Cultural universal
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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A cultural universal (also called an anthropological universal or human universal), as discussed by Emile Durkheim, George Murdock, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Donald Brown and others, is an element, pattern, trait, or institution that is common to all human cultures worldwide. Taken together, the whole body of cultural universals is known as the human condition. Evolutionary psychologists hold that behaviors or traits that occur universally in all cultures are good candidates for evolutionary adaptations. Some anthropological and sociological theorists that take a cultural relativist perspective may deny the existence of cultural universals: the extent to which these universals are "cultural" in the narrow sense, or in fact biologically inherited behavior is an issue of "nature versus nurture".
In his book Human Universals (1991), Donald Brown defines human universals as comprising "those features of culture, society, language, behavior, and psyche for which there are no known exception", providing a list of hundreds of items he suggests as universal.
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General
The emergence of these universals dates to the Upper Paleolithic, with the first evidence of full behavioral modernity.
List of cultural universals
Among the cultural universals listed by Brown (1991) are:
Language and cognition
- Language employed to manipulate others
- Language employed to misinform or mislead
- Language is translatable
- Abstraction in speech and thought
- Antonyms, synonyms
- Logical notions of "and", "not", "opposite", "equivalent", "part/whole", "general/particular"
- Binary cognitive distinctions
- Color terms: black, white
- Classification of: age, behavioral propensities, body parts, colors, fauna, flora, inner states, kin, sex, space, tools, weather conditions
- Continua (ordering as cognitive pattern)
- Discrepancies between speech, thought, and action
- Figurative speech, metaphors
- Symbolism, symbolic speech
- Synesthetic metaphors
- Tabooed utterances
- Special speech for special occasions
- Prestige from proficient use of language (e.g. poetry)
- Planning
- Units of time
Society
- Personal names
- Family or household
- Kin groups
- Peer groups not based on family
- Actions under self-control distinguished from those not under control
- Affection expressed and felt
- Age grades
- Age statuses
- Age terms
- Law: rights and obligations, rules of membership
- Moral sentiments
- Distinguishing right and wrong, good and bad
- Promise/oath
- Prestige inequalities
- Statuses and roles
- Leaders
- De facto oligarchy
- Property
- Coalitions
- Collective identities
- Conflict
- Cooperative labor
- Gender roles
- Males on average travel greater distances over lifetime
- Marriage, though this is disputed
- Husband older than wife on average
- Copulation normally conducted in privacy
- Incest prevention or avoidance, incest between mother and son unthinkable or tabooed
- Collective decision making
- Etiquette
- Inheritance rules
- Generosity admired, gift giving
- Redress of wrongs, sanctions
- Sexual jealousy
- Sexual violence
- Shame
- Territoriality
- Triangular awareness (assessing relationships among the self and two other people)
- Some forms of proscribed violence
- Visiting
- Trade
Myth, ritual and aesthetics
- Myth and ritual, Cultural universal
- Magical thinking
- Use of magic to increase life and win love
- Beliefs about death
- Beliefs about disease
- Beliefs about fortune and misfortune
- Divination
- Attempts to control weather
- Dream interpretation
- Beliefs and narratives
- Proverbs, sayings
- Poetry/rhetorics
- Healing practices, medicine
- Childbirth customs
- Rites of passage
- Music, rhythm, dance
- Play
- Toys, playthings
- Death rituals, mourning
- Feasting
- Body adornment
- Hairstyles
- Art
Technology
- Shelter
- Control of fire
- Tools, tool making
- Weapons, spear
- Containers
- Cooking
- Lever
- Cordage
Non-nativist explanations
The observation of the same or similar behavior in different cultures does not prove that they are the results of a common underlying psychological mechanism. One possibility is that they may have been invented independently due to a common practical problem.
Since any cultures that have been studied by anthropologists have had contact with at least the anthropologists that studied it, and anthropological research ethics slows the studies down so that other groups unbound by such ethics, often at least locally represented by people of the same skin color as the supposedly isolated tribe but significantly culturally globalized, reach the tribe before the anthropologists do, no truly uncontacted culture has ever been scientifically studied. This allows outside influence to be an explanation for cultural universals as well. This does not preclude multiple independent inventions of civilization and is therefore not the same thing as hyperdiffusionism, it merely means that cultural universals are not proof of innateness.
See also
