Our Common Denominator
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Our Common Denominator

Human Universals Revisited

Christoph Antweiler

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eBook - ePub

Our Common Denominator

Human Universals Revisited

Christoph Antweiler

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About This Book

Since the politicization of anthropology in the 1970s, most anthropologists have been reluctant to approach the topic of universals—that is, phenomena that occur regularly in all known human societies. In this volume, Christoph Antweiler reasserts the importance of these cross-cultural commonalities for anthropological research and for life and co-existence beyond the academy. The question presented here is how anthropology can help us approach humanity in its entirety, understanding the world less as a globe, with an emphasis on differences, but as a planet, from a vantage point open to commonalities.

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Year
2016
ISBN
9781785330940
image
Figure 1. Rickshaw puller in Makassar, Indonesia. Photo by Maria Blechmann-Antweiler.

CHAPTER 1

Humankind

Current Societal Debates
Universals and norms are not the same things.
—Karl Eibl, Animal Poeta
My initial approach to the topic of universals will consider certain sociopolitical debates and the varying realms in which cultural universals may function. We are all aware of universal statements in daily conversation or in the mass media, starting with phrases such as “in every human culture there is 
” or “people in all cultures want 
” or people all over the world feel that 
” or “people everywhere are x, y and z” or “we’re just one big family.” Such generalizing views are common in both radio reports in newspaper articles. A book on the cultural history of noodles is entitled Universal Food (Serventi and Sabban 2002). Politicians well versed in universal rhetoric refer to fundamental or age-old human characteristics. Kofi Annan, in his Nobel Lecture of 10 December 2001, described people the world over within the context of a common humanity as well as in terms of individual suffering (Annan 2002: 21).

Universal Postulates Everywhere!

Universal statements are supposedly all-encompassing truths about individuals as well as entire societies or cultures. Often we talk of human beings with reference to all humans, or to all of humanity or humankind without differentiating between individuals and cultures. Generalizing claims have been made throughout the last 2,000 years of history. Plato claimed that all of humanity, Greeks and non-Greeks alike, believe in the existence of gods. A blurb appearing on a book published by the Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft contained the following remark: “Rituals allow us to cope with critical and social situations alike. They occur in the most elaborate of ways in all cultures and time periods” (Ambos et al. 2005).
It appears that being interested in human nature, and particularly in the tension between universal notions and cultural specifics, is in fact itself a universal. Interest in the topic tends to grow in periods marked by cultural contact, or hybridity. When interviewed, social or cultural scientists are often asked questions such as “What is more pronounced, the differences among people or the common denominator that ties people together despite all the different cultural influences?” (Wiegand 1999: 42). We find the expression of universal statements especially common in mass media interviews of prominent figures or academics, for example, a psychologist discussing the topic of casting shows: “Question: Is the desire to become famous a basic human need? Answer: No. We shouldn’t forget that there are millions of young people who would rather cut off their hand than make a fool out of themselves for one second. The desire for care and attention is, though, an anthropological constant” (Ernst and OttenschlĂ€ger 2003: 142).
Academic texts rarely hold such explicit universal statements as the one in the following quote from Pinker’s bestseller on universals at the individual level: “The evidence suggests that humans everywhere on the planet see, talk, and think about objects and people in the same basic way” (Pinker 1997: 34). Assumptions about cultural universals, though not always so striking, are found throughout academic texts in and outside the field of cultural anthropology. Wolfgang Marschall comments relatively clearly that “the search for identity is an important part of human activity” (Marschall 1990a: 8). More often we find universal statements made implicitly in textbooks on cultural anthropology, psychology, or economics as to the essence, nature, or defining attributes of human beings. Universal statements about anthropological topics are found quite often in popularized forms of cultural anthropology, such as ethnographic museums or television shows. In a brochure of the new Rautenstrauch-Joest Museum for Ethnography in Cologne (from 2005), we read the following: “The human issues that move people across the globe, though dealt with in different ways based on regional and cultural influences, are the basic foundations for the new facility at Neumarkt in the heart of the city” (Gesellschaft fĂŒr Völkerkunde zur Förderung des Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museums n.y.: 3).
Universals can be very general or very specific. The more general they are, the more obvious, trivial, or banal they appear. More specific universals may be surprising but are often deemed too speculative or even dubious. We see this in the incest taboo and the Oedipus complex, two of the more broadly known examples of possible universals. Sigmund Freud described a concept of the male child as caught between father and mother in universal terms. Malinowski questioned this idea in cultural anthropology, pointing out that among the matrilineal Tobrianders, the biological father is neither a person of authority for the male children nor a sexual rival in the fight for the mother (Malinowski 1924: 256–58). The Oedipus complex appears, according to more current findings, to be practically universal. However, very different phenomena are understood here with respect to both terms. Contrary definitions often play a decisive role in whether or not we categorize a phenomenon as universal. Vague or implicitly understood definitions are a notorious problem for research into universals.
Universals become more interesting the farther removed they are from elementary physiological facts, such as metabolism or simple sensory functions. But even a shared biology does not make the situation simple (Schiefenhövel 1999: 1). Almost everyone would agree with the statement that human beings want to survive and that they have sexual impulses. But in many cultures it is “normal” that certain persons or groups of people practice celibacy. Also, there have been and still are people who consciously and willingly accept death by starvation. Universals that appear obvious in effect lead to the long-term survival of human beings, a species that depends on organized social ties for that survival. Universals tied to social networks include those associated with tools, physical or bodily protection, communication systems, and cooperation in the search for food and in methods for rearing children. Less obvious are those universals not associated with individuals’ immediate survival. These include division of labor, restrictions on sexual relations between certain categories of family members, organized ways of sharing food resources and exchanging goods, belief in supernatural forces, rites of passage, and the existence of sport (Peoples and Bailey 2015: 43; Herzog-Schröder 2001).
When human beings see themselves as separate individuals going about their daily lives, then they are quick to notice, especially in their own faces, the incredible differences—but not the similarities—in and among human beings. Even when entire cultures are compared, the differences between them are what we end up seeing, as is currently communicated worldwide in public debate on the topic of cultural comparisons. Commonalities between cultures are emphasized only after their differences are cited as central in the comparison, or when similarities are initially denied. The perception of relative differences depends strongly on the level of comparison. When people do not place themselves or their cultures in comparison with other people or cultures, but rather with animals or animal populations, then the perceived differences between human groups disappear almost completely from view. Likenesses pertaining to the biological factors of the human condition take precedence, and the emphasis is on separating humans from their closest biological relatives among the higher primates (Lewontin 1986: 1–2). The human condition (Conditio Humana) can also easily turn into a kind of naturalistic mysticism. The desire for positive universals, as mentioned earlier in the preface, appears almost harmless. But such a desire includes certain problems seen in the world of visual popular culture.

Popular Universality in Visual Media: “The Family of Man”

In recent years, the number of works focusing on visual documentation of human diversity has risen steadily (e.g., Ommer 2000; Lonely Planet 2005; Winston 2004; Komatsu and Komatsu 2006). At first glance these books pre­sent all the different varieties of people with their diverse ways of life. But they also refer indirectly to universal themes occurring among human beings and common problems facing all cultures. Similar projects with an educational bent have been initiated (Cleveland, Craven, and Danfelser 1979) and can currently be found via the Internet (Payne and Gray 1997). Over ten years ago, the Geosphere Project supported by UNESCO put together a CD-ROM presenting data taken from questionnaires answered by thirty “randomly selected” families from across the entire world (see Wenker 2001; Menzel and Aluisio 2004, 2005).
The classic forerunner to these initiatives remains the extremely successful photo exhibition entitled The Family of Man, conceived by the curator Edward Steichen for the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Presented in connection with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, the exhibit held 503 black-and-white images by 273 amateur and professional photographers from 68 countries around the world. Using photography as a universal language, the show was divided into twenty-four image categories representing universal human themes and problems such as play, work, birth, disease, aging, and death. Steichen wanted to create a mirror into the world of the human species (Steichen 1955). Complementing the pictures were selected quotations with a timeless quality about them, for example proverbs or sayings from the Old Testament. Each image category was placed in its own room (for details, see Philipp 1987; J. Schmidt 1996). From 1955 to 1961 The Family of Man toured sixty-seven countries as a traveling exhibition in the form of “travelling editions.” It was an amazing success, presenting humanity as a unifying concept in the midst of the Cold War. The things that divide human beings appeared as a superficial layer over a common substance. The combination of diversity and unity among human beings in their behaviour and emotions fascinated a public of millions. That was still the case when the restored exhibition was shown again in many countries around the world, including Japan. In a time of cultural upheaval, this same fascination, combined with a humanistic form of Utopia, is present in more recent exhibitions and books.
Wishful thinking, sentimentality, an implicit political agenda, or a hidden religious ideal might be found lurking within such presentations of humanity. The exhibit was entitled “All of Us” (Wir alle) in Berlin and “The Large Family of Man” (La Grande Familie des Hommes ) in Paris. In his Mythologies, Roland Barthes (2013: 101) criticized the exhibit during its time in Paris as moralizing, sentimentalizing, and pseudo-religious. He claimed that the images first dramatized the differences among people through skin color and customs in a form of “babelising,” only to then extract human unity out of this plurality by way of magic. In 1994 the exhibition, which the U.S. government had already given to Luxembourg as a present in 1964, found a permanent home in Luxembourg’s Palace Clerveaux in a restored form. Most of the contributions for an anniversary publication (Back and Bauret 1994) in honor of the exhibit paid homage to Steichen (though with a few exceptions; see Segalen 1994). Meanwhile, the work and the exhibition led to intense discussion that expanded on themes introduced by Barthes (J. Schmidt 1996; Back and Schmidt-Linsenhoff 2004; see Kissler 2000). Both the unintentional emphasis on physical differences and the universalizing texts accompanying the images were criticized. The monumental expression of brotherhood was seen as adamantly denying every possible type of social difference. Finally, it was seen as an instrument of U.S. imperialism at the time of the Cold War. The exhibition not only masked social inequality and related problems but also avoided the topic of the Jewish Shoah. Many people criticized the patriarchal undercurrents of the “human family” and the so-called typical American family as a indirectly implied ideal representation of family in the exhibit. Others accused it of presenting a not-so-subtle didactic. The exhibition was also criticized for its form, which was considered a precursor to consumer-oriented depictions, similar to Benetton’s United Colours advertising campaign.
The exhibition drew on the so-called “we are one” feeling (During 2005: 86) presented, for example, in the framework of the Olympic games, the soccer World Cup, global charity events, and companies such as Benetton. But a closer look at the Benetton advertisement campaign reveals completely different concepts of what we might mean by cultural diversity. On seeing the Family of Man exhibit, one may notice that many of the critics’ concerns were justified but at times exaggerated. The term “family of man” is a good example here, being both problematic and full of potential, as Gernot Böhme has claimed. Family as metaphor does not necessarily imply something Christian, Jewish or patriarchal; nor does it have to be simply comforting or sentimental. This metaphor can also be understood within its historical or phylogenetic context. Seeing the individual as belonging within humanity in general in terms of family or kinship produces a particular form of solidarity and unity. “Man is a human being, because he descends from humans” (Böhme 1999: 26). As such, humanity could be defined through relationships or from within contexts, conceived by extension with allowances for diversity. In contrast, defining humanity by localizing specific human features would not likely permit room for diversity. An understanding of humanity through the metaphor of family could also be useful in the debate on the universal dimensions of worldwide cultural diversity. This implies that we are dealing with one aspect of many universal statements, or simply the pursuit of the universal.

Normative Universalism

Human Rights and Civil Society

Universals are often postulated in political and religious contexts with an emphasis on furthering intercultural understanding. Commonalities could help forge ties between cultures (for possibilities and limitations, see Pohl 1999: 28–29). The problems associated with the public treatment of universality are readily seen in current discussions on human rights, ecology, democracy, and political and medical ethics. With increasing regularity since the mid-1990s, general statements on human beings or human societies have been made with reference to the goal of forging a new world culture in the sense of global solidarity for peace or sustained development (Brieskorn 1997; MĂŒller and Reder 2003; Argyrou 2005; Jörke 2005: 99–108), or have concerned democracy and the ideals imbedded in human rights (Berg-Schlosser 1997; Derichs 1998). These discussions often reflect an image of humanity as the cosmopolitan community of interests described in the anthropology of the Greek Stoics or the work of Cicero (Gladigow 2004: 74). Dieter Weiss (2000: 133), in a journal for development politics, wrote: “An increasingly interdependent global society could be barely functional without the creation of an elementary, worldwide consensual basis that calls for respecting the vast richness of cultural diversity.”
Through intensive debate, and despite numerous differences, human rights are now understood within a certain pragmatic consensus, and with specific normative tendencies. A constant but as yet unanswered question in the discussions on the topic concerns if and when the goals of these rights can be based on the existence of empirically substantiated universals. The human rights charter of the United Nations (UN) from 1948 contains explicit wording on universal human rights: every single individual is worthy of human dignity. Accordingly, these rights fulfill the fundamental characteristics of universality, as Tönnies (2001: 15) explains: “Universality follows the rule ‘quod semper, quod ubique, quod omnibus,’ which means forever valid, for everyone everywhere, and therefore rests on the assumption that human beings, from a certain vantage point, are all ‘equal.’” According to one argument, human rights arise from the assumption of a universal human form for both suffering and happiness. The philosopher Johannes MĂŒller (2002: 51–52) offers a clear example of this when describing human suffering and the capability of human sympathy as the basis for societal development: the experience of human suffering is direct and immediate, closely connected with the physical state of being human. All people share in this in some way. The feelings produced by suffering are projected in much the same form everywhere, such as in our facial expressions when we experience physical pain.
Meanwhile, others vehemently oppose the idea of allowing assumed universal human characteristics to be incorporated into the debate on human rights. Many authors view universal human rights as something diffuse. They find the thesis of a supposedly universal ideal concerning human rights to lack a solid empirical basis in data. According to François Lyotard (1987), points of reference to universality are absent in non-Western cultures. LyotardÂŽs contention is that the values associated with universality exist only in Western or Western-oriented societies. Critically understood, the universal postulate of human rights is seen by many as something tending toward the idealistic, ideological, progressive, Western, Eurocentric, or ethnocentric. This criticism is based on a general suspicion that all forms of universality arise out of particular interests, and therefore out of a form of particularism. Such universality, then, is a questionable form of hegemony. The supposed universal is in fact a particularistic bourgeois ideal stemming from the European eighteenth century or Western individualism or the so-called American way of life (Wallerstein 2007: xiii, 1–35). Supporting this position is the fact that certain humanistic movements under the “Universal” banner have often excluded certain categories of people from “universal rights,” such as those with darker skin or women (Davies 2007: 26, 167). Even the progressively understood term “tolerant universality,” coined by the abolitionist Abbot GrĂ©goire during the French Revolution, was used to uphold the ideas behind conquest and colonialism (Goldstein-Sepinwall 2005).
The critique of universal human rights also has a tradition in the field of cultural anthropology. After the initial euphoria in support of human rights and the UN, leading anthropologists of the time, such as Claude LĂ©vi-Strauss, abandoned the human rights movement (American Anthropological Association 1947) because they understood human rights as related to cultural communities and not to universally based individual rights of protection and self-defense (Hauschild 2004: 124–25). The moral horizons of many non-European cultures are radically particularistic and self-focused, something ignored in the concept of human rights. Examples like the caste system in India, marriages of young girls in the Arab world, or extreme forms of punishment among Australian Aborigines would demonstrate that the values incorporated in the notion of human rights are not, in the strict sense, universal. They do not comply with the concepts of justice found in different cultures, let alone among most people on the planet (Wimmer 1997: 124). However, these opposing viewpoints—like the arguments in favor of human rights—are rarely backed by empirical data (see Renteln 1988, 1990; Wuketits 2003).
The thinking behind human rights is in fact the brainchild of Western intellectual history, which projects the idea of human equality before God and the guiding notion of the universal Christian mission. Both ideas were taken up in the European and American Enlightenment, secularized by political liberalism, and radicalized in the nineteenth century (Wimmer 1997: 124). Western theories understanding human rights as rights of the individual before the state were deeply influenced by the Judeo-Christian value system. The inalienable freedom of the individual rests solidly at the core of the Declaration of Universal Human Rights from 1948 (Graf 2004: 211–13). With the Cold War and the period of decolonization, consensus on human rights began to erode. The first objections came from the then communist countries, where social rights and individual responsibility with respect to the community received more legal emphasis. The new countries in the developing world also understood human rights beyond the level of the individual, focusing more on “community,” “the people,” or “the nation” as the primary platforms for human rights. Community ties, social responsibility, and the well-being of the “people” in both Islamic and Chinese thought represent a concept different from the individualism and human rights in Western societies. The universality of human rights is open for debate. A general uncertainty reigns over the status of occidental rationalism. In JĂŒrgen Habermas’s (2005) recent characterization, “the image of the norm for the future is the exception for all other cultures”. As Terkessidis (1998: 229) concludes, “it no longer is the case, as in the time of colonial expansion, of the universalizing of particular European cultures, but rather the particularizing of Western universality.”

Relative Universalism, Negotiated Universals, and Multiple Modernities

Cultural differences, typically presented as intercultural contrasts in the discussion on human rights, are in fact intracultural as well (Holenstein 1985b: 142). Failure to acknowledge this represents a general m...

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