Cultural Universals: What All Societies Have In Common
Cultural universals are the elements of culture, society, language, behavior and mind that, according to anthropological studies carried out so far, we share practically all human societies.
The American anthropologist Donald E. Brown is perhaps the most recognized author in the development of the theory of cultural universals. His proposal emerges as an important criticism of the way in which anthropology understood culture and human nature, and he develops an explanatory model that would recover the continuity between the two.
Below we explain how the theory of cultural universals arises and what the six types proposed by Brown are.
Brown proposed the concept of cultural universals with the intention of analyze the relationships between human nature and human culture and how they had been approached from traditional anthropology.
Among other things, he remained skeptical of the tendency to divide the world between a dimension called “culture”, and another opposite to another that we call “nature”. In this opposition, anthropology had tended to place its analyzes on the side of culture strongly associated with variability, indeterminacy, arbitrariness (which are the opposite elements of nature), and which are what determines us as human beings.
Brown positions himself more towards understanding culture as a continuum with nature, and seeks to reconcile the idea of the variability of cultures and behaviors, with the constants of biological nature that also constitute us as human beings. For Brown, societies and cultures are the product of interactions between individuals and individuals and their environment.
In his theory, Brown develops different theoretical and methodological proposals to integrate universals as explanatory theoretical models about human beings. These models allow make connections between biology, human nature and culture
Among other things, he proposes that there are 6 types of universals: absolute, apparent, conditional, statistical and group.
1. Absolute universals
These universals are what anthropology has found in all people regardless of their specific culture. For Brown, many of the universals do not exist separately from the other universals, but are expressions of different areas at the same time, for example the concept of “property” that expresses at the same time a form of social and cultural organization, and also a behavior.
Some examples that the same author gives in the cultural area are myths, legends, daily routines the concepts of “luck”, body adornments, the production of tools.
In the area of language, some absolute universals are grammar, phonemes, metonymy, and antonyms. In the social area, the division of labor, social groups, play, ethnocentrism.
Behaviorally, aggression, facial gestures, rumors; and in the mental area, emotions, dualistic thinking, fears, empathy, and psychological defense mechanisms.
2. Apparent universals
These universals are those for which there have been only a few exceptions. For example, the practice of making fire is a partial universal, because there is different evidence that very few people used it, however, they did not know how to make it. Another example is the prohibition of incest which is a rule present in different cultures, with some exceptions.
3. Conditional universals
The conditional universal is also called implicational universal, and refers to a cause-effect relationship between the cultural element and its universality. In other words, it is necessary that a particular condition be met for the element to be considered universal.
What is underlying in conditional universals is a causal mechanism that becomes a norm A cultural example could be the preference for using one of the two hands (the right, in the West).
4. Statistical universals
Statistical universals are those that occur constantly in societies apparently unrelated to each other, but They are not absolute universals because they seem to occur randomly For example, the different names by which the “pupil” is called in different cultures, since they all refer to a small person.
5. Universal groups
Group universals are those elements or situations in which a limited set of options explains the possibilities of variation between cultures. For example, the international phonetic alphabet, which represents a finite possibility of communicating through common signs and sounds, and which It is found in different ways in all cultures
In this case, there are two large categories to analyze universals: emic and etic (derived from the English terms “phonemic” and “phonetic”), which serve to distinguish the elements that are expressly represented in people’s cultural conceptions, and the elements that are present but not explicitly.
For example, All people speak based on grammatical rules that we have acquired However, not all people have a clear or explicit representation of what “grammatical rules” are.
