ABSTRACT
The moral traditions indicate positions of extreme relativism. “Western” medicine cannot accept ‘witchcraft’ (or other phenomena) as the main or total cause of physical illness, while most Giriama cannot accept the claim of Western medicine that physical illness has physical causes, and that “psychological stress” (which might translate witchcraft), is only ever secondary and anyway is not motivated by an enemy’s malice. In addition to that of medicine, the field of religion is one in which competing rationalities and moralities may retain their relativistic stance as complete systems, yet may also negotiate zones within them as common to both. Traditions can only be understood when they work in the context of each other; comparison becomes more than a socially decontextualized intellectual exercise when proponents of rival traditions confront, negotiate, and debate with each other. By this claim, relativity only has meaning as contestation, and all that this implies in terms of power differences.
