Given the United States’ outsized role in the world, and Clinton and Trump’s quite different positions on foreign relations, the time seems ripe for Americans to ponder their positions in the world.
A few years ago, as an assistant professor of sociology at Stetson University in Florida, I taught an introductory sociology class every semester. Early on each semester, when my students learned about the sociology of culture, I would ask them in class “are you a cultural relativist, or a cultural universalist?” I explained that a relativist chooses to respect people’s different cultural practices while a universalist (or absolutist) insists that there are certain universal values and practices that all nations should respect regardless of their particular cultures.
It may come as no surprise that when simply presented with that question and those definitions, my students tended to identify as relativists. Countries like the United States that lean individualistic on the continuum from individualism to collectivism are more likely to produce relativists since individualism inclines people to respect individual and group differences, at least in principle, if not in fact. However, I then posed the following issue-based questions, one after the other:
Question 1: Is it bad for people living in high-income nations to condemn the practice of child labor in poorer countries because we think youth belong in school?
Question 2: In 1997, two Iraqi brothers, aged 34 and 28, living in Nebraska were charged with statutory rape of their wives, aged 13 and 14, whom they married following Muslim law and the customs of their community in southern Iraq. Was it right for Nebraska to prosecute the two men, or should their culture have been respected?
Question 3: What about female “circumcision,” also known as “female genital mutilation”? Should nations intercede to stop this painful and sometimes deadly practice, or should nations respect cultural differences?
As you might expect, a lot of my students qualified their relativism as we moved from Question 1 to Question 3. Many defended child labor in poorer nations, but maintained that people should follow the laws of the country in which they reside, and grimaced to learn about female genital mutilation, but weren’t sure how to respond to its practice abroad.
This question of relativism vs. universalism seems all the more relevant now as the U.S. presidential contest spurs debate about how and how much the United States should engage with the world. Relativism, in principle, inclines people not to meddle in the affairs of other nations out of respect for their own sovereign ways of doing things, however much we may find these ways — like child labor, child marriages, and female genital mutilation — reprehensible. Universalism, in principle, inclines people to promote their values abroad, and for westerners that can mean banning child labor, early marriages and female genital mutilation, among other practices driven by religious tradition or economic hardship.
In the United States, how the majority of Americans feel about foreign relations depends substantially on domestic economic conditions. In economic downturns, Americans tend to lean isolationist or protectionist. Isolationists (as critics sometimes deprecatingly call them) generally believe the United States should focus its resources more on its own people’s needs, and not get involved in other nations’ often thorny issues. In contrast, internationalists believe the United States stands to gain in the short and long-term by engaging more with the world, culturally, economically and/or politically.
There are, of course, right and left-wing versions of these positions. Leftist isolationists call for worker-protecting trade barriers and greater domestic investment while right-wing isolationists are more likely to call for withdrawal from the United Nations and crackdowns on illegal immigration. In turn, left-wing internationalists call for advancing human rights and elevating living, work and environmental standards worldwide while right-wing internationalists are more likely to call for strengthening security, democracy and/or capitalism by economic sanction, or force if necessary.
If you lean toward relativism, how to engage abroad seems simple on its face: don’t interfere. If you lean toward universalism, however, should the United States only act when it can get other nations on board (multilateralism), or should the U.S. go it alone when it can’t find partners (unilateralism) so long as it’s doing the right thing? And, what courses of action are appropriate and effective? Should the U.S. government simply issue a public condemnation, try diplomatic dialogue, offer economic incentives, fund nonprofits fighting child labor, child marriages, female genital mutilation, and other practices we oppose, or threaten military action?
Underlying your answers to these questions are fundamental assumptions, conscious or not, about what motivates people and nations. So-called “realists” believe people and nations are motivated foremost by self-interest, and this accordingly drives nations to seek security, economic advantage, political prestige, and/or military glory, depending on their governments. Idealists, on the other hand, assert people and nations are or should be motivated by ideals, whether religious (e.g., Christianity or Islam), political (e.g., democracy or nationalism), economic (e.g., capitalism or socialism), or otherwise.
These varied and overlapping positions can help any citizens of the world think more deeply about how they and their government should engage with the world. But it’s especially important for people in the most internationally powerful nations — like the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Russia and China — to think about their positions and answers to these questions.
So, are you a universalist or relativist? An isolationist or internationalist? A multilateralist or unilateralist? A realist or idealist?
This is the second of a series of spotlights on our summer 2016 student volunteers. Learning Life’s student volunteers this summer are translating documents, conducting research and doing outreach locally and internationally for our new Citizen Diplomacy Initiative (CDI) established this year. CDI will connect American families in Washington D.C. with families in other parts of the world through live online video-dialogue starting this summer. Bruna has been providing invaluable help in translating CDI documents into Spanish, screening D.C. families for participation in the dialogues, outreach in El Salvador, and more.
Where were you born and raised?
I was born in Santa Cruz, Bolivia and moved here to Washington D.C. with my family when I was six years old.
What school do you attend, and what is your year and major there?
I am a junior at Trinity Washington University and I am majoring in International Affairs.
What do you like to do in your free time?
In my free time I love to play soccer with my dad and friends, as well as spend time with my family. I love Netflix, so you will most likely catch me on it when I am home.
What is the most beautiful place you have seen on Earth, and why is it so beautiful?
Since moving here I have not been able to visit another country, so for now the most beautiful place I have been to has been Marco Island in Florida. The beach was incredible, the water was crystal clear and you could see the different colors of the rocks (red, blue, green, etc.) shining through the water.
Is there a particular life experience you have had that has shaped you as a person? If so, what was it, and how has it shaped who you are?
The life experience that has shaped me as a person would have to be leaving high school and trying to figure out my college plans. As a non-citizen, there were few to no options for me to attend college because of the lack of financial aid and scholarship funds. However, because I was a DACA recipient (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival, an Obama Administration policy that provides children of immigrants documents enabling them to study and work in the USA), I was thankfully able to gain a Dreamer Scholarship that provides me with a full scholarship to attend Trinity! Going through two years of nonstop calling colleges and searching for scholarships helped shaped me as a person because I learned how hard it can be to receive a higher education, but that you cannot give up because there is always a way.
Why did you choose to intern with Learning Life?
I chose to intern with Learning Life because I have always wanted to work with children and help out my community in some way. Being raised in D.C., this was a perfect internship for me because I could do just that.
What are your career plans?
My career plans are to further my education as much as possible and eventually work for a U.S. nonprofit organization that works to help immigrants, or one that does international work with Latin America countries.
Volunteer Spotlight: Britany Gatewood
This is the first of a series of spotlights on our summer 2016 student volunteers. Learning Life’s student volunteers this summer are translating documents, conducting research and doing outreach locally and internationally for our new Citizen Diplomacy Initiative established this year. CDI will connect American families in Washington D.C. with families in other parts of the world through live online video-dialogue starting this summer. As a Ph.D. student in sociology, Britany is helping with CDI research and outreach.
Where were you born and raised?
I was born in New York but I was raised in Michigan in the metro Detroit area.
What school do you attend, and what is your year and major there?
I currently attend Howard University in Washington, DC. I am a second year doctoral student in the Department of Sociology.
What do you like to do in your free time?
In my free time, I like to travel (internationally and domestically), cook, read, and attend different cultural events or festivals.
What is the most beautiful place you have seen on Earth, and why is it so beautiful?
There are two places where I have been which I think are the most beautiful, Dubai, UAE and the state of Bahia, Brazil. They are two very different cultures and climates therefore they are beautiful in different ways. In Dubai, many of the buildings are new or decorated in a lot of gold accents. The Grand Mosque was breathtaking. It was made with marble, pearls, and gold with giant chandeliers encrusted with jewels.
In Brazil, I traveled to the state of Bahia, located on the country’s northeastern coast. There is a rich Afro-Brazilian culture in Bahia. They have many buildings that have been there since the Portuguese colonial era and some African traditions are still alive from that time of slavery. Bahian residents are proud of their heritage, and their passion made me fall in love with their culture.
Is there a particular life experience you have had that has shaped you as a person? If so, what was it, and how has it shaped who you are?
There have been many experiences that have shaped me as a person. The one experience that confirmed the path that I am on was a specific experience in Brazil. I was mistaken for an Afro-Brazilian while I was there because I did not look like a stereotypical Black American. Due to racism and discrimination against Black Brazilian citizens, I was looked at and treated differently at times. At one point, one white Brazilian shook everyone’s hand in the group except for mine. Everyone else in our group was white American. My host family told that person I was American too, and then their expression changed from dislike to welcoming and friendly. It was experiences like these that verified that I want to dedicate my life to eliminating social inequalities.
Why did you choose to volunteer with Learning Life?
I chose Learning Life because of the Citizen Diplomacy Initiative’s (CDI) goal. It gives lower-income people a chance to connect with others in different countries when they may not otherwise have the opportunity. In a global society, international connections are becoming increasingly important, therefore programs like CDI help to bring people together from other countries.
What are your career plans?
My career plan is to become a professor at a four-year university after I graduate. I would like to teach classes related to social inequality such as race, gender or class. I want to help bridge the gap between academia and community and continue to be a scholar-activist.
A F.A.C.T. Approach to Citizen Diplomacy
The Problems:
Worldwide, families are looking for ways to make a living. But often, this means working for employers, foreign or domestic, who dictate harsh terms of employment (i.e., where, when and how you will work and for how much pay) and care more about profits than their employees and the families and communities their workers support.
Further, globalization is enriching a relative few who make and shape international relations through businesses, governments or nonprofit organizations they own or direct. In the globalization process, people and their communities are, for better or worse, becoming more like each other as millions of individuals across the world become the employees and consumers of major transnational companies like Walmart, Apple, Toyota, ExxonMobil and McDonalds. Transnational companies are not going away, but people and their communities do not have to, nor should they, lose what makes them unique.
What if there were ways for people to provide for themselves, nurture local ownership, and build the unique assets of their families and communities?
The F.A.C.T. Nexus:
People can and do often pursue food, art, community and tourism (FACT) separately. However, they can form a complementary nexus for people to provide for themselves, nurture local ownership, and build family and community assets.
Food
Everyone needs to eat every day, and many if not most people enjoy eating. Moreover, growing, processing and serving food constitute major sources of jobs in communities worldwide. In many places, food sector workers work for chain restaurants controlled by large domestic or transnational companies. But they could, alternatively or in tandem, work for themselves, offering residents and visitors a unique taste of their family, region and country’s culinary traditions at home, in restaurants, or community spaces and events.
Art
Art in all its forms — paintings, photography, video, dance, music, jewelry, makeup, clothes, etc. — is a way to nurture creativity, expression and dialogue, and a way to make homes and communities more meaningful and attractive. Art can also be displayed and sold to residents and visitors to help families earn a living and nurture community economies.
Community
Every community has stories about its past, present and future. These local stories often connect with national and international stories that can make local stories interesting to residents and visitors alike. Examples include a local person who became famous, a product made locally yet widely known, the local imprints of a national or international war, remarkable local events that connect with universal human experiences. Families and communities can record and tell these stories in unique, engaging ways, using manifold media — photos, audio, video, painting, music, dance, etc. — to create temporary and permanent community exhibits and events that can attract local to global viewers.
Tourism
Tourism can be top-down or bottom-up. In many places tourism is top-down: controlled to varying extents by large foreign or domestic hotel and entertainment chains that create profitable, packaged experiences. Perhaps the most problematic are deluxe resorts that fly vacationers in and out of their all-inclusive enclaves, with no need for their clients to experience let alone connect with the (often poor) communities that surround and serve the resort.
However, tourism can be and sometimes is bottom-up or grassroots: owned by local businesses, employing local people, and devoted to building the assets of their people (e.g., experiences, knowledge, skills, products) and communities (e.g., art exhibits, museums, memorials, murals, monuments, gardens, parks, farms, restaurants, cafes, markets).
A F.A.C.T. Approach:
Organizations devoted to international exchange can help nurture children, families and communities in developing countries through food, arts, community and tourism projects. Working long-term with individuals, families or local groups in the developing world, they can provide training and other resources to turn localities’ food, arts, community and/or tourism into income. They can also connect those localities to audiences eager to learn from them. Further, they can create collaborative, cross-national FACT events and products, like comparative photo or video displays that can add an eye-catching international component to local art or community exhibits and installations. Simpler projects can lead to more ambitious for-profit and non-profit international collaborations for mutual benefit.
The FACT approach is not the big-donor project that withers or dies when the funding dries up or moves on, and that can thus accentuate the chasm between rich and poor communities. This is grassroots development that strengthens communities, if its collaborators commit long-term.
It may come as no surprise that when simply presented with that question and those definitions, my students tended to identify as relativists. Countries like the United States that lean individualistic on the continuum from individualism to collectivism are more likely to produce relativists since individualism inclines people to respect individual and group differences, at least in principle, if not in fact. However, I then posed the following issue-based questions, one after the other: 
