Cultural Relativity and Cross-Cultural Experience in Travel Writing: The Cross-Cultural Path Record

The article develops a theoretical and methodological framework for the study of travel writing based on the original concept of the “cross-cultural path record” — a textual layer in which cultural relativity and personal cross-cultural experience manifest in concentrated form. The framework builds on the classical cultural relativism of Boas, Mead, and Benedict, on linguistic models of perceptual relativity, and on Gherdjikov’s distinction between “real/virtual” relativity. Through this model, travel writing becomes a tool for analyzing cultural shock, adaptation, and identity transformation across five dimensions: sensory, linguistic, emotional, moral, and ontological. Keywords: cultural relativism, cross-cultural experience, travel writing, philosophy of culture, anthropology, mobility studies