Like anything else, it has upsides and downsides - I say far more up then down - it involves a decent level of discernment in my opinion.

When I was an anthropology undergraduate at UCLA, Clifford Geertz (renowned cultural anthropologist) came to speak on campus. After his talk, I asked him this very question about cultural relativism. His answer was simple: "You have to understand the limitations of the discipline", meaning it's not up to anthropologists to "legislate" things like the morality or desireableness of cultural ways of doing things. As I went on to get my own PhD, I have often reflected on his comment. I think we need to recognize that some things are up to your "gut"; the concept is there to sensitize us to our own biases, but it is not meant as an absolute "carte blanche" in human affairs, where nothing is beyond the pale. However, for most practical purposes, the culture decides where the pale is.

I wasn't interested in any of that when young.....then life happens, opportunities come around and next thing you know, you have seen the world and been exposed to other ways to see life. What a wonderful experience it has been. It does open doors to keep discovering more. One life time is just not enough....

Aah, I love how bright everyone is on this site. Even if I don’t agree with people, it’s just a different level of chit chat! I think it cultural relativism is a great tool for study and building empathy and understanding. It means I can understand some very alien practices. However, I think the area we are discussing is taboos, and that is a whole other area of study. Taboos are incredibly interesting, from gestures to food practices, sex and death. The more you dig at taboos the more they seem relative, but some taboos seem universal.
Take eating with hands, perhaps an unwashed hand. Or spitting, or having sex in the same room as other relatives. Is that your own culture causing you discomfort or is there a universal norm, stopping us from doing these things as breaking the norm would be threatening to our own society, evolution or safety? I don’t know, but I like thinking about it!

Great point!

I know cultural relativism it has its place when doing ethophies. Its a great tool to understand groups and cultures but you make a great point about accepting atrocities. Sometimes while writing an ethophy you bump up with child abuse issues from child brides to deal circumcision...

Cultural relativism can be used at the UN to understand the cultures but not as allowing atrocities. Even in anthropology there are times when cultural relativism is peeled away in any branch of applied anthropology. There are studies in applied-medical anthropology, applied-economic anthropology, applied-well any facit of culture were anthropology from both an imic and itic perspective.

This is what makes writing universal human rights so difficult. Say you take a position of cultural relativism, do you condone cannibalism or slavery? Both of those featured as cultural habits for a long time.

My view is that culture grows out of circumstance. When circumstances change culture must but they inevitably bring some obsolete baggage with them.
The best demonstration I can come up with is the most extreme. Is infanticide right?
Right now, in wealthy, liberal/enlightenment western cultures it is abhorrent. But what about Europe in 700AD? Just feeding the family was a constant struggle, the extra mouth would push everyone into starvation.
I read letters by my 18th C ancestors, at a time when infant (before 5years of age) mortality was about 90%, declaring that it was best that a sickly child died, purely because it was sickly. We would find such attitudes now to be (at the least) distressing, but they were a commonplace part of upper middle class life in England not so very long ago.
These attitudes have their holdover in the still existing view that children are property, not individual (albeit not yet fully competent) people.

My thoughts are relative

I think it (cultural relativism) can be used to better understand someone. I am not sure it should be used to reinforce harmful or dangerous actions though.

As a humanist who understands that all of culture is intersubjective beliefs or imagined orders I look at other cultures with a view of not causing harm to other people. Many things like circumcision are cut and dry with me, they do cause harm. Other things like indoctrination into religion are a little harder to parce because they are so ubiquitous. I think we will be better as a species, and not as willing to kill each other, when we better understand that we are all basically the same.

Cant answer the question but I can offer support with the procrastinating.