Universals of Human Culture

viernes, 15 de junio de 2012

Universals of Human Culture

 From E. O. Wilson, Consilience p. 147:

"In a classic 1945 compendium, the American anthropologist George P. Murdock listed the universals of culture, which he defined as the social behaviors and institutions recorded in the Human Relations Area Files for every one of the hundreds of societies studied to that time. 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
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

Source: George P. Murdock, "The Common Denominator of Cultures." In The Science of Man in the World Crisis. Ed. Ralph Linton.  New York: Columbia UP, 1945. Wilson also refers the reader to Donald E. Brown, Human Universals (Philadelphia: Temple UP, 1991).

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