What is Cultural Bias in History?
(As opposed to personal bias)
Cultural bias occurs where, 'a historical inference, description, or explanation is later found to be untrue or unfair, relative to the evidence available, because of a culture wide interest in information of one kind rather than another.'(p41) The example below is an instance of cultural bias because it formed the basic and accepted academic model for the interpretation of 20th Century Korean history. (Wells; pp.191,192) McCullagh's example of cultural bias is "white male history". (p.41)
An Example from Korean History.
Kenneth M. Wells writes that 20th Century Korean History has been interpreted largely using a nationalist framework. This framework leaves out a vast proportion of important information that does not fall under this area.(p197) In particular, he considers the circumstances of Korean Women in the early 1900's and argues these do fit under the auspices of Nationalism but not in a conventional sense. In Korean history it has often been assumed, '...that nationalism works on behalf of all and therefore it is in everyone's interest to work on behalf of nationalism.' …
