Beyond right and wrong: In order to build better partnerships, how are we to balance respect for different cultural practices with our perceptions of social justice?

The ex-InCA (Intercultural Competences Approach) programme of the DG INTPA has proposed a workshop (12 July 2022):

A reluctance to judge or intervene in the beliefs and behaviours of cultures other than our own has been a fundamental principle of the multicultural conversation of our times. Increasingly, however, this culturally relativist attitude has come under pressure from the challenges posed by such phenomena as immigration, globalisation, and fundamentalism (both political and religious).

In an increasingly connected world we still struggle with cultural dilemmas we meet every day at work: how are we to respect or respond to controversial cultural practices that we may find offensive, or just ‘wrong,’ such as child marriage, female circumcision, mistreatment of animals, discrimination, and other forms of perceived social injustice?

The workshop has introduced different models of analysis in order to understand how it may be possible to approach different cultural values/beliefs systems in order to build sustainable partnerships.

Training materials

The presentation used during the workshop is available in the section below.