Human Universals
Page 24
3. To illustrate, among some few peoples when children playfight they do not actually strike each other, while among other peoples the children do strike. Because in all cases children playfight, any innate bases of playfighting should figure in the explanation of each case, despite the differences. Furthermore, it is entirely possible that being peaceable reflects a phylogenetic adaptation that specifies “act tough when you can get away with it, but when you can’t get away with it, act mild.” Peoples who, through force of circumstance, are peaceable (i.e., act mild) may curb their children’s playfighting to the point that hitting disappears. But the resulting manifest difference (children who do not hit) is still an indirect consequence of human nature.
4. Among the further findings were that social science, secularism, and omenry are more likely to flourish in societies with open stratification.
5. If peoples of different cultures lived in fundamentally “distinct worlds” (Sapir 1929:209)—which is the clear implication of any strong version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis described in chapter 1—there would indeed be no basis for distinguishing human from inhuman beyond surface appearances. Surely one of the nightmares of our time is the fear that animated George Orwell’s 1984, the fear that people are so programmable that they could be reduced to social automatons. Chomsky counters this fear by arguing (in Piatelli-Palmarini 1980) that our richly detailed innate mental endowment is a defense against totalitarianism. Part of Bloch’s (1977) argument is that universals provide criteria by which any particular sociocultural system may be judged.
Bibliography
Items with an asterisk are directly pertinent to the study of universals. Many sources that attempt to explain a universal, without addressing the issue of whether it is or isn’t a universal, have not been included. Annotations are provided for specific universals if not mentioned in the titles, and for works that have not been discussed in the text.
Aberle, D. F. et al.
*1950
The Functional Prerequisites of Society. Ethics 60:100–111.
[All societies change through time, are adjusted to the environment, regulate sex, have a system of statuses and roles, have higher and lower statuses, have a division of labor by sex and age, provide for socialization of children and others, have a shared cognitive organization, regulate the expression of affect, and control disruptive behaviors.]
Aceves, Joseph B., and H. Gill King
1978
Cultural Anthropology. Morristown, New Jersey: General Learning Press.
Aginsky, Burt W., and Ethel G. Aginsky
*1948
The Importance of Language Universals. Word 4:168–172.
[The spear, lever, distinctions between general and particular, thinking, dreaming, time, space, number, and other universals of psychobiology and environmental conditions.]
Alcock, John
1987
Ardent Adaptationism. Natural History 4:4.
Alexander, Richard
*1979
Darwinism and Human Affairs. Seattle and London: University of Washington Press.
Alland, Alexander, Jr.
*1983
Playing with Form: Children Draw in Six Cultures. New York: Columbia University Press.
[Argues that certain aesthetic principles, “good form,” are innate and universal.]
Altman, Irwin
*1977
Privacy Regulation: Culturally Universal or Culturally Specific? Journal of Social Issues 33 (3):66–84.
[Privacy (being inaccessible to others) is universal, though the means of regulating access to oneself are variable.]
Annett, Marian
*1985
Left, Right, Hand and Brain: The Right Shift Theory. London: Erlbaum.
Appell, G. N.
*1973
The Distinction between Ethnography and Ethnology and Other Issues in Cognitive Structuralism. Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land-, en Volkenkunde 129:1–56.
*1976
The Rungus: Social Structure in a Cognatic Society and Its Ritual Symbolization. In The Societies of Borneo: Explorations in the Theory of Cognatic Social Structure, edited by G. N. Appell, pp. 66–86, Washington, D.C.: American Anthropological Association.
[Entification, property, universal model.]
Arens, W.
*1986
The Original Sin: Incest and Its Meaning. New York: Oxford University Press.
Arnheim, Rudolf
*1988
Universals in the Arts. Journal of Social and Biological Structures 11:60–65.
[Art and artistic activities are universal. Within all art there is compositional equilibrium and a tendency to simplify. The archetypical themes of love and hostility, birth and death, success and failure, and beauty and ugliness are also universal.]
Bagish, Henry H.
*1981
Confessions of a Former Cultural Relativist. Santa Barbara, California: Santa Barbara City College Publications.
[Ethnocentrism, pragmatic choices.]
Bailey, F. G.
*1988
Humbuggery and Manipulation: The Art of Leadership. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press.
[Good and bad conduct are distinguished everywhere, and effective leaders everywhere must engage in some of the bad. Apathetic, regimented, “mature,” and autarkic are four universal dispositions of followers.]
Bamberger, Joan
*1974
The Myth of Matriarchy: Why Men Rule in Primitive Society. In Woman, Culture, and Society, edited by Michelle Zimbalist Rosaldo and Louise Lamphere, pp. 263–280, Stanford, California: Stanford University Press.
[Myths that posit an early period in which women ruled men are widespread but are always myth. Women have never ruled.]
Barkow, Jerome H.
1973
Darwinian Psychological Anthropology: A Biosocial Approach. Current Anthropology 14:373–387.
1984
The Distance between Genes and Culture. Journal of Anthropological Research 40:367–379.
Barnouw, Victor
1975
An Introduction to Anthropology. Vol. 2: Ethnology. Homewood, Illinois: Dorsey Press.
1978
An Introduction to Anthropology, Vol. 2, 3d ed. Homewood, Illinois: Dorsey Press.
Beals, Alan R.
1979
Culture in Process. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.
Belmonte, Thomas
*1985
Alexander Lesser (1902–1982). American Anthropologist 87:637–644.
Benderley, Beryl Lieff, Mary F. Gallagher, and John M. Young
1977
Discovering Culture: An Introduction to Anthropology. New York: Van Nostrand.
Benedict, Ruth
*1934
Patterns of Culture. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
[Briefly discusses universals as “cradle” traits. (p. 19).]
*1938
Religion. In Boas, ed., pp. 627–665.
[Concept of supernatural is universal. Implies the universality of animism, personification, and moralism in constructing worldviews.]
*1959
Anthropology and the Abnormal. In An Anthropologist at Work: Writings of Ruth Benedict, edited by Margaret Mead, pp. 262–283, Boston: Houghton Mifflin. (First published in 1934.)
[Suggests a universal range of human temperaments.]
Berlin, Brent
*1970
A Universalist-Evolutionary Approach in Ethnographic Semantics. In Current Directions in Anthropology, edited by A. Fisher, pp. 31–38, Bulletin of the American Anthropological Association 3.3, part 2.
Berlin, Brent, and Paul Kay
*1969
Basic Color Terms: Their Universality and Evolution. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Berreman, Gerald D.
*1981
Social Inequality: A Cross-Cultural Analysis. In Social Inequality: Comparative and Developmental Approaches, edited by Gerald D. Berre
man, pp. 3–40, New York: Academic Press.
[Some degree of inequality and dominance is universal. Empathy also universal.]
Beyerstein, Barry L.
1988
Neuropathology and the Legacy of Spiritual Possession: Three Brain Syndromes—Epilepsy, Tourette’s Syndrome, and Migraine—Probably Fomented Ancient Notions of Possession and Transcendence. The Skeptical Inquirer 12:248–262.
Bidney, David
1944
The Concept of Culture and Some Cultural Fallacies. American Anthropologist 46:30–44.
1947
Human Nature and the Cultural Process. American Anthropologist 49:375–399.
Birdwhistell, Ray L.
1963
The Kinesic Level in the Investigation of the Emotions. In Expression of the Emotions in Man, edited by Peter H. Knapp, pp. 123–139. New York: International Universities Press.
*1970
Kinesics and Context: Essays on Body Motion Communication. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Birnbaum, Lucille C.
1955
Behaviorism in the 1920’s. American Quarterly 7:15–30.
Bischof, Norbert
*1972
The Biological Foundations of the Incest Taboo. Social Science Information 11 (6):7–36.
Bittles, A. H.
*1983
The Intensity of Inbreeding Depression. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 6:103–104.
Bixler, Ray H.
1982a
Sibling Incest in the Royal Families of Egypt, Peru, and Hawaii. Journal of Sex Research 18:264–281.
1982b
Comment on the Incidence and Purpose of Royal Sibling Incest. American Ethnologist 9:580–582.
Bloch, Maurice
*1977
The Past and the Present in the Present. Man 12:278–292.
Bloom, Allan
1988
The Closing of the American Mind. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Blum, Harold F.
1963
On the Origin and Evolution of Human Culture. American Scientist 51:32–47.
Boas, Franz
*1963
[1911] The Mind of Primitive Man. New York: Collier Books.
1928
Foreword. In Mead 1928, pp. xiii–xv.
*1930
Anthropology. In Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences. New York: Macmillan, 2:73–110.
*1938a
Mythology and Folklore. In Boas, ed., pp. 609–626.
[The play of imagination is universal and, in conjunction with situations and experiences common to all societies, gives rise to many cultural similarities. Metaphor is universal, and the word meanings that stimulate metaphors undergo constant change. Implies the universality or near-universality of statements like “if I were,” “if I could,” “if this had not happened”; of visits to the skyland; of personification; and of precedent.]
*1938b
Methods of Research. In Boas, ed., pp. 666–686.
[Universal social tendencies include solitary groups antagonistic to outsiders, coordination and subordination, imitation and resistance of outside influences, individual and group competition, a division of labor, and amalgamation and segregation. Also universal are attitudes to the supernatural, fear, hope, love, hate, valuation of good and bad and beautiful and ugly, and perhaps murder, theft, lying, and rape.]
Boas, Franz, ed.
*1938
General Anthropology. Boston: Heath.
Boehm, Christopher
*1979
Some Problems with Altruism in the Search for Moral Universals. Behavioral Science 24:15–24.
*1989
Ambivalence and Compromise in Human Nature. American Anthropologist 91:921–939.
[“Universally occurring psychological ambivalences [are] manifestations of competing tendencies in human nature.”]
Bohannan, Paul
1963
Social Anthropology. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.
Boklage, Charles E.
1984
Twinning, Handedness, and the Biology of Symmetry. In Cerebral Dominance: The Biological Foundations, edited by Norman Geschwind and Albert M. Galaburda, pp. 195–210. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Bolton, Ralph
1978
Black, White, and Red All Over: The Riddle of Color Term Salience. Ethnology 17:287–311.
Bousfield, John, and John Davis
*1989
What If Sophistry Is Universal? Current Anthropology 30:517–518.
Boyd, Robert, and Peter J. Richerson
1985
Culture and the Evolutionary Process. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Boynton, Robert M., and Conrad X. Olson
1987
Locating Basic Colors in OSA Space. Color Research and Application 12:94–105.
Breland, Keller, and Marian Breland
1961
The Misbehavior of Organisms. American Psychologist 16:681–684.
Brown, Cecil H.
*1977a
Lexical Universals and the Human Language Faculty. In Linguistics and Anthropology, edited by Muriel Saville-Troike, pp. 75–91. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press.
*1977b
Folk Botanical Life-Forms: Their Universality and Growth. American Anthropologist 79:317–342.
*1979
Folk Zoological Life-Forms: Their Universality and Growth. American Anthropologist 81:791–817.
Brown, Cecil H., and Stanley R. Witkowski
*1981
Figurative Language in a Universalist Perspective. American Ethnologist 8:596–615.
Brown, Donald E.
1971
The Coronation of Sultan Muhammad Jamalul Alam, 1918. Brunei Museum Journal 2:74–80.
1976
Principles of Social Structure: Southeast Asia. London: Duckworth.
*1982
Social Organization and Biology. Man 17:551–554.
[Classification by sex, age, and kinship.]
1988
Hierarchy, History, and Human Nature: The Social Origins of Historical Consciousness. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.
Brown, Penelope, and Stephen C. Levinson
*1987
Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (First published in 1978 as part of Questions and Politeness, edited by Esther N. Goody. Cambridge Papers in Social Anthropology No. 8.)
Bunzel, Ruth
*1938
Art. In Boas, ed., pp. 535–588.
[Decorative art, literary art, tale-telling, song, and dance are all universal.]
Burian, Richard M.
1983
Adaptation. In Dimensions of Darwinism, edited by Marjorie Greene, pp. 287–314. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Burling, Robbins
*1970
Man’s Many Voices: Language in Its Cultural Context. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.
[The evidence suggests that a genealogical core to kinship reckoning is universal. Beats and lines in verse appear to be universal. All languages change through time.]
Buss, David M.
*1984
Evolutionary Biology and Personality Psychology: Toward a Conception of Human Nature and Individual Differences. American Psychologist 39:1135–1147.
[Universals as part of the definition of human nature.]
Butterworth, Brian, Bernard Comrie, and Östen Dahl, eds.
*1984
Explanations for Language Universals. Berlin: Mouton.
Caillois, Roger
1961
Man, Play, and Games. Translated by Meyer Barash. New York: Free Press of Glencoe.
Campbell, D. T., and R. A. Levine
*1972
Ethnocentrism: Theories of Conflict, Ethnic Attitudes and Group Behavior. New York: Wiley.
Carroll, John B., ed.
1956
Language, Tho
ught, and Reality: Selected Writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf. Boston: Technology Press of MIT.
Caton, Hiram, ed.
1990
The Samoa Reader: Anthropologists Take Stock. Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America.
Chafe, Wallace
*1987
Cognitive Constraints on Information Flow. In Coherence and Grounding in Discourse, edited by Russell S. Tomlin, pp. 21–51. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
[Suggests that natural speech is universally broken into segments (“intonation units”) of approximately 2-seconds duration, each segment usually preceded by a pause. This presumably reflects what the human mind can focus on at a single time (perhaps within the limit of short-term memory).]
Chagnon, Napoleon A.
1979
Anthropology and the Nature of Things. In Chagnon and Irons 1979, pp. 522–526.
Chagnon, Napoleon A., and William Irons, eds.
1979
Evolutionary Biology and Human Social Behavior: An Anthropological Perspective. North Scituate, Massachusetts: Duxbury Press.
Chomsky, Noam
1959
Review of B. F. Skinner’s Verbal Behavior. Language 35:26–58.
*1965
Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. Cambridge: MIT Press.
[Substantive and formal linguistic universals.]
*1980
Rules and Representations. New York: Columbia University Press.
*1988
Language and Problems of Knowledge: The Managua Lectures. Cambridge: MIT Press.