim citizens. As part of the consultations, the commission considered whether Muslim citizens shared an ethnic origin or race, as well as a religion, which would entitle them to comprehensive protection under the Federal Race Discrimination Act. The commission's report, made public in June 2004, contained no findings on the racial status of Arab and Muslim citizens. In January 2005 the leader of the neo-Nazi Australian Nationalist Movement was connected to incidents in 2004 in which several Asian-owned businesses and a synagogue in Perth were firebombed or sprayed with racist graffiti. On December 11, 2005, there was a riot in the Sydney suburb of Cronulla, that erupted because a group of Lebanese-Australian youths had assaulted two lifeguards. Demonstrators against the assault displayed anti-Arab and anti-Muslim slogans. When the gathering turned violent, bystanders perceived to be of Middle Eastern origin or Muslim were attacked. The following day, retaliatory vandalism and other assaults were reported around Sydney.

title: Religious intolerance


text:
Ebenales

Ebenales is an order of flowering plants. This order was recognized in several systems, for example the Bentham & Hooker system and the Engler system, although the Wettstein system preferred the name Diospyrales'. In the 1981 version of the Cronquist system it was an order placed in subclass Dilleniidae with the following circumscription:

 * order Ebenales
 * family Ebenaceae
 * family Sapotaceae
 * family Styracaceae
 * family Symplocaceae

In the APG II system all the plants involved are assigned to the hugely expanded order Ericales.

title: Ebenales