relativism quotes

I suffer the anthropological malady diagnosed by Le  vi- Strauss inTristes tropiques: I find it much more difficult to suspend value judgments about the society in which I normally reside than I do abroad. It takes physical and cultural distance to gain moral detachment and political noncommitment. Relativism implies a solid measure of indifference.

- Pierre L van den Berghe
'From the Popocatepetl to the Limpopo', collected in Bennett Berger (ed) Authors of their Own Lives (1990).