Askin' the Hard Questions

It seems that no matter how far I want to run from the uncomfortable aspects of my job, the more glaring they become. Knowledge is a slippery subject. How does one know what they think they know? If you look at beliefs as more than true or false/ black or white, then you run into an entire gradient of beliefs, and it is hard to determine which side of that gradient is the good, and which is the bad.
Absolutists would believe that there is a right and a wrong to everything, while relativists would believe that there can not possibly be a right or a wrong, since any opinion about about morals is inextricably tied to one's culturally specific value system.
Many people pride themselves on being "cosmopolitan." The more one knows about the world, the more globally aware one is. In fact, it is chic to be enamored with foreign cultures and foreign belief systems. One can justify nearly any social or moral shortcoming (in relation to their home society) by appropriating some sort of value (which may or may not exist, and certainly isn't completely understood) from a borrowed culture.
If one wanted to, by looking back at history or at nearly any science of the humanities, one could find cultural justification for nearly anything. The Aztecs sacrificed humans, the Ancient Greeks had a long running tradition of pederasty, prostitution was an industry in feudal Japan, and pimps in Cambodia will tell you that little children would love to do anything that your money can by.
Now, indeed, some of these things would seem quite absurd. But, if one were to take a firm standpoint of true relativism, it would be hard to reject any of these cultural realities as bad.
Yet, most people who do development work, or want to "help" other cultures who are based from an "enlightened" academic position in the West will tell you that most facets of a culture
should be "preserved," while other facets should be developed.
Things that should be developed are education, access to basic resources, such as water, food, fuel, etc., health services, improving / raising women's roles in society, and aiding / giving loans (kiva.com) to small businesses. The average proponent of changing these aspects of society would probably be OK with removing pederasty and sacrifice from them as well.

The problem I confront comes in when academically oriented people allow themselves to exploit an aspect of a culture that either does not exist, or from their own value systems, can not exist as moral.

If one were to be abusing their power position among a weaker, poorer culture in a poor area, what would they do to justify what they were doing? If we take a brief glance, we could look at knowledge / ignorance and justified / unjustified beliefs. If someone of relativist leanings studies a culture and sees that a certain issue of moral question is lacking from it, introducing it to that culture would clearly be morally questionable. If a child is ignorant about a sharp blade, it would be unfair to give that child a sharp blade, because it might cut itself.
If the culture has knowledge and customs surrounding this issue, it would be fair to work within that context.

The problems balloons if there is an existence of a certain issue at a small, perhaps discriminated against, scale. If one wanted to justify their participation in a questionable event, they could convince themselves that a scattering of historical precedents was enough to justify their actions. A sex tourist in Phnom Phen very much wants to believe that what they are doing is actually beneficial to their victims and for the communities. What other work could they do? And in a very perverse mind: Perhaps they enjoy it. One must justify their actions in order to extinguish guilt. If one were to concentrate harder on the inconsistencies in their argument, perhaps they would find that their beliefs were indeed unjustified.

I mentioned that such an abusing individual might be violating the mores of their
"home society." This might seem absurd to bring up, as many people pride themselves in how
different their values systems are from their families or from the "mainstream," but humans are often more rooted then they like to think they are. Preferences for food, for beds, for clothes, and for books and media still strongly permeate most expat communities.
It is doubtful that any person who has embraced another religion or culture system different from that of Western secularism would find beating a child OK. Many people simply use alternative, exotic cultures and others' ignorance about them for their own gain.
Once again though, it is important to remember that most people are not trying to get away with doing something bad. They might fully justify their cursory beliefs in another value system as de facto proof that they are part of something that is fair and fully understood by people other than their accusers. If one wants to believe that everyone else besides them in a Starbucks is a consumerist hack, it is very easy to do so.

A threat of modern anthropology that it has turned exoticization into a science. Still people
and their cultures are being picked apart like biologists do to animals, but now it a fully defendable fortress. To accuse it is to be guilt of cultural insensitivity and to be anti-relativist.
But why do these cultures even interest foreigners? The same sorts of things that interest Western researchers here in Xining are what Chinese tourist companies superficially peddle to their tourists. The NGOs here rely on the fetishization of Tibetan culture in the West to attract donors and aid. People who come to teach here, typically come on similar, if less touristic grounds, to see the real Tibet. And recently, to document it before it "disappears." Despite heavy, anti-exoticization rhetoric, most people here are given in to accepting such self-defeating donations from groups perpetuating these "ignorant" ideas about such areas and their people. Students are taught to despise tourists and modernizers as violators and destroyers of culture. Development projects here largely aim at providing modest work alleviation (such as solar cookers, water pumps, etc.), as they won't harm the pristine traditions of the culture. Student here clearly love there cultures and want to see them endure, but can they think of the motives of the Westerners helping them? Or the consequences to their villages if they continue to accept such gifts from outsiders? In the end the Chinese are ballooning around the Tibetans and beating many of them out of home and work.
The mostly highly educated of our students, on the other hand, become well trained in sociology and literature, and hope to get jobs at NGOs that rely on foreigners to extensively correct their English and find grant opportunities for them. Who is learning Chinese laws to work within the system? So many successful Tibetans in the area are themselves tourists, yet the students won't even consider that work as of now. Many teachers are too afraid to lose their roles and jobs here by admitting that their work is either ineffectual, pointless, or contributing to greater evils. How far will one go to justify their roles in a corrupt system?