ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on cross-cultural conflict that arises in a North American context between non-Western cultural communities and the dominant Western cultural community. The classic definition of culture is that offered by the social anthropologist Sir Edward Tylor: that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man [sic] as a member of society. The chapter explores aspect of these questions; namely, how to respect the beliefs and values of non-dominant cultural communities without thereby contributing to the oppression of vulnerable members of these same communities. It develops an alternative feminist approach to the problem of cross-cultural conflict in cases of suspected child abuse and neglect, which is grounded in the following beliefs: women and others are oppressed on the basis of one or more morally irrelevant characteristic(s) and this oppression must be exposed and eliminated.
