Culture Theory: Cultural Relativism/Social Penetration Theory

(Devito) Cultural relativism holds that all cultures are different but that no culture is either superior or inferior to any other.

Not all cultural practices are equal, but there is no level of inferiority or superiority either.
You can see cultural material infused into contemporary textbooks. Naturally, you may find some cultural practices to be very unethical. According to John Dewey "Although it is hard for us in the modern world to imagine, a primitive culture might value genocide, treachery, deception, even torture. While we may not like these traits, a true follower of cultural relativism could not say these are wrong since they are merely the product of cultural adaptation."

Another Source

Click Here to visit AnthroNotes. This site explores subjects such as cultural relativism and universal human rights. From this site you can things such as:

• One cannot reject any form of culturally acceptable homicide on moral grounds because cultural acceptance or condemnation are equally valid.

• We cannot make judgments about 'right' and 'wrong' in comparing one culture to another

 

Social Penetration Theory 

According to DeVito...

Social Penetration Theory is a theory of what happens when the relationship does develop,

 it describes in terms of the number of topics that people talk about and their degree of " personalness"

the Breadth of a relationship has to do with the number of topics you and your partner talk about . the Depth of the relationship invovles the degree to which you penetratethe inner personality- the core- of the other inidivual. when relationship begins to deteriorate, the breadth and depth will, in many ways, reverse themselves, in a process called depenetration. 

Extra Information:

This is a website from the University of Kentucky which break down the realms of the Social Penetration Theory.

 

http://www.uky.edu/~drlane/capstone/interpersonal/socpen.html