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One would think in an article about universals, there would be atleast one universal? I can not see a single thing listed that is indeed universal, Or even close to it. 210.185.16.176 ( talk) 09:05, 2 January 2010 (UTC)
Please provide more material/source to based your remark. As well, we should keep in mind that it is an hypothesis in some fields and some thinkers have written about it. Therefore, while the universality claims of any item on this page may be contested (and I think anyone strongly suggest you to provide researches invalidating those claims), it is still valid to have an article talking about this concept, overviewing the various hypothesis and raising the various oppositions/critics to those universality claims. MaximeH-ULaval ( talk) 10:05, 6 July 2018 (UTC)
At least in some cases, I know there are documented exceptions, so these alleged universals are not really all universals, and the list is dubious and misleading. (Reminds me of linguistic universals, by the way, where exceptions also tend to occur in many cases, but are often played down or simply ignored by the universal-hunters. But research on rara and rarissima is much more enlightening, I'd say.) For example, the Andamanese and Tasmanian Aborigines are well-known for lacking (or having lacked) the ability to make fire. (That they would seem to have lost it secondarily is really irrelevant for the purpose of such a list, which does not, after all, present an historical perspective.) Kibbutzim present a famous counter-example to the existence of incest taboos, and I have also seen the Alutiiq of Kodiak Island discussed in that context. Rape is not always proscribed and accepted in some cases – even ancient Greek heroes are portrayed as perpetrating it, with no indication of it being wrong. The Pirahã people provide a counterexample to the claim of universality for creation myths (among other things), and the lede to the History of atheism article indicates that "certain Pygmy tribes found in Africa" and the Vedda of Sri Lanka were also counterexamples to claims of university for religious beliefs in general. Gender relations and matriarchy are a hotly debated issue, of course, so I won't go into it (though I may point out that while the existence of true matriarchies is denied by many anthropologists – according to a certain definition of matriarchy, at least –, the existence of matrilinear, matrilocal or egalitarian societies seems to be uncontroversial, and in any case, the formula of "male domination" hides a lot of complexity in male/female relations), but listing universal male dominance as uncontested fact here is severely intellectually dishonest. Anyway, it's the exceptions that matter: one should think that it is unnecessary to point out that a single unexpected counterexample is more telling and important than thousands of confirming examples in science, through its potential to spur new insight, so it is imperative to focus on exceptions. -- Florian Blaschke ( talk) 14:52, 18 November 2011 (UTC)
These Universals cast a shadow over questions such a s wars, racism and fascism. The fact that the "others" (identified by skin color, language, beliefs and even clothing style )are accepted with suspicion or outright hostility may imply these traits may be the drive behind their modern counterparts.
However, there is quite a distance between the tribal level (as proved in the Universals) and the modern phenomena. The fact humans did manage to form societies three magnitudes larger than tribes implies that many adaptations occurred, and it's possible this Universals are not the cause, and the cause should be sought elsewhere.
Problem is, this phrase may fall under "original research". אילן שמעוני ( talk) 12:52, 18 December 2019 (UTC)
So the article still says "among the cultural universals listed by Brown (1991) are", as I have put it when I first built it years ago. But people took liberties with the list, just altering, adding or removing stuff. To put it bluntly, this is vandalism, because the article now attributes to Brown (1991) what is not in Brown (1991).
You are perfectly free to change or expand the list, but each change must be attributed to some specific source. -- dab (𒁳) 17:34, 9 April 2012 (UTC)
There are sixty-seven universals in the list: age-grading, athletic sports, bodily adornment, calendar, cleanliness training, community organization, cooking, cooperative labor, cosmology, courtship, dancing, decorative art, divination, division of labor, dream interpretation, education, eschatology, ethics, ethno-botany, etiquette, faith healing, family feasting, fire-making, folklore, food taboos, funeral rites, games, gestures, gift-giving, government, greetings, hair styles, hospitality, housing, hygiene, incest taboos, inheritance rules, joking, kin groups, kinship nomenclature, language, law, luck superstitions, magic, marriage, mealtimes, medicine, obstetrics, penal sanctions, personal names, population policy, postnatal care, pregnancy usages, property rights, propitiation of supernatural beings, puberty customs, religious ritual, residence rules, sexual restrictions, soul concepts, status differentiation, surgery, tool-making, trade, visiting, weather control, weaving. [147]"
Many authors wrote about cultural universals. May it be better if, instead of having one list as now, current list would be clearly identified as Brown's list and other lists/hypothesis would be added? I clearly identified with a new heading the current list is based on Brown, but an additional verification of list integrity should be done and additional candidate lists should be included. As this is not my field of expertise, I will let other people do it. MaximeH-ULaval ( talk) 10:32, 6 July 2018 (UTC)
Done
I think we need to discuss the inclusion of the sentence tacked on to the end of this piece which refers to "empty universals". The latter is a philosophical concept which, IMHO, does not apply here. Who in social science refers to cultural universals as "empty"? To say that a structure or trait or institution or theme is found in all cultures is not to point to a vacuous factor by any means. And by definition a cultural universal does not imply anything unique about a single culture. I am suggesting here that the sentence be removed because, unless the sentence's author can document the use of "empty" universal in the social science literature, it is inapplicable to the topic.
Charles D. Laughlin 00:37, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
There is no more mention of empty universal. This talk is then irrelevant.
MaximeH-ULaval (
talk)
10:40, 6 July 2018 (UTC)
Done
I have been fixing the disamb for
Shelter and the biggest problem is that there is no page for the actual word "shelter".--
Mynameisnotpj (
talk)
21:33, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
This appears to have been a theory vaguely cobbled together by sociologists which may be pseudoscience. It is not wikpedia's job to establish if it is pseudoscience, but there is quite a bit here and very little to verify it, and does not contain a section on discussions of the veracity of such claims(criticism). 96.55.138.35 ( talk) 05:15, 8 November 2021 (UTC)
I'm wondering if the neutrality tag is the best fit compared to a stub issue. I would like to see an expert give an origin or history of the term, and most importantly a relevance to any modern fields of study. If this page is to contain a list of proposed cultural universals then I agree we should expand the sources and change the tone (and possibly title) of the article. If not, maybe just a few examples given by Murdock or Brown and the list of 67 Human Universals could be moved to that book's page. A criticism section is only required if there are valid sources that criticize the idea. These might not exist if the idea isn't seriously considered by academia, but does not imply a lack of neutrality. DHHornfeldt ( talk) 02:00, 29 December 2020 (UTC)
Does this section make sense? The first sentence of the second para, in particular, seems unclear, and makes a rather strong claim, as in: " ... 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 ... reach the tribe before the anthropologists do, no truly uncontacted culture has ever been scientifically studied." There are quite a few assertions nested into these lines! The reference given [1] does not, on my reading, support what this main sentence asserts. For all I know, it may be true, but I think it at least needs a better source. Since its addition in 2015, it remains unchanged and unchallenged, so that gives me pause, as maybe I just don't understand the topic well enough? Could someone more knowledgeable about the topic please look at this? 49.177.64.138 ( talk) 05:36, 23 March 2021 (UTC)
References
The title "Cultural Universals" is misleading. If it's cultural it's learned (from other people), but many of the traits listed are good candidates for evolved adaptations, as the article notes. "Human Universals" would be much better. Paulhummerman ( talk) 00:03, 11 August 2022 (UTC)
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One would think in an article about universals, there would be atleast one universal? I can not see a single thing listed that is indeed universal, Or even close to it. 210.185.16.176 ( talk) 09:05, 2 January 2010 (UTC)
Please provide more material/source to based your remark. As well, we should keep in mind that it is an hypothesis in some fields and some thinkers have written about it. Therefore, while the universality claims of any item on this page may be contested (and I think anyone strongly suggest you to provide researches invalidating those claims), it is still valid to have an article talking about this concept, overviewing the various hypothesis and raising the various oppositions/critics to those universality claims. MaximeH-ULaval ( talk) 10:05, 6 July 2018 (UTC)
At least in some cases, I know there are documented exceptions, so these alleged universals are not really all universals, and the list is dubious and misleading. (Reminds me of linguistic universals, by the way, where exceptions also tend to occur in many cases, but are often played down or simply ignored by the universal-hunters. But research on rara and rarissima is much more enlightening, I'd say.) For example, the Andamanese and Tasmanian Aborigines are well-known for lacking (or having lacked) the ability to make fire. (That they would seem to have lost it secondarily is really irrelevant for the purpose of such a list, which does not, after all, present an historical perspective.) Kibbutzim present a famous counter-example to the existence of incest taboos, and I have also seen the Alutiiq of Kodiak Island discussed in that context. Rape is not always proscribed and accepted in some cases – even ancient Greek heroes are portrayed as perpetrating it, with no indication of it being wrong. The Pirahã people provide a counterexample to the claim of universality for creation myths (among other things), and the lede to the History of atheism article indicates that "certain Pygmy tribes found in Africa" and the Vedda of Sri Lanka were also counterexamples to claims of university for religious beliefs in general. Gender relations and matriarchy are a hotly debated issue, of course, so I won't go into it (though I may point out that while the existence of true matriarchies is denied by many anthropologists – according to a certain definition of matriarchy, at least –, the existence of matrilinear, matrilocal or egalitarian societies seems to be uncontroversial, and in any case, the formula of "male domination" hides a lot of complexity in male/female relations), but listing universal male dominance as uncontested fact here is severely intellectually dishonest. Anyway, it's the exceptions that matter: one should think that it is unnecessary to point out that a single unexpected counterexample is more telling and important than thousands of confirming examples in science, through its potential to spur new insight, so it is imperative to focus on exceptions. -- Florian Blaschke ( talk) 14:52, 18 November 2011 (UTC)
These Universals cast a shadow over questions such a s wars, racism and fascism. The fact that the "others" (identified by skin color, language, beliefs and even clothing style )are accepted with suspicion or outright hostility may imply these traits may be the drive behind their modern counterparts.
However, there is quite a distance between the tribal level (as proved in the Universals) and the modern phenomena. The fact humans did manage to form societies three magnitudes larger than tribes implies that many adaptations occurred, and it's possible this Universals are not the cause, and the cause should be sought elsewhere.
Problem is, this phrase may fall under "original research". אילן שמעוני ( talk) 12:52, 18 December 2019 (UTC)
So the article still says "among the cultural universals listed by Brown (1991) are", as I have put it when I first built it years ago. But people took liberties with the list, just altering, adding or removing stuff. To put it bluntly, this is vandalism, because the article now attributes to Brown (1991) what is not in Brown (1991).
You are perfectly free to change or expand the list, but each change must be attributed to some specific source. -- dab (𒁳) 17:34, 9 April 2012 (UTC)
There are sixty-seven universals in the list: age-grading, athletic sports, bodily adornment, calendar, cleanliness training, community organization, cooking, cooperative labor, cosmology, courtship, dancing, decorative art, divination, division of labor, dream interpretation, education, eschatology, ethics, ethno-botany, etiquette, faith healing, family feasting, fire-making, folklore, food taboos, funeral rites, games, gestures, gift-giving, government, greetings, hair styles, hospitality, housing, hygiene, incest taboos, inheritance rules, joking, kin groups, kinship nomenclature, language, law, luck superstitions, magic, marriage, mealtimes, medicine, obstetrics, penal sanctions, personal names, population policy, postnatal care, pregnancy usages, property rights, propitiation of supernatural beings, puberty customs, religious ritual, residence rules, sexual restrictions, soul concepts, status differentiation, surgery, tool-making, trade, visiting, weather control, weaving. [147]"
Many authors wrote about cultural universals. May it be better if, instead of having one list as now, current list would be clearly identified as Brown's list and other lists/hypothesis would be added? I clearly identified with a new heading the current list is based on Brown, but an additional verification of list integrity should be done and additional candidate lists should be included. As this is not my field of expertise, I will let other people do it. MaximeH-ULaval ( talk) 10:32, 6 July 2018 (UTC)
Done
I think we need to discuss the inclusion of the sentence tacked on to the end of this piece which refers to "empty universals". The latter is a philosophical concept which, IMHO, does not apply here. Who in social science refers to cultural universals as "empty"? To say that a structure or trait or institution or theme is found in all cultures is not to point to a vacuous factor by any means. And by definition a cultural universal does not imply anything unique about a single culture. I am suggesting here that the sentence be removed because, unless the sentence's author can document the use of "empty" universal in the social science literature, it is inapplicable to the topic.
Charles D. Laughlin 00:37, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
There is no more mention of empty universal. This talk is then irrelevant.
MaximeH-ULaval (
talk)
10:40, 6 July 2018 (UTC)
Done
I have been fixing the disamb for
Shelter and the biggest problem is that there is no page for the actual word "shelter".--
Mynameisnotpj (
talk)
21:33, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
This appears to have been a theory vaguely cobbled together by sociologists which may be pseudoscience. It is not wikpedia's job to establish if it is pseudoscience, but there is quite a bit here and very little to verify it, and does not contain a section on discussions of the veracity of such claims(criticism). 96.55.138.35 ( talk) 05:15, 8 November 2021 (UTC)
I'm wondering if the neutrality tag is the best fit compared to a stub issue. I would like to see an expert give an origin or history of the term, and most importantly a relevance to any modern fields of study. If this page is to contain a list of proposed cultural universals then I agree we should expand the sources and change the tone (and possibly title) of the article. If not, maybe just a few examples given by Murdock or Brown and the list of 67 Human Universals could be moved to that book's page. A criticism section is only required if there are valid sources that criticize the idea. These might not exist if the idea isn't seriously considered by academia, but does not imply a lack of neutrality. DHHornfeldt ( talk) 02:00, 29 December 2020 (UTC)
Does this section make sense? The first sentence of the second para, in particular, seems unclear, and makes a rather strong claim, as in: " ... 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 ... reach the tribe before the anthropologists do, no truly uncontacted culture has ever been scientifically studied." There are quite a few assertions nested into these lines! The reference given [1] does not, on my reading, support what this main sentence asserts. For all I know, it may be true, but I think it at least needs a better source. Since its addition in 2015, it remains unchanged and unchallenged, so that gives me pause, as maybe I just don't understand the topic well enough? Could someone more knowledgeable about the topic please look at this? 49.177.64.138 ( talk) 05:36, 23 March 2021 (UTC)
References
The title "Cultural Universals" is misleading. If it's cultural it's learned (from other people), but many of the traits listed are good candidates for evolved adaptations, as the article notes. "Human Universals" would be much better. Paulhummerman ( talk) 00:03, 11 August 2022 (UTC)