Rachel attended the Collaborative Relativism Colloquium at the IT University of Copenhagen.

Key note speakers included Barbara Herrnstein Smith, Isabelle Stengers, Marilyn Strathern and Eduardo Viveiros de Castro. Discussants: Deborah Battaglia, Steven D. Brown, Martin Holbraad, Morten Axel Pedersen

This workshop puts in conjunction the two unlikely terms “comparison” and “relativism.” On the one hand, comparison, in the most general sense, involves the investigation of different contexts in order to elucidate their similarities and differences. Relativism, on the other hand, often involves the assumption that contexts exhibit radically different, incomparable or incommensurable traits. Thus comparative studies are required to treat their subjects alike, by providing general and external measures by which can be established what is shared and not between cultures or practices. Relativism, however, indicates the limits of this stance, by suggesting that the observation of the similar and the different depends on an outside position from which comparison can be made. And, of course, relativism is sceptical of the possibility to establish such an outside position. [read more]